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New Foundations of Experimental Psychology

1551 min read

Original publication

Original title: Nové základy experimentální psychologie
Author: Břetislav Kafka
Publication year: 1999 (first complete author-supplemented edition; first edition 1925)
Original language: Czech

About this translation: Complete English translation of the supplied Czech EPUB, including all eighty chapters, prefaces, expert assessment, glossary and both indexes. The source edition is Poznání, Olomouc, 1999, ISBN 80-902739-0-4, the first complete edition incorporating the author’s additions, sixteenth overall. Original paragraph numbers are retained for reference. The supplied EPUB contains no images.

Historical text: The author’s paranormal, physiological and medical assertions, and historical language about people and illnesses, are preserved without endorsement. This book is not medical guidance. Clearly labeled translator’s notes identify particularly dangerous procedures and selected textual ambiguities; they are separate from the source. Do not use its historical claims to postpone qualified medical care or to harm or coerce people or animals.

New Foundations of Experimental Psychology

Břetislav Kafka

Research and Discoveries in the Study of the Soul

SEDARE DOLOREM DIVINUM OPUS EST

(To relieve pain is a divine work.)

The author dedicates this book to all who suffer.

Contents

Břetislav Kafka

Břetislav Kafka was born on May 14, 1891, in Červený Kostelec. Originally a woodcarver and sculptor by profession, he discovered extraordinary hypnotic abilities in himself at the age of nineteen. By gradually developing them, he became a world-renowned researcher in experimental psychology.

The first edition of this book, still entitled Dawn in the Soul, appeared in 1925. He continued his research into the soul until his death on August 27, 1967.

He was able to penetrate the depths of the human soul and reveal its qualities and abilities.

Because the Second World War and the period of unfreedom after 1948 prevented the publication of New Foundations of Experimental Psychology with the author’s additions and revisions, this complete work is only now seeing the light of day, as a message to the people of the third millennium.

Introduction to the First Edition Incorporating the Author’s Additions

The first edition of Břetislav Kafka’s book appeared in 1925 under the title Dawn in the Soul. As the esteemed reader will learn in the author’s prefaces that follow, he changed its name beginning with the eighth edition, so that all subsequent editions bore the title New Foundations of Experimental Psychology.

During the author’s lifetime, the book appeared in a total of fourteen editions, into which he incorporated his further findings as they arose. The last was published in 1949.

After that, however, publication of New Foundations of Experimental Psychology was prohibited for many decades.

Nevertheless, Břetislav Kafka continued to experiment, supplementing and revising his book until his death in 1967.

In 1968 the book was again being prepared for the press, but after the August invasion its publication was prohibited once more. The next edition did not appear until 1991, but the publisher at that time did not have the corrections and additions with which the author had continually supplemented the book. Unfortunately, that edition also omitted certain essential portions of previous editions.

Following an agreement between the author’s heirs and the present publisher, I was given the honor of preparing the book for a new edition, including the corrections, supplements and additions on which the author worked until his death. In incorporating all these changes into the original text, I fully and respectfully followed the author’s intentions, handwritten notes, instructions and advice for preserving the work’s intelligibility and integrity. This also applies to the care taken over minor changes in meaning, style and language, made in accordance with present-day rules and principles, in which some of my friends also participated.

For specialist consultations on particular points in physics, chemistry, education, Tibetology, metrology and linguistics, I thank Dr. Kolmaš, Ing. Pech, Ing. Krčálová, Ing. Halíř, Professor Suchý, Professor Lindrová and Dr. Černá. It is also thanks to them that I was able to incorporate into these revisions the latest relevant findings in those disciplines and anticipated trends in the development of the Czech language.

In my work, I also kept in mind the need to preserve the flavor of the language and the period in which this important work originated. This includes the author’s terms subject, used as a grammatically animate noun in Czech, oduší, as compared with other hypotheses that currently use the term aura, and others.

I first encountered Mr. Břetislav Kafka’s New Foundations of Experimental Psychology as a student in my early youth. Many decades later I returned to it while working on my own book, Mysteries of the Subconscious, which appeared at the beginning of 1991 as the first small popular educational work on mysterious phenomena and folk healing after fifty years of unfreedom.

Today, esteemed readers, you have before you the first complete edition of Břetislav Kafka’s principal work, New Foundations of Experimental Psychology, incorporating his additions, including essential portions omitted from the last edition that are necessary for a full and correct understanding. These are, in particular, the author’s prefaces to all editions published during his lifetime and his own explanatory glossary. The book also contains a complete list of experiments and examples prepared by Mr. František Ducháč, the author’s friend and collaborator, and an alphabetical index of terms used in the book, referring to the paragraph numbers so wisely incorporated into its structure.

What does a person need in order to believe many of the results of this pioneering work? Some of the people who took part in his research and experiments are still alive. If nothing else, the predictions he arrived at in their presence can still be substantiated by witnesses. Even if the reader does not believe everything, it is enough to understand that the author’s experiments and healing activities were successful. From this, even a skeptic may conclude that “there is something between heaven and earth”…

Those of you who intend not merely to read this book but to study it would do well to approach the organization of its contents with tolerance. Regard the chapter titles as informative only, because the chapters also include facts and ideas previously mentioned that may at first appear to have been placed there unsystematically, and that one would not expect from the chapter title alone. I therefore recommend that anyone interested in studying this book become acquainted with the specialist assessment by the philosopher PhDr. Miloslav Skácel at the end of this publication.

Jaroslav Hofman, Trutnov, May 1999

The Author’s Prefaces

Preface to the First Edition — May 1925

(1) I have tried to lift a little of the veil that conceals many mysteries still hidden from us. After many experiments and experiences of my own, I offer the reader this book, the work of many years, which will shed a little light on the phenomena we call metapsychic and psychophysiological. I say a little, because I do not wish to imagine that I have understood and discovered everything belonging to this branch of science. I know that there are many things between heaven and earth that remain mysteries and riddles.

My book signifies a dawning in the soul. I did not intend to set down a scientific system in it. In places, therefore, I chose the form of free discussions arranged to serve their purpose, and I do not recommend that the reader select any one of them at random without knowing those that precede it. He would not understand it. A good psychologist examines the content of experience.

The book will disappoint those who see in metapsychic phenomena nothing but phenomena from beyond the grave. They refuse to abandon their suppositions and errors, although they, above all, should gratefully read a book that would lead them out of a foolish and harmful delusion of which many individuals have become unhappy victims. This applies especially to spiritists.

It would be scarcely philosophical to deny the existence of manifestations of psychic forces merely because, in the present state of our knowledge, they appear inexplicable. My endeavor has been to investigate how the hidden forces of human beings and nature might be understood and employed, not for selfish ends, but for the good and health of humanity. And I hope that, precisely because of this good aim and purpose, the book will be kindly received in qualified circles, judged without prejudice, and arouse a greater and genuine interest in a science whose importance is often poorly understood. Far too many still regard it as entertainment, so that, unfortunately, amusing experiments almost exhaust the extraordinary interest of broad sections of the public in metapsychic phenomena. Others, in turn, have given metapsychology a mistaken, harmful direction that leads to delusion, and on the basis of poorly understood metapsychic phenomena they attempt to construct a new outlook on life, and even a new, though wholly erroneous, religion.

(2) When I place a subject in a deep trance, I approach the very essence of the soul, freed from matter, the senses and the esplana. I approach its inner light, its unusual aptitudes, qualities, abilities and faculties. In trance, the spirit, with the help of the energetic fluid of oduší, can contemplate the past and future made present, and events both contemporary and distant.

I stand at the source and can draw new knowledge from the direct activity of the soul. For this to become possible, it was necessary to remove all the confusing obstacles that literature had gathered from conjecture and put into circulation, and, by conducting experiments, to find in psychic research the true direction of actual lawfulness. This would clarify our knowledge of the soul and its manifestations in trance, so that, guided by sober reason, we could employ the soul’s abilities for new discoveries and to elucidate various mysteries.

The superficial reader looking for entertainment will pass over many of the book’s more difficult passages without the necessary attention. The book is not, of course, intended for such readers, although it is written in a popular and intelligible manner as far as the subject permits. But a reader engaged in studying these questions will devote attention and interest precisely to the more difficult portions, through which the very heart of the matter will become understandable and self-evident. Such study is certain to bring him manifold benefit. The experiences of psychology are of the greatest value for life.

The fundamental element of the human being is thought in its full extent. This includes all inner events: sensations, feelings, perceptions, experiences, concepts, longings, acts of will, wishes, and so forth. Consciousness permeates absolutely all these psychic phenomena, making of them an indivisible unity. In investigating mental illnesses, experimental psychology also becomes physiological psychology insofar as it investigates the relationship between psychic phenomena and the manifestations of the brain and nerves. A person corrects errors through better understanding. The human spirit has the ability to penetrate more deeply into a subject. Analysis and synthesis lead to an understanding of things. Through experiment we learn facts. These require the activity of the spirit in judgment. Judgment is a complex expression of the mind and depends upon the degree of sensory experience.

In this book I take a position on the most difficult problems of the human spirit. In its individual discussions I wish to address the relationship between the psychic and the bodily, a question that invites profound reflection, as well as the physiology of the nervous system, particularly the brain, its manifestations, and psychology in general.

A human being has spiritual and bodily qualities. Insofar as soul and body form a single substance, a hypostasis, one person, almost every psychic event rests upon a concurrent, consubstantial physical, physiological and nervous event. Soul and body are interconnected and act upon one another. This psychophysiological premise can be recognized in every case through experiment and experience.

The first foundation, or principle, of the life of thought is spiritual. The soul is the form of sensory manifestation. This manifestation is not direct. It is neither spiritual nor bodily. Because it is bound to matter, it is consubstantial with it; it is psychophysical. The distinctive character of cognition, sensations and perceptions is already an event beyond the physical and physiological: it is a conscious event. We come to recognize and understand this lawfulness in the course of consubstantial events by studying nervous and psychic processes, but also the peculiar nature of the energy of oduší and the matter of the esplana. This knowledge may therefore become an important complement to, and foundation of, a scientific psychological system on which psychology can be built as a science.

Psychology cannot immediately be an exact science, because in examining the order of life it cannot make do with the methods employed by the truly exact sciences, which obtain their knowledge through precise methods such as calculation, weighing, chemical analysis, experiment and the like.

(3) There will also be many who begin reading this book with great distrust. In places I have therefore included certain verified, successful experiments from a specialized practice that will dispel any distrust readers may feel. I, too, would not have believed had I not become convinced. Those who do not understand or believe me today may perhaps understand and believe tomorrow, a year from now, or later. It is especially important for qualified specialists to satisfy themselves and, on this foundation, to continue working and researching independently.

I also encountered distrust during my experiments. I recall a certain official from J. who visited me during a period of a year and a half when I was conducting experiments publicly for scientific observation and receiving everyone. This gentleman doubted that an accurate and correct diagnosis could be established through a subject in trance without the patient first saying anything about his illness.

After the procedure, visibly shaken, he confirmed the accuracy of the account of all the symptoms of the disease in his leg. He admitted that he had arranged everything so that we would notice nothing in advance and would be unable to determine where and in what the illness should be sought, or what its origin was. For this reason he had removed the rubber part of the walking stick he used and behaved like a completely healthy person. He could not shake off the powerful impression for a long time. Even two hours later, before his train departed, he came back to us and expressed his astonishment that research which could greatly benefit humanity was forbidden in public and prosecuted by law.

I recall another patient, Mr. V. from R., whose illness no physician could discover. After so many disappointments, he was entirely skeptical. Nevertheless, we established a diagnosis. I quote from my notes:

The subject says: “I see shadows in the left part of the brain; they will be—these are diseased humors; there is withering, dying away and insufficient functioning. The circulation of the blood is impaired. The medulla oblongata is also trembling. The other half of the brain is congested with blood. This gentleman exerts himself a great deal mentally; I see many illuminated and expanded esplana. Because of the diseased other half of the brain, he soon exhausts himself. I see him in some dark room, feeling very tired as early as two in the afternoon and unable to work. This gentleman has a great deal of mental work. I see him earlier; it was worse then, and he could not sleep. He must take care of himself so that, through excessive mental work, he does not bring on hardening of the blood vessels in the healthy half. I see him four years ago in a crowd, being struck on the head.” At this point I interrupted the subject, because it seemed to me that he was talking nonsense. But Mr. V. said: “Let him continue; everything is completely correct. Four years ago demonstrators injured my head during a street clash. The defect in the brain must surely be as he described it. That is how I suffer.”

Many people doubt the existence of bodily vital magnetism. Yet it exists, and extraordinary results can be achieved through magnetic connection. I cite the case of Miss K. from R., for whom many people pleaded with me to relieve her great mental torment, since there was fear that she would end her life by suicide. The girl avoided people to a marked degree. Through magnetic connection, she recovered within five weeks to such an extent that she took part in a public theatrical performance.

(4) For lack of time, I have been unable to answer a great many letters from patients and from people interested in metapsychological science, and I ask their forgiveness here. Nor will I be able to answer letters in the future.

I mention this so as not to create the impression that I do not know the answer. The book is my answer to all correspondents and patients, and I hope it will also satisfy new requests.

Because of my many commitments, I cannot provide specialized diagnoses to individuals. Let this book serve everyone as a guide and a direction for how to proceed in such cases. Careful study of it will bring some clarification even to complicated cases. Nevertheless, much remains hidden that has yet to be understood and discovered. I shall devote all my strength and experience to further work for the benefit of humanity. Metapsychic science is a work of abstraction: the further the spirit rises toward the immaterial, the more perfect its knowledge becomes. Many further experiments, considerable effort and great patience are needed.

I am a simple man. I attended only elementary school and lower secondary school. This circumstance will tempt some to deny my experiments any scientific value. The history of science, and especially of inventions, teaches us that clear reason and a strong will often suffice for outstanding and remarkable achievements.

In metapsychic science particularly, the most important factors are a strong, cultivated will and clear reason. Whoever has acquired them is, in a certain respect, more capable than a scientific theorist who, despite an exact knowledge of the subject, cannot substantiate his principles and doctrines by a simple experiment. Progress in this direction may rest upon practical experiments and their correct interpretation. It is customary to list the literature an author has used, especially in a book that is really nothing more than an extract from other books and generally brings little that is original. The results set down in this book were obtained through my own work. It is possible that some of my findings and results correspond to, and are to a degree even identical with, those of authorities in this field, such as Reichenbach, Habáň, Schönenberger and others. This only further confirms and demonstrates the correctness of my conclusions and findings, confirming that the independent paths by which I arrived at the results recorded in this book are correct. This is natural, because it is the path of reality, of practical experiments corroborated by testimony.

Truth is the common property of all. The paths by which we approach this absolute value are individual, corresponding to the individual person and the circumstances and conditions of life in which a new work can always emerge and grow.

It is also natural that use has been made, although to a small extent and insofar as it suited the book’s informative purpose, of the results of science known to date, even though we must acknowledge that what must be done in the interests of all creation is far from accomplished.

In concluding this brief introduction to my book, I warmly thank all my friends and supporters who, through their selflessness in allowing themselves to be placed in trance, contributed their abilities to its publication and made it possible.

Preface to the Second through Seventh Editions — March 1938

(5) It was a reward for my exhausting and debilitating work over many years that a second edition of my book was already necessary in June 1925. Its extraordinary success encouraged my endeavors, so that in October 1926 the book appeared in a third edition, expanded and supplemented in certain sections, and less than another two years later, on June 4, 1927, it was published for the fourth time. This is its best recommendation and proof that it filled a gap in its field and in the minds of its readers.

In 1932 the book appeared in a fifth edition, and in the same year in a sixth, in an exemplary German translation by Dr. Alfred Fuchs. The seventh edition appeared in March 1938.

I thank the esteemed reading public for its unflagging interest in objective research into the soul, aimed at employing people’s own natural powers for good and to help overcome life’s difficulties, in an effort to attain the joy of mastering one’s own will and the health that comes from a conscious way of life and fervent faith in the purity of the soul.

I supplemented certain sections in these editions and greatly regret that I cannot at present continue with further scientific experiments, because my best subject, Mr. K., has died of an insidious disease of the throat.

I remember his help with gratitude, for Mr. K. was a truly phenomenal clairvoyant. With him I could conduct experiments with at least 90 percent certainty, whereas with the other, average subjects the degree of certainty was at most two-thirds. With average subjects I would have to base my observations partly on conjecture, which would not have the desired significance for science.

I shall not, of course, abandon the work I have begun, and I shall continue as soon as I succeed in finding a new, accomplished subject, so that I can supplement the work with the results of more recent knowledge and experiments.

Preface to the Eighth through Fourteenth Editions — January 1967

(6) Since all the findings presented in my book are based on experiments, at readers’ request the book is receiving a title better suited to fulfilling its purpose.

(7) In December 1945 the book appears in its eighth edition, under the new title New Foundations of Experimental Psychology in place of its former title, Dawn in the Soul. In May 1946 it is published for the ninth time. In February 1947 the tenth edition appears, and in July of the same year the eleventh. In February 1948 it appears as a reprint of the eleventh edition, again in June 1948, and once more as a reprint in January 1949.

(8) With the new edition of this work I offer readers the results of further experiments and knowledge, brought together in supplements and discussions, with the wish that the book may benefit people in keeping with its title, for every human being, from an innate biological necessity, clings to life with every thread of his being. In many areas of psychic matters we have been far removed from scientific certainty. Through my own activity, on the basis of experimental investigations, I penetrated to the depths of the foundations and principles of the human soul and, as far as our abilities permit, uncovered its qualities, faculties, aptitudes and capabilities for the enrichment of science.

(9) The printing of a further edition was halted for political reasons in 1949. The book was placed on the index of prohibited works by the political authorities of the time.

Břetislav Kafka

The Author’s New Terms — A Brief Overview

Subject

Throughout this book, a term for a sensitive: a person susceptible to being controlled by a hypnologist; also a medium, an intermediary between the hypnologist and the object of hypnological experiments.

Esplana

The seat of memory. Little clouds of fluid, a certain kind of cell whose nature has so far eluded scientific investigation. They permeate the gray matter of the brain, from which they receive thought impulses. There are several hundred esplana for every neuron in the brain matter. The esplana store memories within themselves. During thinking and recollection, those esplana that relate to the subject of the thought light up, or vibrate. In this way associations of thought arise. Corresponding vibrations occur in the brain matter. This is the essence of thinking.

Protosplana

Special little clouds of a fluid nature, like the esplana, found in the region of the surface of the cerebellum. They are extraordinarily sensitive, respond in advance to sudden meteorological changes, are stimulated by approaching natural disasters long before people notice them, and are sensitive receivers of transmitted waves of thought-fluid particles, which set them vibrating. Through this last activity they intercept telepathic messages, whether consciously transmitted or unconsciously released from the brains of unsuspecting people. At night during sleep, the protosplana are continually stimulated by wandering waves of thought-fluid particles transmitted telepathically, for the most part unconsciously, by other people’s brains, thereby giving rise to dreams. Both good and evil beings can telepathically impress their impulses upon a person’s protosplana.

Protonace

A mysterious substance of some kind that is neither material nor spiritual in nature, but something in between. It is older than primordial matter, which it permeates, and possesses an astonishing ability. It accurately records within itself all the actions, thoughts, mental images and events that have occurred anywhere and at any time in the world. It becomes their eternal record, which is why occultists call it the “astral chronicle.” In this protonace, every event, whether mental or material, remains faithfully and vividly recorded forever and can, in a transcendent state of the soul, be seen and heard again, or simply experienced. Through the record in protonace, the liberated spirit can see events in worlds long vanished with complete fidelity, as though they were present now.

Ectoplasm

This was the earlier name for the material fluid from which material and semimaterial formations, or phantoms, are produced in so-called metapsychic phenomena. Ectoplasm arises when the matter of an exceptionally endowed person, a medium in trance or a sensitive in deep sleep, is broken down into pyrotons and sitons, travels out of that person’s body, and at a certain distance reassembles into atoms and molecules. We call this dematerialization and materialization, the dissolution and formation of matter. Materialization into specific phantom shapes is directed by the supernormal activity of the medium’s soul. When the phantom disappears, the process takes place in reverse order. If matter in a dematerialized state is transported over a great distance and reassembles there, we call it teleplasm.

Bodily Magnetism

A special material fluid that arises in living bodies. A special magnetic fluid is also found in minerals and other nonliving substances, but it differs from bodily magnetism. Bodily magnetism is a fluid many times more rarefied than hydrogen, the lightest known substance. It animates the matter of living bodies. A deficiency of it causes disease. It can be used to heal people and put them to sleep. Magnetic fluid occurs in nature in various forms. Here I do not mean so-called physical magnetism, which produces paramagnetic, diamagnetic and ferromagnetic phenomena. I therefore give an overview of the known fluids:

Mineral magnetism: It occurs in nonliving matter, in mineral crystals, metals and salts, rocks and chemical substances, and so forth, from which it radiates gently. Sensitives recognize the nature of these nonliving substances by means of it.

Bodily magnetism: A material fluid emanating from the protoplasm of cells. It is relatively coarse, can be directed by the will, and can be endowed through imagination and will with various specific qualities, beneficial or harmful. When it is consciously radiated from the body in its purest form for the purpose of healing, I call it electrism.

Electrism: It is finer and more effective, and possesses qualities to some extent similar to those of electricity. When we emit it from the hands as a ray that appears luminous to sensitives, it resembles a stream of physical electrons. It is a remedy of the first order.

The fluid of oduší: Whereas bodily magnetism arises in the protoplasm of cells, the fluid of oduší radiates from their nuclei. Although it too is material in nature, it is exceedingly subtle and serves the soul in performing wondrous metaphysical phenomena, apparent “miracles.” It is very swift, moving at the speed of thought, whereas bodily magnetism moves slowly. Although it is a component of primordial matter, it is a sought-after instrument of the soul, to which it is perfectly suited. The fluid of oduší cannot be controlled consciously; it is controlled by the soul in a transcendent state.

Telepathy

This is our name for the transmission of thoughts by means of particles of thought-fluid. I know two kinds of thought transmission. Either it takes place consciously, when two people wish to communicate through thoughts at a distance without material aids, or when one consciously transmits thoughts to another through will and imagination, perhaps without the other’s knowledge; or thoughts escape from people’s brains of their own accord, without their awareness. These two modes differ:

Conscious, intentional transmission of thoughts: The transfer occurs through waves of thought-fluid particles traveling in a straight line. These waves spring from the telepath’s brain, are animated by his imagination, propelled by his faith in the success of the transmission, and directed by his firm will. On reaching their destination, they strike the protosplana of the intended person, set them vibrating in their own rhythm, and, through further action upon the brain, accomplish the transfer. These particles of thought-fluid have not yet been scientifically investigated. During transmission, electrical waves also arise in the brain as accompanying, rather than essential, phenomena.

Unconscious, accidental transmission of thoughts: The transfer occurs through wandering waves of thought-fluid particles. During certain intense mental images enlivened by the imagination, waves of thought-fluid spontaneously spring from the brain of an unsuspecting person. Because they are not directed by the will, they wander through space, setting in motion the protosplana of people upon whom they happen to fall. This usually occurs during sleep, and the mental images received in this way turn into dreams.

The Structure of Matter

Primordial matter: The simplest created material substance, the oldest form of matter. It is changeable and capable of transformation and combination. It possesses all the qualities necessary for this.

Sitons: The simplest material particles of primordial matter, incapable of further division. They are the smallest building units of the material universe.

Pyrotons: These arise through the association of sitons into compound structures, ranging from the simplest combinations to considerably complicated formations. Individual pyrotons differ in the number, arrangement and spacing of their sitons. The manner of their arrangement gives rise to the positive and negative nature of pyrotons. This enables them to combine into still higher units:

Megatron: A building unit of the atomic nucleus belonging to the class of pyrotons. Particles ejected from the atomic nuclei of cell protoplasm gather together and form the aforementioned luminous fluid of animal magnetism.

Siloton: A building unit of the atomic nucleus, likewise belonging to the class of pyrotons. Exceedingly fine particles are ejected from the atoms contained in the nucleus of an animal cell. These gather into a luminous fluid, the so-called oduší, which permeates the whole body. When subconscious activity is at work, they form raylike waves that carry thoughts and mental images into outward manifestations.

Nucleon: A building element of atomic nuclei. Present-day atomic physics, or nucleotics, still knows only a few of these building units of atoms: the proton, deuteron, helion (alpha particle), electron (positron and negatron), neutron and photon. Science is only now demonstrating some further pieces of the puzzle, mesotrons and varitrons, while others, the neutrino, are still only suspected.

Atom: The smallest particle of matter that we can no longer divide chemically. It can be divided only by bombardment with atomic projectiles, or atom splitting.

Molecule: The smallest particle of matter that we can no longer divide mechanically, by cutting with shears, crushing, slicing, grinding, and so forth. All matter, including our material bodies, is composed of molecules. Molecules can be further divided into atoms only chemically.

1. Matter

(10) The whole universe is a magnificent interweaving of mysterious realities, exceedingly difficult to know, which the inquiring human spirit strives to reach and penetrate.

Sensory knowledge is limited, diminished by the immensity and minuteness of matter.

We know that the human body contains compounds of various elements, composed of exceedingly minute particles called molecules, the individual particles of protoplasm. Molecules do not fill the space of matter continuously and completely; they are separated by gaps and attract one another.

In experiments, matter appears penetrable to the human soul in the state of the subconscious SELF.

The smallest particles of compounds, molecules, are built from atoms of the elements.

The molecules of compounds, as composite substances, can be divided chemically into particles of their elements: atoms.

The molecules of both compounds and elements, such as iron and phosphorus, are composed of atoms. Atoms of different elements have different masses and different properties.

Atoms are immeasurably small. Their existence has been reliably established by many scientific methods. Through research we have learned that even atoms are not the smallest indivisible matter, but consist of particles, still smaller units called electrons. These are charges of negative electricity concentrated upon a kind of pointlike body. They are centers of force that have no weighable matter in the usual sense of the word.

An atom can be imagined as a cluster or nucleus of positive electricity around which negative electrons move in a circle. Every electron of any element contains a unit quantity of negative electricity. The electrons of all elements have the same nature and value. The number of electrons depends upon the existence of the elements. This can be understood to mean that as many negative electrons circle an atom’s nucleus as there are units of positive electricity in that nucleus. The electrons, consisting of negative electricity, balance the positive electricity contained in the nucleus of the atom. For this reason atoms appear outwardly nonelectrical, or electrically neutral.

(11) The nucleus itself consists of positively charged protons, the later-discovered positively charged positrons, and neutrons, which have no charge.

The atom can be compared to a solar system of infinitesimal dimensions. Just as the Sun forms the center of the solar system, around which the planets circle, so the nucleus forms the center of the atom, from which various radiations of unequal value and intensity stream forth. Around this center, too, particles called electrons move at a dizzying speed.

The electron, in the broadest sense, appears to us at one time as a particle and at another as a wave, depending on the methods with which we experiment upon it.

We recognize that matter is not a constant quantity, but that there is motion within it, whereby the persistence of matter is translated into an effect of energy.

The picture or model of atoms created for our senses is approximate. We cannot form an exact picture, because both the shell and the nucleus of the atom are subject to change. The cause of this is quantum mechanics and wave mechanics.

From what has been said we see that we are penetrating far into the mysteries of the laws of matter, but we have not yet understood matter’s origin or its essence.

2. The Beginning of Life

(12) The knowledge we have gained in physics teaches us about the immateriality of matter. According to this knowledge, matter is nothing other than almost complete emptiness. Matter is empty space permeated by a few lines of force. A few sparsely scattered, vibrating electrical charges moving at astonishing speed present our imperfect senses with the illusion of matter, solidity and corporeality. It is the omnipotence of omnipresent vibrations.

These invisible, intangible and unweighable oscillations are the foundation of the world. Particles of sitons of unknown force, sparsely scattered through space, conjure up the tangible, concrete, solid world of bodies.

When the restlessness of these oscillations crosses its bounds, when this eternal motion reaches trillions and quintillions of oscillations a second, the rearrangement of these vibrating particles gives rise to what we call heat, color, electricity, magnetism, oduší, light and force. There is no process in nature that is not the result of vibrating energy.

Creation manifests itself in space and time, energy and matter, life and consciousness.

The mystery of what makes life possible is as obscure today as it was thousands of years ago. Why an individual cell lives and why cellular tissue reproduces is, and will remain, incomprehensible to human reason and inaccessible to human investigation.

Powerful, boundless biological forces build the enormous from the minute. At the beginning there is a microscopic piece of substance, protein, the most complex organic substance, in which unknown, wondrous forces begin to act. Skillfully and ingeniously they spin out the original tissue, the cells, into construction and differentiation.

I believe that all living things on Earth arose from an unprepossessing, indistinctly pulsating first beginning, a cluster of protein. The unity of living substance is universal. All creatures, from the amoeba to the human being, have one foundation of corporeality.

(13) Human life manifests itself in the structure of the human body and begins with the union of two cells, namely the male seed and the female egg. The egg can be observed even with the naked eye; it is one-fifth of a millimeter in diameter. The male seed is two million times smaller. The egg waits alone to be fertilized. At conception, hundreds of millions of male cells circle around it, but only a single cell, one out of half a billion, succeeds in entering the female egg and fertilizing it. The miracle of life takes shape. The two nuclei merge, and the egg and seed become one cell: a human child has been conceived.

This zygote, called the germ or embryo, has the ability to produce all the specialized varieties of cells from which the whole body will later be composed.

The first cell that has thus arisen then divides into new cells, or blastomeres. Within a few hours of fertilization, division produces 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on new cells, according to the established laws of Providence. The precise sorting and arrangement of cells for the new organism begins.

(14) These are the beginnings of the bodily structure, prepared to receive an immortal soul, which unites with this beginning of matter, the embryo, only when the cells have prepared the gray substance of the brain for that purpose. This is why the embryo’s head takes precedence in development over the rest of the body. It then becomes capable, as the subject perceives, of receiving the soul in the sixth week after fertilization, sometimes even earlier, depending upon the strength and disposition of the cells. Before the fifth week the subject does not yet perceive the soul. Some scholars and theologians uphold “vitalism,” meaning that even the rational soul already develops in the embryo through the division of cells. I reject this view; this happens only with the vegetative and sensory soul, which is based in matter. In my scientific research I report my subjects’ findings without comment. Even at the moment when the germ cells unite, a foundation is provided for the soul to receive the rational soul. Because the human soul in trance can determine the presence of another soul only with the cooperation of the matter of the human body, the subject detects it only when the possibility for such a manifestation exists. At conception the vegetative faculty of the soul operates, and as soon as the first gray brain cells form, particles radiate from them that are capable of transmitting the subconscious activity of the rational faculty. This stimulates the sensitive radiation of another kind of matter, the so-called “oduší,” emanating from the body of the subject in trance. Only at this later time, the fifth week of embryonic development, can the subject firmly establish the presence of the rational soul. According to natural law, God creates the soul at the moment when the natural disposition and conditions for animating the body are present. After the soul unites with the embryo, it itself adapts the gray substance for its extensive activity in the future manifestations of life.

Through continual division, the developing cells gradually construct the individual tissues, muscles, bones, nerves, blood vessels and brain substance. They join firmly together by means of a cementlike substance that they themselves produce, transforming the original formation into solidity and organic unity.

3. The Cell

(15) The cell is the smallest unit of living matter and consists of a nucleus, granular protoplasm and a protective cell membrane. The cell nucleus is the foundation of life. The protoplasm, or living substance, surrounds the nucleus. It is a nutritive substance containing water, protein substances, compounds of sugar and fat, and mineral substances such as sodium, magnesium, potassium, iron, sulfur, phosphorus, calcium, fluorine and chlorine. According to the purpose for which a cell is intended, it must contain more of the substances suited to that purpose. For example, a bone cell takes up a great deal of potassium phosphate and carbonate from the blood, whereas a brain cell takes up more phosphorus compounds. The basic elements of protoplasm are nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. Carbon is a notable factor in the organism when it combines with other elements that are subordinate and auxiliary to it.

The living cell is in an uninterrupted cycle; the irritability of the protoplasm supports its nourishment and growth.

At the same time, the cell has an indispensable need for oxygen, which it receives from the blood. A skin cell receives oxygen directly from the air. Let us therefore make a point of exposing the body directly to healthy air, and we shall rid ourselves of anemia!

(16) We recognize that the cell is subject to a continual exchange of substances and energy. It takes in nutrients from its surroundings and adapts them to its needs, that is, to building the body and obtaining vital energy, the ability to perform vital functions. These are processes of assimilation.

At the same time, processes of the opposite kind, dissimilation, take place. Through them, substances that impede vital activity are eliminated from the body by means of the blood and vapors. The energy obtained through assimilation is also released, in the form of movement, heat, oduší, magnetism and electrism. Nutrition is the prerequisite for assimilation, and excretion for dissimilation.

There is never chemical or physical rest in the living body. Cells are kept alive by the continual exchange of substances and energies. As long as they take in more substances than they excrete, they grow. In addition, they are subject to the influence of their surroundings, adapt to them in structure and activity, and modify them for their own benefit.

The cell’s protoplasm contains a translucent, mucilaginous, semiliquid to solid, finely granular substance to which all the vital manifestations of the animal body are bound: nutrition, excretion, growth, movement, reproduction and others. Protoplasm is living matter that constitutes the essence of every living cell. The life of protoplasm also manifests itself in movement, the ability to respond to external influences, called irritability, and the ability to regulate these influences according to different needs.

Chemical changes in cells take place through the action of minute quantities of complex substances called enzymes, or ferments, which facilitate the breakdown of organic compounds without themselves changing in the process.

Nucleic acids serve to support the cell’s metabolism. The nucleus contains deoxyribonucleic acid, while the plasma contains ribonucleic acid. These acids are an essential component of the cell body; they produce complex organic substances, true elixirs of life, as well as destroyers of microbes. In a cell irradiated with X-rays or radium, or damaged by chemicals, the production of nucleic acid comes to a halt and the chemical process is thrown into confusion. Individual functions previously united in harmony succumb to chaos, so that the chromosome system disintegrates and dies, its capacity for life ceases, and the cell perishes.

The cell fluid contained in the protoplasm mediates the exchange of soluble nutrients between cells. In addition, it removes substances from the cells that would hinder vital activity. The quality and quantity of the necessary substances therefore change. Cells grow by inserting new particles among older ones. When cells stop growing, the cell membrane thickens in order to strengthen itself.

(17) When a cell reaches a certain size, it reproduces by division. First its nucleus divides into two parts. Then the cell membrane constricts in the middle until the original, or mother, cell divides into two daughter cells. These separate from each other and grow to the size of the mother cell, after which they divide again. The impulse for cell division comes from the nucleus. The nucleus divides before the rest of the cell plasma.

The nucleus harmoniously directs the cell’s vital activity and is regarded as the carrier of dispositions passed from the original cell to its descendants. There is a genealogical continuity among cells. In some cell nuclei we find one or more nucleoli.

The cell nucleus, situated in the colorless protoplasm, is further enclosed by a nuclear membrane. The network of nuclear plasma contains chromatin granules, particles that determine the formation and progress of the body’s construction and development. During mitosis, or nuclear division, these form chromosomes carrying the dispositions for various tendencies and qualities that are transmitted into the new cell by splitting.

The human body consists of about eight trillion cells, each living its own life, continually renewing itself in its cellular protoplasm, its molecules, gaining strength and growing until it finally dies.

(18) Let us not imagine that all cells have the same shape and size. Some are minute, visible only through delicate microscopes; others are of considerable size, such as the yolk of a bird’s egg. A subject who has been put to sleep detects in the yolk of a fertilized bird’s egg a living, luminous little nucleus, a sign of future life. This radiation is the fluid of oduší.

There are several kinds of bone cells, differing in structure. Human bones contain mainly cells with an elongated nucleus and protoplasm that forms protoplasmic extensions. The bone cell receives the least nourishment.

The cells on the surface of the skin are flat and spindle-shaped in cross section. If a skin cell dies or disintegrates, a new one immediately forms in the same place.

Sensory cells have their greatest sensitivity turned toward the surface, as in the nose, for example, where they form a delicate nerve network that gathers into bundles leading to the brain. The same is true in the fingers, where the sense of touch is most highly developed at the tips. In the outer skin there is less sensitivity to pain and greater tactile sensitivity. The nerve cells of the retina and the auditory cells are particularly delicate and possess an exceptionally heightened sensitivity. When nerve cells reach the stage at which they can no longer divide, they lose the ability to reproduce by division. They renew themselves in their protoplasm.

The cells of nails, head hair and body hair are interesting in that they have no nerve connection to the brain’s center, which all other cells possess. We therefore have no sensitivity there.

A muscle cell is smaller, elongated and finer; it stretches like a skin cell, needs more nourishment and is essentially more enduring. There are two kinds of muscle tissue: striated and smooth. If one of these muscle cells dies, a new cell no longer forms in the same place.

Ganglion cells vary in size and shape. The most perfect cell is that of the gray substance of the brain, its surface. It has few extensions and needs the most abundant and finest nourishment. It will be the principal subject of this book.

(19) As I have already mentioned, all cells need at least 40 percent of their food to be uncooked in order to live. Cooking produces dead cells that have lost 80 percent of their important vitamins and form the basis of diseases, which are the source and nourishment of the substance of cells.1 If this living substance is absent from the blood, owing to a lack of nourishment or an improper way of life, the cells perish. At first they help one another, the stronger assisting the weaker. When destruction threatens them all, the stronger cell consumes the weaker. We might say that they devour one another. At first they discharge the remains onto the surface of the body. In addition, the blood sweeps the residues of these substances into its current and, with the help of oxygen, breaks them down into carbonic acid, water and urea for easier excretion.

In a more severe catastrophe, if the blood cannot rid itself of these residual substances, it carries them into various parts of the organism, where it tries to dispose of them by burning. Inflammation of the lungs, kidneys and so forth arises at the very place where these substances have accumulated, for they are a good breeding ground for disease-causing bacilli.

General overview:

(20) The living body draws energy for movement and nourishment from some of the assimilated food substances. In the process these substances break down into simple waste components, their starting materials. During decomposition, or the splitting of substances, the body gives off various forms of free radiant energy, which it manages purposefully. From the substances it retains, the living body builds itself: it grows.

The body replaces worn-out parts and those destroyed by illness in a similar way. Through continual division, cells multiply, grow and are replaced. Daughter cells grow to maturity and divide again until they reach the stage at which they can no longer divide.

The reproductive cells from which offspring arise remain permanently capable of division. Through this arrangement, a series of functions returns to where it originated. It is a reversible process. The system returns to the fundamental process, to the state from which it came or from which the change began. Life is therefore a cyclical process that maintains itself autonomously from within.

In the body, living matter changes continually by taking in substances from outside, transforming them and eliminating the excretions. The bioplasm of cells grows by inserting new molecules among those not yet consumed.

At the same time, every cell has the ability to regulate physicochemical processes purposefully, in whatever way benefits it. This is an autonomous and purposefully regulated process.

For the life of the body, cells produce hormones and enzymes that direct chemical reactions. We recognize that life manifests itself through continual chemical, physical and mechanical transformations of energy.

4. Ganglia

(21) Cells do not all have the same function. They are not merely building material; some are assigned important and interesting work, particularly in the brain, spinal cord, lungs, heart, stomach and so forth. These contain automatic clusters of cells intended for involuntary movements, the so-called ganglia. These clusters keep the heart, lungs and other organs continually active without our awareness. We distinguish the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord, from the peripheral nervous system, the totality of nerves connecting the central nervous system with the various organs. A special position is occupied by the sympathetic system of visceral nerves, which does not originate in the central nervous system but is scattered throughout the body and governs organs that function without our awareness. These are primarily the viscera and the extensively branching vascular system. These clusters need the greatest quantity and best quality of nutrients. According to observations by the subject in trance, they receive these nutrients, already most thoroughly processed, in the following manner:

Two cells at a time draw the necessary substance from the blood and pass it to one cell, which stores it and, when needed, passes it again to two cells for processing, during which it is freed of harmful substances. This is repeated several times. The two cells work precisely and do not accept new material until they have processed what they have. Once its quality has been fully improved, it is received by a so-called supply cell, which retains it and keeps it available for the gray nuclei of the automatic ganglion cells. For their vital task, in which there is no rest whatsoever, these need substances of the most essential and nourishing quality.

Without this ingenious process ordained by Providence, human life would not be so long. A considerable number of cells carry out these processes to sustain the life of a single ganglion. The shorter the purification route of the nutrient intended for the ganglia, the shorter the life.

(22) Notice that in other parts of our organism the cells are nourished directly from the blood, and as the blood is, so is the health. If the blood contains a disease-producing substance, the entire organism soon becomes ill.

Ganglia are an exception in this respect. They receive nutrients already reprocessed and purified. This also happens for the smallest and most perfect cells of the gray substance of the brain, the neurons. The process takes place even more perfectly because the substance is supplied along a longer route in order to improve its quality.

The subject detects still other cells, the so-called “esplana,” above and below the gray substance, and the “protosplana,” which lie on the cerebellum. These cells, which appear to the subject only as little clouds, absorb the nutritive substance as it evaporates. On the heredity of germ cells, see the section “Hereditary Burden — The Mystery of Heredity.”

(23) The human body contains remarkable organs that secrete specific fluids. Internal secretion: these are the great mysteries of the endocrine glands.

The specific product manufactured by these glands of internal secretion collects in their cavities in a thick, liquid, colloidal form. The colloid then seeps through the spaces between cells, is absorbed by the lymph vessels and capillaries, and thus enters the blood.

These glands often secrete fluids in immeasurably small quantities, thousandths and millionths of a gram. They send them into the blood and intestines, and they flow through the body in countless directions. Yet from these fluids, present only in traces, a great miracle arises. These secretions have an unsuspected effect. Even in their minute quantities, they are the directors, administrators and rulers of the processes of building up and breaking down in the human body. With the cooperation of these fluids, alongside mental abilities, the highest humanity, glory and beauty germinate, or bodily decline and mental darkness. They provide springs of youthful strength that mysteriously transform a tiny dwarf into a giant. They kindle passions and let them die again, enticing the sexes into excesses both in youth and in old age. The glands direct bodily growth, metabolism, nerve function, heart activity and mental alertness. They exert a decisive influence upon the soul, temperament and moods.

(24) A person’s character and actions can be predicted according to the predominant strength of the hormones of one or another endocrine gland. This is not a rule, and is probable only in those individuals who tend toward bodily vitality and depend little upon the activity of the higher power of spiritual freedom.

If I become aware of and cultivate the powers of the spirit, reason and will, I attain wakefulness of spirit. I recognize what I am capable of and what is possible for me, and acquire the ability to reflect upon myself and my activity. In this way I gain an awareness of strength, of the spiritual value of personality, for purposeful, free, independent and individual activity in making decisions. My character and actions will then be under the control of rational judgment and the deciding will. And I shall not become a weakling, utterly dependent upon the activity of the forces of certain endocrine glands whose influence would determine my life and future.

5. The Age of Cells

(25) At birth a child has a certain number of cells. They are small and delicate. With the help of the secretion auxin, the body of the cellular protoplasm stretches and develops, and through the intake of food a person grows until the age of twenty-six. Then, until about forty-two, all the cells increase in vigor and strength in their vital substance and energy. This is the period of greatest reproductive capacity, after which gradual dying begins.

This can best be recognized in the dying of a woman’s reproductive nuclei after menopause: the egg follicles, of which a woman has about 100,000 to 200,000 in her two ovaries. At that time no new life can arise. A woman can be a mother only during the lifetime of her own reproductive cells. Gradually her vital forces diminish, a kind of dying away and withering, until complete death at about eighty years. Of the stated number of follicles, from the first menstruation until menopause, many perish during life and thereby form hormone-secreting cells. See paragraph 233, “Electricity.”

The human cell of our earliest ancestors had a more powerful and vital nature, and maintained its full strength for three hundred to four hundred years.

(26) Through ignorance of the proper way to live, the substance of our cells continually degenerates. It may be supposed that in five to six thousand years the nuclear nature of the cell will have weakened to an average development of twenty-five years, at which point its vital and regenerative strength will already begin to diminish, and its greatest age will be fifty years. And this will be so only for someone who has led the most orderly life. From this it can be calculated that, unless we put our way of life on the right path, we are living in the seventh stage of humanity’s lifespan, if we divide it into ten parts.

Humanity itself bears the chief responsibility for its degeneration through disorderly living, ignorance of its own body, lack of movement, healthy air and sunshine, and above all improper nourishment.

In earlier times humanity ate uncooked food and did not use fire to prepare meals. At that time the human lifespan was longest. Then fire came into more frequent use, and natural food gave way to boiled, roasted and similarly prepared food. These preparations destroy the regenerative, living essence of the cell’s nuclear substance in food. The body is supplied with corpses, and the human cell cannot take from them the living substance needed for its original vitality as it can from uncooked food. The most easily digested and best food for us is uncooked food that is reaching the stage at which its cellulose swells and breaks down, right at the beginning of decomposition. Examples are raw sour milk, meat in the condition in which nomadic peoples ate it after bringing it to that state beneath a saddle on horseback, and, among fruits, bletted pears, plums, cherries and apples, all naturally dried. But it is dangerous to eat such food when it has completely decomposed.

White baked goods, heavily milled and finely prepared substances, and everything cooked kill and weaken the digestive capacity of the digestive system.

Let us endeavor to adapt and accustom ourselves to a diet that is at least 50 percent uncooked. This is particularly important for someone who is ill, because this practice affects how quickly he recovers. The supply of living plant matter brings about a youthful renewal of cells once again within the cellular protoplasm.

(27) Some researchers believe that all cells are completely replaced over a period of seven to ten years. If a person avoids what caused his illness, they say, it is possible to expect a complete return to health. This view is mistaken. What takes place here is only the replacement of the cellular protoplasm; the nuclear substance of the cell’s life is reinvigorated and enlivened, and becomes capable of meeting its requirements. Only certain cells, for example bone and liver cells, can initiate a regenerative process of replacement. Regeneration is growth. A skin cell possesses this capacity for complete renewal if a cell has died.

This process also exists in the cells of body hair, head hair, teeth and nails. For example, if we give someone part of our skin, we need not fear that new skin will not form; but if we cut out any part of a muscle, it will not renew itself. An organ once lost cannot be replaced. It will never grow again; in its place comes connective tissue incapable of functioning, a scar.

This is most clearly seen after ulcers and smallpox. If the muscle has been affected by fermentation, a depression always remains. Regenerative ability manifests itself only in those parts of the body that are still growing or capable of resuming growth. The skin is a tissue that retains the ability to grow into advanced old age. Extensive skin wounds heal easily and quickly. Nerve cells do not have the ability to renew themselves. For this reason the treatment of nervous diseases is lengthy.

A certain kind of weakness in the legs also demonstrates that, through lack of nourishment, a stronger cell consumed a weaker one to preserve itself. In this case the leg certainly cannot be restored to a normal condition. Nevertheless, exercise and hardening can strengthen the remaining cells in the weak part to take the place of those that died. Injury is a different matter. In an injury, thousands of cells are damaged, but they do not die. The blood cells soon repair what has been damaged.

We can observe the same thing in adults of slight physical build who, as everyone knows, remain thin and do not grow stronger even with the best possible nourishment. People say, “That is simply their constitution.” Yet they do not feel weak and even praise their health. Here is evidence that the full number of cells was not maintained after birth. Through malnutrition, illness and the like, many cells died and disintegrated completely, or one consumed another, depriving its neighbor of nourishment. In adulthood the remaining cells can never become robust enough to make up for the number lost in youth. There are, of course, exceptions in which the slightness of build is congenital. A similar withering, mutual consumption of cells owing to the digestive system, and cellular disintegration also occurs in old people. We say, “He is wasting away.”

(28) Up to the age of fifty-five, cells merely contract during illness and regain their original vigor after recovery. The human internal organs, however, do regenerate.

The ability to renew, replace or regenerate is one of the magical gifts of our cell. Regeneration is a kind of growth of particular parts of organs.

The impulse for this renewal, however, comes from the damaged organ itself. The human internal organs regenerate adequately, especially the liver. In certain illnesses part of the liver tissue dies; as much as three-quarters may be destroyed, and yet from the surviving remnant a new liver will arise within seven to eight weeks.

In bone fractures, too, the resulting gap slowly fills with bone substance, and as much as four centimeters of bone material may be added.

The regenerative force contained in the plasma has the full ability to restore tissue, and in this way the life of the individual creature is assured. The human cell has two principal functions: in its protoplasm it regenerates to maintain the individual’s integrity, renewing itself and manifesting itself in healing and growth.

In certain organs it maintains integrity by rebuilding them; in this case it multiplies by division without exceeding the law governing the given number of cells.

The fact that, after injury, the substance of the cell’s nuclear nature remains alive for as long as forty-eight hours is of great and inestimable importance to medical science, especially in operations such as nose transplants. The necessary part can be removed from a suitable location, and before it is given the shape of a real nose, it must first be attached to a nearby organ of living tissue until it grows fast. The removed part can then be shaped into a nose and appropriately attached.

(29) The lifespan of an individual particle of protoplasm varies considerably. Mineral substances, which are firmer, are consumed more quickly than protein substances.

Fats and sugars disappear very soon. As soon as the inner living force of a particle of protoplasm, a molecule, is exhausted, it disintegrates and is broken down, or burned, by oxygen. The cell replaces these substances from the fluids surrounding it.

The nucleus harmoniously directs the cell’s vital activity. Up to the age of forty it grows, gains strength and vigor, and consolidates itself at its center. Through assimilation, or nourishment, it acquires an inner vital force, which it continually gives off in the form of radiant energy, oduší. After forty it gives off this inner vital force predominantly from its reserves through the disintegration of the nucleus. Like enzymes, this radiant energy has a beneficial influence on the cell’s protoplasmic body, on growth and the exchange of waste products, and at the same time on obtaining another kind of energy, called magnetic energy, for our external activity, which is released from food in the cell plasma.

Therefore, if we are continually ill and poorly nourished in youth, we deprive the cell nucleus of the supply of substances needed for its growth and acquisition of the vital energy of oduší. The nucleus develops inadequately, and a person ages more rapidly, is prone to various illnesses and to general bodily and mental weakness, unless in later years he saves himself through a natural dietary regimen, conservation of strength, hardening and training of the will.

6. Death

(30) When we recognize that someone “has died,” the separation of the soul from the body has not yet occurred, because the cell remains alive for a time until the store of substances around its nucleus is exhausted. It dies gradually. In an old person its vitality is limited to ten to fifteen hours (in a healthy individual up to the age of forty-five).2 If death has occurred prematurely, it remains alive for as long as two days. More is given in later paragraphs.

For specialists, the living nature of the cell is significant because, in an apparently dead person whose soul is almost detached from the entire organism except the brain, it makes it possible to prevent premature complete death. This can be brought about by the willpower of a physician-hypnologist who telepathically supports the weakened will of the dying person and commands a revival throughout the organism.

We have enough examples of apparent death, and in many cases actual death could be prevented.

Let us not imagine that the soul always detaches itself all at once. What appears to us an accomplished event is often only apparent. The soul is not usually completely detached, particularly in a young person whose will is weak and who cannot overcome bodily illnesses. He succumbs, but if his will were strong, if he firmly believed and resisted his illness with all his strength, he would overcome it. Both the lower and the higher principle of the unity of the soul, which here works through oduší, would forcibly revive the diseased body. But with a weak will he cannot withstand it, and it is precisely in weak faith that the soul, together with oduší, abandons the body. I make this assertion about people up to the age of forty-five.

(31) In later years, when the substance is already dying, I warn the hypnologist against experiments. Our efforts would be in vain. On the contrary, we would only make the patient’s condition worse, and within a few days death would inevitably come, because the cell nucleus’s capacity for life has already been exhausted. I know this from my own experience.

I warn against magnetizing a dying person. Longer and closer magnetization would bring him into rigidity, or catalepsy, harm him and make our work more difficult. It is enough to act through faith and, after a while, make about three passes at a greater distance from the body in order to retain the escaping oduší as a means of sustaining the life of the cells. I repeat: here one can act only through living faith, the spoken word and the power of the spirit.

The higher principle of the dying person’s immortal soul, separating itself from all the cells, passes into the fluid radiation on the surface of the body, where the released oduší gathers and condenses around the head. The two oduší must therefore be joined through the will; to subjects, or sensitives, this appears as a luminous band between the patient and the physician-hypnologist. See further in the chapter “Death and the State of the Soul in Oduší.”

7. A Remarkable Ability of the Cell

(32) The cell has another quality in which lie what are almost the miracles of the future. Every individual cell is capable of receiving psychic manifestations. If someone loses his sight or hearing, it is possible to awaken it in an entirely different part of the organism. I know from experiments that a subject who had been put to sleep saw and read with a finger, heard well with an earlobe, and even better with the back or calves. If this is possible in hypnosis, in the subconscious, it can also be transferred to the upper consciousness. It now depends on who first achieves it, and how.

8. Cleansing and Preserving Healthy Cells

Translator’s safety note: This chapter reproduces historical medical claims and a potentially dangerous fluid-restriction and enema regimen. It is not a treatment plan to follow or a substitute for medical care. Thirst, dark urine, reduced urination and a dry mouth can be signs of dehydration, not evidence that a treatment is working; dehydration can become serious. See the NHS guidance on dehydration. The author’s text follows unchanged.

(33) In its initial stages an illness presents no symptoms; later they are vague and slight, so that no one thinks of a diagnosis.

After a period of waiting, when the illness can already be recognized pathologically and anatomically and manifests itself as inflammation, a tumor, an ulcer, stones and so forth, it is usually too late.

Wise is the person who examines his reserve strength in good time and refuses to wait for some symptom to appear in the form of impaired functioning.

Between the first signs of illness and findings that can be demonstrated physically or chemically there is a certain interval that we can use for treatment, for during this time less uric acid is excreted and it becomes bound in the tissues.

In every case it is necessary to consider the whole organism, and what matters is how much healthy and functioning tissue remains. What is dead is of no significance to the patient. Examining the reserve forces is one of the first tasks in treatment. Living tissue is still a reserve of vital energy; it is capable of growth and renewal.

The deposits found here and there on tissues are not the cause of their illness. They have settled in diseased places, for example calcium salts on portions of tissue that have lost their elasticity. We shall therefore classify pathological changes not by the organs attacked but by the functions damaged. Every little part, down to the last cell, retains all functions. Thus, for example, damage affecting the function of elasticity will influence it in every part of the body. To our eyes, however, it will be apparent only in those places where it occurs in large amounts. Yet, because all functions are interconnected in the body, it will gradually affect the other functions.

(34) Every organism contains within itself a continual law of cleansing. Without it, life would be impossible. If matters reach the point at which physiological cleansing is no longer possible within an organism, it perishes. Every symptom of illness is a visible manifestation that this natural physiological cleansing in the body has been disturbed and harmful substances have begun to accumulate.

The task of treatment is to remove substances harmful to the organism and its vital functions, to deprive disease-causing bacteria of the breeding ground in which they multiply and thereby manufacture various deadly poisons that destroy the cellular life of our body. Health rests upon a complete balance between nourishment and excretion. All organs of the human and animal body depend, in their structures and functions, upon the blood that supplies them. The blood itself depends upon the food we eat, its processing and the way it is adapted to the body’s needs.

The foundation of defense against infection is the cellular processes of special cells in our body that I call reticuloendothelial. These cells can engulf microbes and digest them with their ferments. These produce antidotes that pass into the blood, circulate in it and form the basis of immunity: substances necessary for tissue regeneration.

(35) The means of defense against all illnesses is prophylaxis, or the prevention of disease: avoiding all causes harmful to the body that are sources of illness and destroy vital strength. Living tissue will then not suffer from a deficiency of this vital strength, which the organism should have at its disposal throughout life. Illnesses arise from the inability of the organism’s vital force to resist various harmful agents, to neutralize all acids in the body, especially uric acid, that is, to transform it into urea, and to produce enough defensive substances against developing illnesses and forming viruses. A virus is a living molecule of protein that is actually a crystal, a living crystal consisting of one molecule. It is a living protein molecule.

The most feared disease today is the malignant tumor, cancer. It originates in a chemical substance formed when cells are ill, and therefore the causes of tumor growth must be sought not in the tumor itself but in the whole sick person. Illness of the body brings premature aging of the organism, inadequate metabolism and thus a weakening of vital strength. The cells grow old earlier, prematurely, and approach death. The normal processes within the cell are reversed, the balance between the cell’s physicochemical state and its surroundings is disturbed, and a basis for tumor growth is thereby created.

The chemical substance formed in a diseased cell provides a breeding ground for various kinds of microbes of infectious diseases as well as for the noninfectious living tumor of cancer. The malignant tumor develops from its own extract. This contains a substance that enables cancer to attack an animal’s cells and transform them into cancer cells. Thus the type of malignant tumor depends upon a specific factor, the medium or bodily fluids, allowing a normal cell to become malignant through the destruction of its defensive powers.

The destruction of the cell’s defensive powers and the formation of the harmful chemical substance are often caused by inadequate cellular respiration owing to a chronic lack of oxygen. The causes are civilization and, with it, a sedentary life, lack of sunlight and movement, through which the cells also become ill. South African savages and Eskimos, living in their primitive ways, do not develop cancer. Overeating also influences the development of tumors. Nourishment should be light but rich in calories.

Cancer, this malignant disease, a tumor that destroys tissues, can still be cured before proliferation and disintegration occur. This also applies to patients in whom cancer is hereditary owing to a constitutional disposition.

(36) When an animal is ill, it does not eat. Instinctively it does not accumulate unnecessary food that is subject to decomposition and further floods the diseased organs already hindered in their normal functions.

The dry diet I shall outline is a unique remedy for many illnesses, enabling the organism to eliminate inactive, weakened and diseased cellular elements, as well as disintegrating cells weakened in their resistance to bacterial action, and all the products of decomposition that impair the vital activity of the healthy surrounding cells. Contact with the diseased cells paralyzes and arrests their activity. To live normally, a cell needs restoration to health, nourishment, work and rest. What does not work dies. This applies to every cell as well. If one cell is dying, it also affects its neighbors so that they fail to perform their own functions and become ill, and this process then spreads further.

To perform its functions properly, the human organism needs two to three liters of water daily, which we supply through food. The lungs alone exhale more than a liter of water in twenty-four hours; the kidneys excrete more than a liter in urine, and some water leaves through the pores and in the stool. Yet we shall not give the body this necessary water. Instead, by introducing dietary-physiological treatment, we shall give it enough food from which water has been removed, so that it must yield its own fluids to digest this dry food. What will happen in the organism?

The body will make available, and thus send to execution, those cells that have the least and shortest vitality. They no longer possess a defensive vital force and disintegrate of themselves in the structure of their diseased and feeble bodies, so that their seventy percent of water becomes available for the normal functions of the respiratory, digestive and excretory organs. You who have eyes, see!!!

(37) Reason must show you that this is the best remedy for restoring and preserving tissue that is still alive. It must be freed of diseased cells so that it does not itself gradually succumb to infection. After the replacement of the severely diseased cells, the mildly diseased cells come next. These can be healed, that is, renewed in their protoplasm, from which they remove diseased substances together with the necessary water.

Healthy cells remain, and only the weakest of them would be next, even if we foolishly prolonged the dietary treatment. There is a kind of lawfulness here: what has already lost its own vital force is, under a dry diet, made available to sustain the remaining healthy tissue. The organism itself, or rather its cells, normally cleanses itself through the blood. This is flooded with various substances already discharged by worn-out cells saturated with toxins, substances of which the body wishes to rid itself. To bring about the breakdown of diseased tissues no longer capable of functioning, we shall help the sick body each week by carrying out a therapeutic dietary-physical cleansing of the bodily organism. Only a course of dry dietary treatment will induce transformations in the diseased cell body so that irritating substances dissolve and are flushed out. It is well known, after all, that uric acid destroys nerve tissue, clogs blood vessels and brings on gout, the deposition of uric acid salts in joints and other organs. Dry dietary treatment draws from the entire body the fluid needed for its functions, together with unhealthy wastes. Meanwhile, unnecessary substances leave the body through the kidneys, intestines, skin and mucus of the mucous membranes. Everything dead departs; the body retains only the parts necessary for maintaining life, now cleansed and healthy. Animal energy also participates in this cleansing, helping to burn substances in the body that obstruct the organism’s normal functioning. When the body is cleansed, every illness heals. With this treatment we can prevent all illnesses, even cancer.

(38) We shall undertake dietary-physiological treatment in the knowledge that the will is a power of the spirit. We shall call upon it for help and willingly take part each week in the renewal and cleansing of our organism.

On Thursday we eat an uncooked, raw supper if possible. For example, we pour cream, fruit juice or honey over two to four tablespoons of rolled oats and add raisins and grated apple to taste. We drink fruit juice with it. An hour and a half later we bathe our feet in warm water for twelve minutes and apply a cool wrap for two hours while lying in bed. We use two sheets, soak them in cool water, wring them out so that they do not drip, draw air into our lungs, and wind the sheets around the body from the arms to the ankles. Over them we wrap two blankets, drawing them close to the body with a cord. Thus wrapped, we lie down in bed and cover ourselves with a feather quilt. After two hours we remove the wrap and sleep peacefully until morning. The next day, Friday, we eat only dry dietary food, without any liquids. We eat enough to be completely satisfied. In the morning, according to taste, we eat toast made from good stale bread with butter and garlic, hard rolls two or three days old with honey, or dry crackers and biscuits. At noon we may drink no more than one eighth of a liter of natural white wine with the same food, drinking it hot with three sugar cubes to counteract weakness and feelings of cold and to promote a good mood. For an afternoon snack we have a few figs and dates or dried apple slices. In the evening we eat dry gingerbread biscuits with six stewed prunes, without their liquid. Before bed we bathe our feet again. On Saturday morning we give ourselves a large soap enema of two to three liters of lukewarm water so that the large intestine is thoroughly cleansed. We shall not breakfast until after ten o’clock, because until nine in the morning the organism is cleansing itself of surplus food residues from the previous day, and should therefore not be disturbed in this activity by a fresh influx of work. Toward eleven we breakfast on a cleansing tea of strawberry leaves, blackberry leaves, elderflowers and linden blossom, sweetened with sugar, with a pastry. At noon we eat a normal lunch composed of lighter dishes containing less liquid than usual, such as omelets, porridges and strudels. Let us avoid plain water. We exclude heavy meats from old animals, heavy sauces, smoked meats and sausages, legumes, tea, cocoa, coffee made from beans, sweets, and foods that are spicy, sour or oversalted, as well as spirits. Among vegetables, let us avoid asparagus, tomatoes, lingonberries and mushrooms, which release uric and oxalic acids.

(39) Let us choose predominantly plant-based food: various dishes made from milk, fruit and vegetables, potatoes baked in their skins, whole-grain bread, raw sour milk, fresh cheese, rice, oatmeal, olive oil, and one or two raw eggs daily. Meat at most twice a week; thymus is healing. Let us salt only with gray salt, which contains magnesium chloride. This prevents the formation of cancerous tumors and promotes the growth of nervous energy, increases resistance to disease, limits fatigue and senile tremor, invigorates the muscles, cures eczema and promotes bile secretion. White table salt and white flour contain no magnesium. Magnesium chloride salt, raw, unrefined, mineral or sea salt, hereafter simply gray salt, may be taken dissolved in distilled water, ten grams to one hundred grams of water, one or two tablespoons daily.

We shall continue this restorative treatment every week for three months, twice a year, in spring and autumn, or whenever we feel ill.

Anyone suffering from a more severe chronic illness may extend this treatment from forty to eighty hours. In very serious cases we shall renew the organism through dietary treatment lasting continuously for nineteen to twenty-five days. During that time, every other day we shall use a cool sweating wrap to stimulate the skin’s activity and produce moist bodily warmth to dissolve unwanted substances, together with an intestinal washout. Every third day we shall take a larger quantity, three to four eighths of a liter, of hot white wine with sugar, drinking it in sips and dipping hard rolls and gingerbread into it. We shall divide the wine over the whole day. After these nineteen or more days, we shall maintain the dietary treatment for another two months, once a week for forty hours.

(40) Dietary treatment, when carried out for several consecutive days, has the character and culmination of all therapeutic reactions. A dry, coated tongue, thirst, often a lack of appetite, feelings of discomfort, daily dark urine with precipitates of uric and oxalic acids, and loss of body weight must not disturb us. If a crisis of dejection occurs, it is a sign that the treatment is effective and must encourage us all the more to persevere. For after enduring physical difficulties such as colic, migraine, stomach pain, the recurrence of remnants of previous illnesses and so forth, an unprecedented sense of well-being arrives as treatment progresses. Dietary treatment draws out all parts of the vessels clogged with diseased substances, as well as damaged portions of tissue. These changes in the body manifest themselves as mild indisposition.

Once the peak of treatment has been passed, feelings of thirst and feverishness abate. The tongue becomes cleaner, the urine becomes lighter in color, and a desire for ordinary food appears.

The dietary food I have outlined must not be replaced with another kind. It must be simple, without water and as free of fat as possible, so that the kidneys are not disturbed in their excretory function. We therefore spread only a thin layer of butter on the toast. Nuts and almonds, which contain a high percentage of fat, are not permitted. We also make baked goods with milk containing little fat and ensure that they are several days old.

The rationale for this dietary-physiological treatment is logical, scientific and based on experience. It must not be carried out in cases of kidney disease, stones or after the removal of a kidney.

9. Blood

(41) Autonomous, purposeful regulation operates in the living cell. That is, the cell does not behave passively toward physicochemical processes, but actively regulates the intensity of their action in whatever way benefits it. The life of the cell depends upon healthy blood.

The nourishment of all cells is the cellular, or cellulosic, content of the blood. This is the source of life. To achieve the proper composition of the blood, we need to take in as much living matter as possible, of the kind contained in raw plant food.

Blood consists of blood fluid, or plasma, and solid cellular elements, the so-called white and red blood cells. The ratio of white cells to red is 1:300–400. These corpuscles float in the aforementioned blood fluid, which is a clear yellowish color. Blood plasma consists of blood serum, protein substances and fibrin, which causes blood to clot.

Protein, the fundamental substance of all living beings, of which cell plasma, blood and all bodily fluids are composed, is chemically the most complex thing we know.

Blood cells have the shape of round disks, raised at the edges. They are so small that as many as five million fit into a single cubic millimeter.

Red blood cells have an important role because they contain iron, which absorbs life-giving oxygen, and carry it to all the body’s tissues. A decrease in iron content or in red blood cells causes serious bodily disturbances manifested as chlorosis, or anemia.

(42) In the bone marrow and spleen, a vital fluid called lymph is formed. It spreads through the lymph vessels throughout the body, bringing the necessary substance to the blood cells. It already contains new cells within itself, let us call them lymph cells, which separate along the way and are assigned to the blood cells. They thus provide a continual replacement for exhausted blood cells that disintegrate. We may say that lymph gradually turns into blood. The vascular system brings nutritive substance to the tissues and carries away blood containing waste substances.

Because the strength of blood cells is soon exhausted, they disintegrate, and both kinds are replaced by new ones formed in the bone marrow and spleen. Through the circulation of the blood, the new blood cells reach the lungs, where oxygenation brings them to life and makes them capable of their task.

Blood contains everything the body needs for growth, nourishment and metabolic processes, chiefly oxygen, water, protein substances, sugars, fats and mineral compounds, including, besides iron, considerable quantities of sodium phosphate and carbonate.

At the same time, the blood sweeps the products of metabolism, carbonic acid and urea, into its current. Nutritive blood is driven to the tissues through the arteries, and waste substances leave through the veins.

Iron gives red blood cells the ability to take up oxygen from inhaled air in the lungs. This passes from the blood into the whole organism and breaks down, or burns, unnecessary substances; it is a gradual combustion. The remains of these substances are absorbed by the finest blood vessels, the so-called capillaries, and carried by the blood to the lungs, skin and kidneys, from which they pass out of the body.

(43) Besides the red corpuscles, the blood contains white corpuscles, the white blood cells already mentioned. They are larger than the red ones and formed so that each functions as a single-celled protozoan capable of extending projections, changing its shape and squeezing through the narrowest openings. In this way they reach every part of the organism, flush out all harmful substances or render them harmless by producing from themselves a “healing serum” that acts as an antidote. The substances for this serum must be present in healthy blood: potassium, sodium, calcium and magnesium. The white blood cells take them from the blood and only then process them.

For a sick person, the principal task is to know how to obtain healthy blood and to know the elements important to the organism: potassium, magnesium, phosphorus and nitrogen. Magnesium is particularly important because it prevents illnesses.

It is therefore necessary to increase the number of white blood cells, which drive disease-producing substances out of the body, cleanse and heal the blood, and cause the substances mentioned to be neutralized and removed as quickly as possible. It is also necessary to improve the quality of the red blood cells in order to invigorate every kind of cell in our organism. If we strive for this while the vital substance of the cell nucleus is not yet degenerating, that is, until about forty years of age, I believe it is possible to cure every illness, though not every patient.

10. Healthy Blood

(44) According to my findings, the best way to obtain and maintain healthy blood is as follows:

White blood cells multiply most rapidly from boiled beef. We can test that this is so in a well-developed child whom we were to feed only boiled beef. Within one to two months the organism would lose so many red blood cells that the white ones would predominate, which must not be allowed to happen.

To strengthen the red blood cells, as already stated, it is necessary to supply food as uncooked as possible, in the state in which its cellulosic substances are beginning to break down, so that they are easily digested. In doing so, let us attend to the principal components of protoplasm, its molecules.

To obtain nutritive salts that contain no carbon and are composed of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and phosphorus, it is necessary to eat plenty of dark whole-grain bread, apples, salads, vegetables and so forth, and to expose ourselves to sunlight, which alone transforms the fluids into health-giving and healing forces. Exposure to the sun, however, must not be overdone. Direct sunlight should fall on the bare body for only fifteen minutes in an hour. We may, however, repeat the sunbath several times a day. Excessive sunbathing is harmful. Subjects observed that after ten days of excessive sunbathing the number of red blood cells had fallen by as much as forty percent.

Plenty of movement in the fresh air is also necessary, because it promotes appetite and good blood. The oxygen contained in the air is at the same time an important nutritive substance that helps the body not only to maintain the proper temperature but also to rid itself of harmful metabolic residues.

(45) Hydrotherapeutic applications bring about a reaction: movement of blood that in some places flows sluggishly and is almost at a standstill.

In a healthy person, blood should circulate through the entire organism in six to fifteen seconds, but in some patients it takes thirty to sixty seconds. This is very bad, because disease-producing substances then predominate over healthy ones.

It is necessary to drink enough spring water, because the human body consists of as much as 70 percent water. Water has an important task in chemical decomposition and metabolism. Take in as much uncooked food rich in proteins, fats and carbohydrates as possible.

Proteins are the principal component of every cell and consist of five elements: oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon and sulfur. All plant and meat foods contain protein.

Fats are very important; in the body they serve mainly to produce bodily heat, which arises through oxidation, or burning. Without this heat, the metabolism of disease-producing substances would be impossible.

(46) Carbohydrates, contained chiefly in various kinds of sugar, are important as well. They also arise from groups of substances that are converted into sugar only within the body, particularly starches, dextrin and gum. All the substances mentioned occur most abundantly in plant food. Both carbohydrates and fats consist of three elements: oxygen, hydrogen and carbon.

Carbohydrates are the chief source of muscular strength. They also produce a great deal of bodily heat.

We must make ourselves eat uncooked food for another reason: boiling and baking not only destroy cell nuclei but also deprive food of various kinds of magnetic energy, which is easily disrupted by heat.

This radiant energy of plants, contained in vitamins, accumulates chiefly at the surface, where it is protected by skins so that it is not readily discharged. These kinds of vitamins are indispensable to our organism because in the body they are transformed into vital nervous energy, bodily magnetism.

We must attend to all this in order to produce as much blood rich in building substances as possible.

(47) At the same time we must attend to proper digestion, because nutrients gradually undergo chemical changes through the action of various juices. The rules are approximately these:

Looking at food awakens appetite, which brings about the production of the juices needed to digest that particular food. Anyone who neglects this lacks good digestive juices, digests his food inadequately and grows weak.

We should eat slowly, chew thoroughly and mix the food well with saliva. Attend to a daily bowel movement, do not breakfast before eight o’clock, and eat supper no later than seven in the evening. Eat only three times a day and do not overeat.

I am decidedly opposed to coffee, tea, alcoholic drinks, cigarette smoking, white baked goods, artificially seasoned sauces and sweets. Pork lard and fatty smoked meats and sausages are poison. Excessive use of salt, vinegar and spices is also harmful. A low-salt diet promotes the healing of inflammations, especially of the nerves.

We have learned that the cells of our body depend upon the blood, which brings them oxygen and nutrients and carries away all the products of metabolism.

This, however, can never be performed perfectly. Thus more and more waste products, the slag of metabolism, accumulate in and around the cells. The cells begin to poison one another with their unremoved waste substances. States of general depression of the organism arise, causing precipitation of the plasma, and colloidal disturbances accelerate the general decline, ultimately condemning the entire cluster of cells to destruction. Life then becomes a slow dying.

(48) Aging is a gradual weakening of the reactivity of cells, consisting in biophysical and biochemical changes in the cellular plasma, changes in its physicochemical composition, the gradual loss of the cell’s ability to reproduce and renew its biochemical structural elements, and the clogging of the cell with coarsened, altered, physiologically ineffective particles of its own cellular plasma.

It is therefore necessary to regulate this overproduction of waste, to check and delay as long as possible this process of poisoning the organism, so that a person does not physically degenerate in his prime through premature aging and self-poisoning.

To prevent cells from aging through poisoning by waste substances, throughout our lives we shall sensibly assist the whole organism in accelerating their timely exchange.

Walks in healthy fresh air for two to three hours daily will help us do this. So will daily deep-breathing exercises and a predominantly alkaline-forming diet prepared from milk, potatoes, fruit and vegetables, with smaller portions of other foods, which are acid-forming. We should sweeten with honey, add sourness with lemon, use butter or cooking oil for fat, and use little salt, seasoning or vinegar. Meat and egg dishes should be reduced to a minimum. Meat contains little organic calcium, of which the body needs two grams daily. To supply the body’s calcium from meat alone, we would have to eat thirty kilograms of meat a day, a quarter of a kilogram of cheese, and so forth.

(49) A meat diet produces heat throughout the body and mild stomach inflammations; all the blood grows heated, and the bodily system is thereby considerably weakened, so that a person easily becomes ill.

Let us eat bread made from whole rye and wheat grains. Baked goods made only from white flour do not benefit the body and cause anemia. Let us neither smoke nor drink alcoholic beverages, except at most one or two eighths of a liter of genuine wine daily. To allow waste substances to dissolve quickly and be carried out of the body, the whole body should be steamed once a week before bedtime. For this purpose there is a cabinet specially adapted for such steam baths, with the head left free. We remain in it for twenty-five minutes. After steaming, we wash the body with cold water.

Every other day, three times a week, we immerse ourselves in cold water for five seconds and immediately return to bed without drying, remaining there closely covered for at least an hour.

For three days a week we drink blood-cleansing tea made from plantain, centaury, nettle, St. John’s wort, speedwell, knotgrass, birch leaves, wormwood, sage and field pansy. It is enough to take a mixture of three or four herbs and boil one tablespoon for one minute in a quarter of a liter of water. Then we set it aside for twenty minutes, strain it and drink it unsweetened half an hour after meals in the morning, at noon and in the evening. In the second week we replace this mixture of three herbs with others so that the organism does not become accustomed to one kind.

(50) Once a week we impose a dry fast upon ourselves, meaning that on that day we drink absolutely nothing and eat only dry rolls three or four days old, in the morning, at noon and in the evening. This releases from the bodies of diseased cells the water needed for digestion, breathing, sweating, urination and bowel movements, and harmful substances are released with it.

We pay too little attention to a daily bowel movement. Intestinal bacteria make up one-third of the volume of feces in our intestinal canal. Every day the human body excretes about 130 quintillion bacteria with its feces. Constipation causes their decomposition and putrefaction, producing bad blood and thereby contributing to accelerated aging. To shorten these prolonged poisonings, kefir or raw sour milk taken at night destroys these bacteria and prevents constipation.

Anyone who wishes to remain young, healthy and fresh will follow these instructions, which I have tried myself.

11. The Circulation of the Blood

(51) Since every part of our organism is built from cells, we must attend to proper blood circulation so that they are adequately and evenly nourished and oxygenated.

If we notice that some part of our body remains colder, we apply various water treatments to those places: washing, wraps, pouring water over them and baths. In anemic people bodily warmth should be stimulated with heat; in full-blooded people with cold, but briefly, without chilling them. Washing the whole body three times a week, every other day, also helps maintain proper circulation. Let us wash the feet and hands first, then the rest of the body.

The agent of blood circulation is a healthy heart. It is a hollow, cone-shaped muscle divided into two ventricles separated by a partition. Each ventricle has its own atrium. At the entrance and exit of the ventricles are valves that determine the direction of blood flow. The heart performs its work through rhythmic contraction of the muscle, systole, by means of automatic ganglia, or self-acting nerve clusters.

From the left ventricle of the heart emerges the largest artery, the aorta, which divides into two directions, toward the upper and lower parts of the body. It further divides into many arterial branches, then branches like a tree into every part of the body, down to the finest arterial vessels, the so-called capillaries. There it passes into minute channels flowing around individual cells. Thus wherever we prick, we encounter blood.

Used blood passes through the smallest arterioles into similar vessels, the so-called venous capillaries, which join into larger and larger veins, and by these routes, the venae, returns to the right atrium of the heart. From there it enters the right ventricle, which drives it to the lungs to take up fresh oxygen and rid itself of carbonic acid. Oxygenated blood returns to the left atrium, then to the left ventricle, from which it leaves through the aorta to return to the body. Arterial, aortic blood is bright red, while venous blood is dark bluish red.

An adult needs seven hundred grams of oxygen daily and eliminates as much as nine hundred grams of carbon dioxide from the blood.

(52) If our blood is weak, diseased and circulates improperly, a disturbance arises within the cellular protoplasm. This often manifests itself in skin, muscle and nerve cells, in a bad mood, fatigue, oppression and pain when the weather changes. Such people warn us with certainty of bad weather two or three days in advance and do not themselves know how to explain it. Chemical changes in nature, chiefly streams of electrons detached from atomic nuclei, have an adverse influence upon the weakened nervous system. Air pressure and humidity irritate the diseased cellulosic substance, which swells, presses upon nerves and arouses the unpleasant feelings mentioned. In a healthy person, cellular protoplasm does not chemically decompose when the weather changes. Diseased cellulosic substance responds to fluctuations in atmospheric pressure and changes in ionization in the atmosphere. These alter the composition of ions and the colloidal structure in the tissues of the human body, thereby producing mental disharmony and various painful sensations.

People whose cellular protoplasm is diseased react to changes in the weather, as do those who belong among the sensitives, as I shall explain later.

I have set out the most important things necessary for the formation of healthy blood, upon which all our health and a contented life depend. In old people, whose cells are degenerating, the blood being formed is inadequate to nourish them. To rejuvenate the cells and the whole organism, only the addition of mother blood, from young men and girls, can help, and I recommend it.

If a person who gives blood to save the sick is sensitive, that person remains for a time in psychic connection with the patient through the radiantly vibrating oduší. If, despite this help, the patient cannot be kept alive, the donor senses the death of the person to whom the blood was given. In such a case the donor may experience nausea, vomiting and pain in the upper part of the body. These symptoms make it possible to anticipate the patient’s death.

If the patient recovers, the mutual fluid connection is broken because the patient has saturated the received blood with his own oduší and expelled the foreign oduší from it.

12. Infection

(53) Let us not worry about picking up some bacilli in raw food. Someone may fear raw milk lest he contract consumption, and therefore refuse to touch unboiled milk at all, anxiously obeying this nonsensical suggestion. Yet he carelessly eats curd, butter and cheese, products made only from raw milk, as if those bacilli were no longer present in them.

I remind such people that gastric juice, which is acidic, kills every kind of bacterium, provided the principles previously laid down are observed. Fear of bacilli today is often downright ridiculous.

Bacteria are very small organisms that must be magnified a thousand to three thousand times under a microscope to appear as dots. They were discovered on decaying substances in 1671 by a priest of the Jesuit order.

I myself have observed bacilli and assert that neither the cell nor decomposing cellular protoplasm in our body contains a trace of bacteria. These can enter only by transmission from the air and from spoiled blood, which provides a good medium for receiving them, and begin their destructive work in the organism. This happens precisely where there is plenty of suitable, decomposing ground, not permeated by the fluid of oduší, in which they can multiply. If the blood is bad, gastric juices are formed that are incapable of killing bacilli. Thus the chief cause of illness is not the bacillus but the disease-producing substance that has not been removed from the body.

Let us also attend to healthy teeth: a decayed tooth is a very dangerous intermediary for transmitting bacilli into the blood.

If I am certain that I follow a natural way of life, I need not fear bacilli from uncooked food. I know that certain death awaits them in my body, and that I am eating food that is alive and rich in vitamins, rather than dead food deprived of them by cooking.

13. The Human Being

(54) The human being was deliberately placed within the work of creation. God created the world to bring happiness to creatures. All creation is an image of divine goodness. The human being is created directly by God. God Himself created man. For this He used inorganic substance, matter, the clay of the earth, which He had made from nothing.

The human being was created in the image and likeness of God. Matter, too, bears traces of God’s image within itself; through its qualities and capacities it is adapted to cooperation with the spirit. It comes into play particularly in the human body. The entire body, especially the brain, esplana and hormones, is masterfully adapted, its parts complementing one another in the soul’s activity, whether higher or lower. In the glorified body it endures eternally. In experiments, the energetic matter of oduší moves at the speed of thought.

The human being consists of a material body and an immaterial soul, united in one human nature, or substance. The soul is the form of the body; that is, it gives the body human life.

God is pure act, the infinite activity of intellect and will. This activity is inward. A human being also has inward activity when he thinks and wills. When a person knows and wills, he can command something, carry it out outwardly himself, and explain things not yet understood.

The methods of natural-scientific inquiry are direct observation, experiment and rational reflection.

The human spirit is influenced by matter in the capacity of its being, and many a person will hear nothing of a higher principle of life. His life approaches the sum of the qualities of animal creatures, realized through matter and various energies governed by a lower, immaterial, instinctive agent, and such a basis of life is governed by a bounded order. We find no cultivation in such a person, for he lives under the sign of animated matter and life is his fate. Let us not then be surprised that in the enlightened twentieth century of progress, education and humanism, human dignity could fall so astonishingly low. The person of progress and enlightenment sank beneath the level of a beast of prey, destroying, beating, imprisoning and murdering other human beings without feeling or mercy.

This evil will pursue humanity as long as it lives. Egoism, cunning, baseness, predatory aggression and voracity are the instinctive weapons of many predatory animals for preserving an existence whose spirit proceeds from the order of matter. The human body and its lower soul are of the same animal origin. The bodily substance and its phylogenetic deposits conceal these instinctive qualities, which, once awakened, determine and incite to lower actions a spirit of a higher order: reason, will and feeling, which through inadequate upbringing and neglected self-education has lagged in development and weakened. It has not become free and strong enough to defend the moral personality.

(54a) The senses are insufficient for understanding psychic events or all the material properties of the world, for to them nothing further exists. God supplemented the human senses with spiritual intuition. Reason, the possibility of thinking, feeling and willing, presents the world to us in a far more perfect perspective than the mere senses of lower creatures can know it.

Life is a purposeful interplay in which everything is harmoniously joined and manifests itself perfectly only as an organized whole.

Life is not the resultant of energies. Energy alone does not condition life. Life is the embodiment of a principle of a higher order, of an immaterial and nonenergetic nature, thus different from matter and energy. We know the general properties of matter and energy, but from none of them can we derive the properties of life, such as thought, instinct, heredity, purposefulness and so forth. Matter merely cooperates here. We sense something more in the background, while matter and energy appear to us as mere material means in the artist’s work. Just as a painting is the embodiment of a painter’s thought, life is the embodiment of a principle of a higher order than matter and energy alone. Purposefulness appears in both ordinary and organic matter. It is the intentional realization of a particular goal. Purposefulness in organic nature is undeniable. The fulfillment of this law realizes a phenomenon of a higher order, unknown to ordinary matter, and therefore it cannot be explained as a consequence of causality, or causal connection.

The essence of life, that which makes life life, is of a supramaterial and nonenergetic nature. Life arose through creation. The qualities of living creatures must in some way be potentially contained in the properties of nonliving matter.

God joined the elementary particle of primordial matter, the siton, with the principle of life. Under certain conditions the siton forms both ordinary matter and animated matter, the foundation of organisms. There is one kind of matter, the siton, in which an energetic agent and an agent with psychic potentialities operate. In ordinary matter the spiritual principle of life is in a latent state. Through certain chemical and physical processes, matter changes into organic matter. The lower spiritual principle, vegetative and sensory, thereby enters an active state. In ordinary matter it manifests only its energetic aspect; in animated matter it additionally manifests its psychic aspect, to which it provides form. Form is thus the vital principle that enables matter to exist organically. Form, the soul, resides in the essence of the bodily units, atoms and molecules, and gives their forces direction.

The universe developed, and continues to develop, according to the laws of the act of creation, laws implanted in both ordinary and animated matter.

God is existent being, who through His thinking realizes the entire world. Everything tends toward a purpose, and movement accords with the purpose of the world.

Every thinking person must acknowledge that God exists and is pure act, the foundation and bearer of qualities, His own first object of thought and first object of desire. The created world and the order in nature are the result of His thinking and will, through which He thus manifests intellect. God is being existing of itself, without cause, independent, unconditioned, absolute, and is the cause of all being. God is the first sovereign cause of all actual and possible being. God sees Himself, penetrates Himself and sees within Himself how He is inimitable outwardly. Thus there exist in God ideas of things capable of realization outside Him. God’s ideas are thought by God. According to them the essences of things are created, as according to the archetype of the original supreme model.

The pattern for building the universe was conceived and determined by God’s intellect and will. Immutable ideas, the pattern, appear to the human being as types and principles. The conceived essence of ideas exists in God. Only some ideas were designated for the creation of the material universe and its creatures. Some remained potential. Others were designated for the creation of the spiritual world and its highly intelligent, active spiritual beings of a higher form, with exceedingly perfect intellect and will. The essences of things are reflections of eternal ideas as God thinks them. He realizes His eternal plan if He wills. Everything created, ordinary and organic matter and all creatures, belongs to the order of finite, limited being.

(54b) For the outward manifestation of matter, God first created by His breath the universal essence of lower spirituality, dependent upon Him as the first mover, who is not set in motion by another. Lower spirituality is the lowest created spiritual formation for realization, that is, for the emergence of ordinary matter and organic matter. For there to be motion, for it to arise, there must be actuality, a first mover: energy. Motion is then the cooperation of potentiality and actuality. Actuality is the active force for movement and contains purpose within itself. From actuality, God, comes direction, the realization of what is possible.

Into this immaterial principle, this spiritual formation, He implanted a law, which proceeded from His will, and also an analogue of some of His immutable ideas. Let us imagine the operation of ideas outside God’s substance in this way: a thought exists in my substance. Once spoken, it continues to exist in me, but also in a friend, in a crowd and on a running sound-recording tape. God endowed the essence of lower spirituality with a vital, purposefully acting force so that ordinary and organic matter might arise, with the potential for individual development of vegetative and sensory, or sensitive, capacities. He then let the universe develop according to these directives.

Spirituality issued light energy from its movement. Energy, in connection with spirituality, united and divided, and from itself, from its movement, issued and created the first independent material wholes: the smallest, unchanging and indivisible luminous particles of sitons, which gave rise to primordial matter. The indivisible element, the particle of primordial matter, the siton, received its own activity and the necessary most perfect qualities. The siton acquired the nature of matter, energy and psyche. At the same time it was endowed with a plan, order and organization. Although the sitons separated, they form a single continuous moving body. With the emergence of sitons, the universal spiritual formation ceased to exist as an independent, unified agent.

Endowed with energy, the sitons displayed an immense motive force, attracting and repelling one another and giving rise to various kinds of forms, from the small and simple to inconceivable combinations, densities and distances of siton particles bound by energy of different strengths. In this way composite formations of highly complicated units arose, in which lies the basis for the differing chemical properties of various elements.

Different kinds of these units, these little stones, arose with various differing new qualities acquired when sitons met and combined. These stones, which I call pyrotons, differ in the number, arrangement and spacing of their sitons. The manner of arrangement gave rise to the positive and negative nature of pyrotons, which enables them to combine into still higher wholes, called nucleons, that become units of atomic nuclei. We know them by the names proton, deuteron, helion, electron, neutron, photon, mesotron, silotron and so forth. These kinds of stones then further associated and combined into the final fundamental building blocks, atoms, for the construction of the universe. From atoms and atomic molecules is built the entire masterwork of the living and nonliving world, which tends toward a purpose. The cause here is therefore not mechanical but purposive. Lower formative spirituality is the foundation of all matter, operating in it as an order-producing agent. Through chemical and physical processes, matter changes into organic matter, and the immaterial vital principle leads it toward its goal. The lower spiritual principle of an animal, the vital force of vegetative and sensory capacity, passes in conjunction with matter from a latent state into an active, substantial state. It determines the being and manifests itself in instinctual behavior, in which it exercises the limited aptitude of a kind of mechanical reason. This soul governs the taking of food and reproduction. Besides these functions, it can also perceive, desire and direct bodily movement. Essence, the substance arising from an idea or disposition, has passed into actuality and become existence. Substance, the constant, unchanging bearer, provides it with form and determines its being.

(54c) The human being is also an animal with an animal soul originating in universal spirituality, for it received existence from its potentiality. But by an act of creation God gave the human being a rational soul, made in His image and likeness. Through reason it becomes conscious, thinks and decides. This soul, of a lower pure form, since only beings of spiritual substance possess a higher form, is at the same time a vital principle, the moving force of the material body, and can exercise itself fully only in connection with matter. Its essence has a higher aptitude for vegetative and sensory capacity. This makes it possible for the two kinds of forms, of the lower animal order and the higher rational order, to join in unity in the human soul. Three orders are joined in perfect unity: vegetative, sensory and rational. Vegetative activity is supramechanical. Sensory activity is suprabiological and supraphysical. Spiritual activity is immaterial.

In the human being, as in the animal, the animal soul retains drives and instincts that pass into action only through the reflex action of matter, the body’s instinctive desire and the reflex action of the external world. God implanted instincts in all nature, or rather in lower spirituality. Instinct is a manifestation of nature’s mechanism. It is a chain of reflexes evoked by stimulation, tending toward a goal without knowing it.

The rational soul, by contrast, retains reason, free will, feeling, intuition and inspiration. Unity and certainty reside only in reason. Reason provides self-consciousness, activity reflecting upon itself. Only reason knows of its own existence, its own being. Reason is endowed with the ability to perfect itself. For a person to acquire the enduring mark of mental maturity, competence, prudence and adulthood, and to act rightly and nobly, he must rise higher. He can freely choose moral development in the virtues, moral qualities that perfect him for life and ideal social existence and make him beautiful before God. Acquiring virtues is the highest benefit a person can attain. Reason enriched by virtues triumphs over the animal side of the human being, clarifies dark mental images, removes the wickedness of human nature, and thereby leads him out of a subhuman state.

The activity of the animal soul does not exceed its given instinctive dispositions; it always acts within the circle of instinctual lawfulness, according to principles implanted in the essence of lower spirituality. Its psychic experiences are in the senses, not in reason.

The rational soul freely extends its expression and creative activity far beyond this circle. It acts consciously and freely. Because rational psychic expression is bound to matter, it is consubstantial with it, psychophysical. Psychic experiences and cognition reside in both the senses and reason. The distinctive character of cognition is already a supraphysical and supraphysiological, conscious event.

(54d) Let us realize that rational aptitudes and abilities exist only in a potential state. Whoever makes no effort remains an animal, a creature with inadequately developed reason and a weak will. His thinking proceeds through inadequate judgments; he does not live fully in the present and loses the meaning of his existence. He betrays his spirit, loses spiritual competence and is incapable of perfect thought. He lacks the strength of a rational spirit to direct moral imagination freely. He cannot create and grasp an idea as a goal. He renounces spiritual values and his freedom. He has remained spiritually backward and therefore does not understand enduring spiritual values. He knows only material values and neither knows nor understands ideal values. Material values have a subordinate importance in life; they are merely the foundation beneath spiritual and moral values, a means and not an end. Such a person is then a moving animal, dependent on instinctive activity, living at most from innate a priori dispositions acquired through the experiences of previous generations and realized in his hereditary bodily matter. Only a cultivated person can infuse animal drives with soul, rationalize and moralize them, and thus develop into a human personality. Yet he is never a creative being, for in an unawakened spirit, in the realm of willing to be creative and more perfect, there is no freedom. Full freedom is the necessity and goal of human development and self-realization. True human knowledge and perfection occur when reason unites with things and touches the system of divine ideas and laws.

Modern man, the creator of ideas, electrical transformers, airplanes, atomic bombs and so forth, has grown proud and ceased to believe in eternal ideas and their purpose. He has failed to think through the fact that his creation depends upon the first cause, that his ideas are not permanent, that they are not thought from eternity but invented, and therefore have a transitory duration. Their purpose is only the temporary and contingent benefit of humanity. They are changeable in nature, related to both good and evil; they are relative. They are not directed toward absolute good.

Material processes, the purposefully acting force, do not cease, and the phylogenetic development of matter will continue through constant improvement, perfection and the appearance of new species in both the plant and animal kingdoms.

The conception of a threefold soul, vegetative, sensory and rational, is justified only to the extent that plant, animal and human life actually appears this way. Some plants, too, have sensory organs. Thus the vital principle is not merely the formative agent of the individual; throughout the entire species and the whole organic kingdom it is directed toward a definite evolutionary goal, the gradual perfection of creatures from generation to generation. In matter there is nothing rigid, passive or finished; everything is in constant evolutionary movement.

(54e) The vegetative soul and the sensory soul are capable of existence only in union with matter. When organisms perish, their soul disappears only for a time. It remains latent until new chemical and physical conditions arise for a new organic life of plants, animals and human beings. It remains only as psychic possibilities in the individual parts of sitons, not as an independent soul that becomes embodied in organisms. In the human being, however, there is a rational soul that forms a unity with the vegetative and sensory soul. This is of a higher order, and amid chemical disturbances and the disintegration of matter, that is, after death, it can live separately from the body and perform its highest function, thinking, without the help of matter. The human soul, with reason and will, can exist as pure form: it is immortal and contains something of the very highest form, which is God, from whom it proceeds, being created by Him at the conception of every human being. The higher form of the soul, reason and will, has a divine origin. From this belief flow the high ethical values of Christianity, such as the equality of the members of human society before God, brotherhood, love of one’s neighbor and the like. Here begins the great function of religious faith, which is not a form of resignation of the human spirit but its natural need as the “image of God.” Indeed, on the contrary, it is the highest intensification and development of the human spirit as God’s image, a development God brings about supernaturally, beyond mere human abilities, demands and claims, solely from His own good will.

The highest form of active intelligence is God. Among the highest created active intelligent forms are the angels. After them, the human soul is a higher active intelligent form. Among the lower forms are the sensitive, or animal, soul and the vegetative soul, which operates in plants and in the bodies of animals. The lowest form, yet the fundamental one for the emergence of matter, is universal spirituality. The sensory and vegetative forms and the lowest spirituality depend upon one another in their unified and common foundation. Their activity is governed by a plan, laws and order. The human soul, distinguished by reason and will, has the aptitude to enter into unity with these formative agents, that is, with matter containing the potential for vegetative and sensory psychic capacity, and to give expression to a rational being. The substance of the human being is easily impaired. Disturbances of bodily and mental health, however, do not originate in the higher form of the soul but in the lower forms.

(55) God is the originator and sustainer of both the material and the living world. Primordial matter, primal substance, received its own activity and the necessary perfect qualities. The elementary particle of primordial matter, the “siton,” was equipped with its own order, plan and organization for its specific formation. These luminous particles of primordial matter organized themselves into pyrotons, electrons, macromolecules, molecules, cells and organs, and eventually into the life of animals and human beings.

Nonliving matter has certain degrees of freedom. In living systems it is organized in a special way, and when its process of combination reaches a certain order, chemical and psychic properties arise. There is no rigidity in matter, but continual happening in the sense of a dynamic conception that unites matter and process into one indivisible whole.

For developing physicochemical life, and especially animal life, God at the same time implanted in the created, original, lowest essence of universal spirituality a vital principle. This is also a purposefully acting force that, from given ideas, plan and order, creates energy, primordial matter, ordinary matter and organic matter, with all the properties and potentialities for life and for the development of vegetative and sensory psychic capacity. Nothing here was created earlier or later. If the lowest created spirituality gives rise to matter, then matter, or rather primordial matter, the siton, is essentially a spiritual formation in the order of realizing everything material, vegetable and animal.

As development on Earth advanced, physicochemical processes were realized first, and only then, from this foundation, did increasingly complex living beings gradually appear, with psychic manifestations of various qualities. Each domain of phenomena has its own lawfulness.

Matter displays in all its manifestations a unity and harmony that can be expressed by the concept of the whole. The whole is more than merely the sum of its parts. In its organization as a whole, matter acquires different qualities. All organisms in their wholeness are brought into harmony with other being through happening, or process.

Life is an order implanted by the Creator in the particles of primordial matter. The immense forces of sitons build the material and animal world. Molecules arising from pyrotonic and atomic chaos display a certain order in their atomic composition. From this, life is built, a higher and more complex order. When these crystals group into a macromolecule, a kind of higher form, already living, emerges from matter; in further development an even more perfect form of vegetative life appears, as in the protozoan amoeba, which already develops important functions of vegetative life. A further stage in the realization of matter’s vital capacities is the plant or animal cell, which, after merging with a cell of the other sex, produces a higher and more complex plant or animal organism. In it rich psychic processes develop, even if they are only vegetative and sensory. Such a more perfect animal or plant is already endowed with the ability to produce germs capable of developing into a complete being of the same species, plant or animal.

(56) Psychic life, at least vegetative, is an attribute of everything living, even the lowliest amoeba or the simplest bacteriophage or filterable virus. The vegetative and sensory soul, of a lower order, of course, emerges here directly from the possibilities of matter. There is unity between the matter of the body and the animal’s vital principle, so that the living organism forms a whole. Both animal and plant, as living organisms, are definite wholes.

Every species and every individual lives its own species-specific or individual life. The dynamics of life unfold under the continual tension of two poles: the tendency toward life and the tendency toward death. Both tendencies grow out of the immense and intricate complexity of living systems.

In an animal, and let us allow that this is also true of a human embryo, the vegetative or sensory soul proceeds from matter, that is, from the possibility implanted in matter by the Creator. It is realized under certain conditions and, undoubtedly, at least as regards the first appearance of life and of individual species, also with the help of a special, direct intervention by God. The soul of a plant or animal perishes through the disintegration or ensuing incapacity of the body’s matter, because in its activity, and thus in its being, it is bound to matter. The human being, however, was raised above other creatures by the breathing into him of an immaterial, spiritual and therefore immortal soul, which at the same time represents the principle of vegetative and sensory life in the human being. The human soul is therefore one. And the immaterial principle of the soul, characterized by the faculties of reason and will, forms with its vegetative and sensory psychic principle a perfect unity, one substance, one being. The spiritual side of the human being, his reason and will, recognizes the moral order, oversees the lower vegetative and sensory instinctive activity and, to a certain extent, also controls and directs it.

The faculty of reason is also an instrument of thinking and communication. Without speech there would be no development of thought. Without thought the emergence and development of speech would be impossible. The spoken word is not merely an expression of thought but also an indicator of the speaker’s mental level. We should therefore strive to refine reason and discipline it through spiritual life. It then thinks more precisely and deeply, judges more cautiously and critically, and goes into the depths, beneath the surface of phenomena and appearances. Thought is a conceptual flow, a chain of concepts. When gaps occur in thought and consciousness, this flow continues uninterrupted in the subconscious.

The matter of the human body acts outside the conscious SELF, particularly in its vegetative functions.

The higher, rational side of the soul, however, has a powerful influence upon lower material and psychic activity. It can direct the forces of instinct and even sublimate them for its own activity of thought. If bodily matter is ill, the higher side of the soul, will joined with faith, can restore chemical order and bring it to health. If the rational SELF is out of harmony and does not believe in recovery, it disrupts order in matter and hastens death.

(57) We ask: where does the human being come from? The human being was deliberately placed within the creative whole by God’s direct intervention. He appears suddenly in the world during the diluvial period, and as a complete being.

Biology, however, teaches that the human being arose in every respect through development from lower organisms, from an animal. In contrast, it is known that the law of heredity maintains the immutability of species. This creature, still an animal, continued to improve until a half-human emerged from it. This half-animal, or half-human, grew more and more like a human being until one day it attained human consciousness, self-awareness, speech and rational thought. Paleontology, however, has not adequately demonstrated any transitional species of half-human. All finds cited in defense of this theory remain insufficient. It has not been proved that any breed could transform into a new species at all, nor that exceptional qualities were hereditary and thus continually led to the improvement of species. A new species appears suddenly, and I therefore judge that it arose through a direct intervention of God’s will, on the basis of a biogenetic law causing the transmutation of genes at fertilization, for this produces biological changes already during a plant’s growth and in the embryonic stage of an animal. Christian teaching does not resist the possibility of an animal origin of the human body; it allows that, in creating the human being and forming his body, God used already existing lower organisms.

Let us allow and explain, from the standpoint of sound reason, the possibility that the human being arose from a single ancestral stock. Science can join with Christian teaching and faith and arrive at one and the same possible explanation. The human being is a vertebrate, belongs among the mammals, and among these evidently to the primates, because the brains of primates and humans differ from those of other animals in being divided into convolutions and furrowed. In this respect the chimpanzee and gorilla stand very close to the human being. The human being, however, does not descend directly from apes but rather from a certain very highly developed related animal species. This predecessor of man, equipped with perfect vegetative and sensory capacities and living in groups under the laws of instinct, could have been designated by God as the material progenitor of a human being endowed with reason and will. God could have used a pair of these predecessors of man so that, from one fertilization of a female egg and the intervention of creative power through gene transmutation during embryonic development, a new species arose, perhaps bringing a pair of new beings into the world at the same time. This new species, this animal pair, surpassed its parents in the perfection of the whole body, permanently upright walking and a more powerful brain, and thus became capable of receiving a spiritual soul. When the perfected male creature had developed, God could have breathed into this animal being a soul in His image, a soul endowed with the faculty of reason and with will. This soul, as it were, incorporated into its unity the existing principle of vegetative and sensory capacity. That first human being, Adam, the natural embodied image of God in man, recognized by the light of his reason that he excelled other creatures in body and spirit and was a child of God. His body and the lower spiritual vegetative and sensory principle arose indirectly from an animal cell, while the soul of the higher principle, with reason and will, arose immediately through a direct act of God’s will. God joined all three psychic capacities into a unity, a single being.

Compared with the animal, the first human being had, for the development of his spirit, a brain that was more orderly overall and enlarged by a frontal lobe; he employed reason and free will. He knew no sin and was happy.

(58) The natural image of God in the human being consists in the fact that the first man was a rational being who made free decisions, manifested his intelligence and, according to revelation, was raised by God’s sanctifying grace to a supernatural participation in the life of God. Among visible creatures the human being occupied the foremost place in physique, reason and will. Adam comprehended the delightful land through reason, tilled the field and cared for it. Yet he found no helper like himself in behavior and reason. While he slept, God brought him a similar helper, for she had been conceived at the same time as Adam, and when she was more fully grown He breathed into her the image and likeness of His spirit. This helper was conceived either from the simultaneous fertilization of two eggs by two sperm, or both arose from one egg fertilized by one spermatozoon. During further division of this fertilized egg, a new division into two halves occurred, each developing into an independent individual of a different sex. Adam, through his intuitive intelligence, immediately recognized that she was bone of his bone, blood of his blood…, that she was his equal, for through embryonic division she had separated from his side, from the site of the elementary particles, “from the rib.” Even today twins are born, though of the same sex, arising from a single fertilized egg that divides into two individuals; we call them identical twins.

This human pair had no interest in their ancestors, who differed considerably in bodily structure and in their purely instinctive life. Because they had previously possessed an animal soul not yet endowed with rational capacity, they could not be conscious of anything from their earlier life before the spiritual soul was breathed into them. Only reason is conscious of itself, and only through reason do we know that we exist. Animal instinctive memory is not conscious of this.

Had God endowed the animal egg with a rational soul immediately at conception, Adam and Eve would have known of their childhood and their animal parents, who were distinguished by bodily and psychic animal traits.

With the placement of the human being on Earth, his predecessor disappeared; it certainly had not formed a widely branching group. This already distinct species of half-human lived briefly and was little dispersed. We have virtually no documented evidence of its transitional forms, although remains found in the Earth’s strata attest to the development of beings that lived in those times.

The first human being was deprived of happiness of soul by sin. Through the knowledge of evil he lost sanctifying grace, his reason was darkened, he became inclined toward evil, and animal vegetative and sensory instinctiveness began to rebel within him. The first people lived on plant food. When it no longer sufficed to sustain them, they turned to hunting and a meat diet. In killing and searching for game they spread throughout the world. A shortage of game then led them back to plant food. Hunting alone did not give the human being opportunities to develop his spirit; his brain did not grow more powerful, and the skull with its frontal lobe receded, while the lower jaw’s chewing region became stronger, as we find in Neanderthal man. Only when a shortage of game forced him to return to plant food and begin thinking about preserving his existence did the skull, under the influence of brain development and less strain upon the jaws, the discovery of fire and the consequent choice of softer food, change back into the original noble form inherited by Adam’s descendants.

(59) God could also have created the human body in a single act, using an existing animal cell as its foundation, and animated it with an immortal soul. God creates through intellect and will. By a mere thought, an intervention of will, He could have caused a body to arise from an organic cell according to the eternal plan, either instantaneously or through gradual cell division. It is absolutely certain that God did not use the organism of an ape’s entire body to create man by removing the sensitive soul and replacing it with a human soul endowed with reason and will, for it is contrary to God’s wisdom that He should destroy or alter a work once created. But He can perfect all three psychic capacities, unite them and elevate the being above other creatures. We know that an animal cell is of the same substance as the clay of the earth, and therefore we come from it; we are made of the same elementary particles of primordial matter.

The use of the biological foundation of an existing animal egg cell and sperm explains the instinctive traits and qualities that human beings share with animals, that reside in genes and in the biological structure of cells, and that are transmitted from one generation of offspring to the next.

In his body and its functions, the human being resembles an animal and has much in common with it. What raises him highest above the animal, however, is awareness of his own existence, of his SELF as distinct from his surroundings. The chief difference between human and animal lies in psychic life, in the fact that a human being can think and will freely. He is endowed with reason and volition. He can attain the highest moral perfection and intelligence. Yet the faculty of reason is in a potential state, and unless a person strives through education to awaken it and grow mentally, it does not develop sufficiently. Instinctiveness, a trait common to all animals, predominates instead. The decline of reason is the decline of intelligence and culture. An uneducated person instinctively gravitates toward the mass, the crowd, where lower psychic functions, instinctive and mechanical, prevail over rational functions; he lets himself be led by a stronger spirit.

The spirit of the material order and the spirit of the immortal, rational order, although forming a unity, one soul, in the human being, are individually divided in social life into two camps struggling against one another and continually waging ideological battles for their existence. Through ignorance and lack of knowledge, a person cannot give meaning to his life and sinks to the level of a merely combative animal. The spirit of matter, lacking its own reason, would never develop to the point of ideological attacks if the spirit of reason, in its weakness and lack of understanding, did not lend them form. Weakness of spirit is removed through education and knowledge. The task of rational activity is to know truths and raise life to a higher degree of perfection and mutual community. If the spirit of reason strove to penetrate, through the power of wisdom, to the very foundations of the human spirit, it would grasp its essence, know and discover itself, burn with zeal for perfection, and equip and adorn itself with divine qualities, virtues and Christian truths. It would emerge from error, free itself from the crisis humanity is experiencing, and remove mistaken forms of life and struggle.

Only a free, unified and independent spirit equipped with such clear knowledge consciously tends toward truth and is a force of existence; its body, with the instinctive soul and its instincts, becomes its helper on the path toward higher goals. It stands firm, alone. If the spirit of reason is deprived of these powers and weakened, it loses freedom and succumbs to determination by lower instinctive forces of the order of the spirit of matter. It is mentally disordered, dependent, shortsighted, intolerant and envious, has dark mental images and lacks creative strength. The power to destroy values predominates within it; it enters and sinks into the service of the spirit of matter, where, controlled by drives, instincts and the phylogenetic deposit inherited from ancestors, it depends upon them and receives a false personality, a form. Through delayed mental development, ignorance and incomprehension, it wages a truly futile, mistaken and purposeless struggle against spiritual ideas and the higher form of its own soul, which it neither understands nor recognizes.

A child must be guided by upbringing toward God’s law, toward the virtues, from earliest youth. Virtues belong to the order of the rational soul, which understands them. The lower animal, instinctive order of the soul does not understand virtues. In the human being, both spiritual orders form a unity, one soul. Without instilling virtues, we may create a rational and calm person, but one dangerous to human coexistence. His animal, predatory appetites flare up at various moments in life, and unless they are controlled by reason through moral forces, the virtues, they ruthlessly restrict his neighbor’s freedom, mercilessly destroying and strangling him. Only possessions from the world of moral qualities, the virtues, will make a person lastingly happy.

The human being is the summit of all creation only when he has attained moral development and a broad development of reason and will in the higher order of the spirit. Without this mental growth he does not attain his greatness and turns into an instinctive being with an average outlook. An average spirit requires concrete and simple mental images and is little receptive to logical reasoning. It readily employs its brute strength and drives, arising from the age of savagery, from the order of the lower spirit.

A person who does not uncover his psychic capacity returns to where he originally came from, to instinctive animality and herd behavior. Lower instincts common to all people determine his soul. He becomes an instinctive being and succumbs to collective psychosis. In the mass, the crowd, he feels his power and strength, which he celebrates, and he wants, needs, a leader whom he follows blindly. Without reflection he votes for laws restricting everyone’s freedom, permitting development and creation only within the framework of the existing mistaken ideology. Instinctive drives herd him into and reduce him to the realm of mere workplaces and a generally primitive fulfillment of life in the collective. He thus becomes a herd animal satisfied with bread, games and a better “nest.” This dangerous game with the weakness of the human soul can throw culturally advanced nations back by entire centuries.

A free, conscious spirit does not wish to be fettered; it recognizes and cannot tolerate false ideologies. It works for the worldwide development of everyone’s free spirit. A person must not be filled with instinctive forces and laws that restrict his free mental development.

The human being is not merely a super-animal. He is guided by intellect, by reason and will. He is capable of individual development in both orders of the spirit. Only in freedom can a whole human being be formed, particularly if well-directed upbringing by parents and the state assists him. The highest manifestation of being is consciousness in the order of moral reason and free will, not in drives and instincts. From freedom of spirit radiate initiative and inspiration for moral and creative activity. Intuition illuminates entire mysteries like a flash of lightning; reason judges soundly and the will decides. It is the work of the spirit of freedom for its own activity toward aims and great goals, new horizons and directions. Only in freedom of spirit does a person reach the subconscious source of unsuspected aptitudes, abilities and excellent qualities. He uncovers and employs the capacity of the spirit’s higher essence, of true good, which provides the highest cultural, social, humane and moral flourishing and well-being for all. Unless a person strives to know his essence, he will not develop in the higher order of the spirit of freedom and will remain stuck in the instinctive forces of the lower spiritual order. He enters the service of stronger spirits, often immoral schemers and speculators who conceal their bad intentions behind unhealthy ideologies.

Of all living creatures, the human being alone was given reason and free will so that he might realize himself and rise to the level of a thinking creature. He was endowed with the ability to reflect upon the purpose of his life and the reality of the world, to understand the creative force and seek the law of life and death. This inner life leads to knowledge of the spirit, which is not a material being. The spiritual part of the human being therefore survives the death of the body.

(60) Biology incorrectly judges that the human being is merely a link in nature, like an animal. We would say more correctly: the human being is rooted in nature through his material body, but through his spirit he stands high above it. He is well aware that nature is not his true and final homeland.

Biologically, the human being does not particularly excel. He does not possess all abilities in perfect measure. Neither a bony shell nor muscular strength protects him; he does not excel in size. His natural means of defense are slight. The capacities of his senses are not extraordinary. Human personality, however, is one of the most complex formations produced by consciousness. This rather fragile, unstable creation of consciousness, which gradually develops as the body grows, is easily impaired and split, as psychopathological observations demonstrate.

Creation on Earth culminated in the human being. This differed from the creation of the great work of the natural orders of species. Only the human being was endowed with reason and free will. With his creation, a manifestation of spirit, consciousness rooted in the human brain, appeared in the material world as a whole. Endowed with an immortal spirit, the human being is conscious of himself and ventures on his own to build and create, daring to fasten his mind and his soul’s longing upon enormous problems.

A wondrous gift, spiritual potential, leads the human being to think and investigate. This longing cannot be suppressed. He yearns to explain the phenomena around him and their connections, and thus the spirit overcomes every boundary and difficulty.

The human being experiences nature and also struggles with it. Pressure from outside constantly makes itself felt, compelling him to think and live. Willingly or unwillingly, he is exposed to an eternal influx of external influences and the reactions they produce within him. If he wished to avoid all this, he would sink almost to the level of an animal, an exile from creative forces.

Only from this interplay of ordinary or extraordinary impulses, impressions and external influences, and from their reactions in body and soul, does the state of tension called human life form in the upper subconscious. A person receives impulses and impressions from his surroundings through the senses. Through the senses he acquires experience and knowledge. The pattern of a person’s mental development takes shape exclusively on the basis of sensory observations and psychic experiences, through the selection and acquisition of higher values. By distinguishing good from evil, he improves his judgment and intelligence.

(61) Every individual is a being who is a person and cannot be denied the human rights of freedom and mental development if he is not to become a counterfeit of life, mentally aberrant. We begin shaping a new human being from birth when we consider the whole person. Education must rest upon a holistic, comprehensive and unified conception of the human being. A person is not merely an animal, so it is not enough to cultivate only his bodily side. Yet neither is he merely a spirit, so it is not enough to educate only his spirit. And the human spirit is not merely memory; teaching must not be limited to imparting facts and memorization. The spirit is not merely reason. Teaching must include not only theories but activity as well, because a person also possesses will. Finally, as a spiritual-bodily being, a person also has feeling. Hence the requirement for education in the visual arts, music and the arts in general. A person is not merely an individual being but a social one as well. Hence the requirement for social and civic education. A person is not merely a temporal being, but an immortal one with a supernatural goal. Hence the requirement for religious and ethical education as the foundation of relations with God and one’s neighbors. We must see the whole person and educate the whole person, with all his abilities and with regard to all his tasks, rather than tear him into pieces and attend only to some of his aspects.

The continual activity of the spirit is the flame of life for cultural activity, and developed reason is an eternal value. Reason must not stop but must advance in uninterrupted development. In the order of knowledge, wisdom is highest, leading us to knowledge of first causes and relationships. The desire for a firm, constant, unchanging and sharply defined concept stands against the changeable and unbounded world of material changes and phenomena. The power of the spirit therefore seeks and discovers the truth about being that neither perishes nor changes and is not many, but a single, unchanging being: God. Dreamers, heretics, fanatics and the mentally lazy lose clear reason. Thinking reason has healthy wishes, and wishes give rise to needs. The basic needs are material, food, clothing and housing, and spiritual, science, art and morality.

Life must not be interpreted merely as the activity of desire, the gratification of various drives and passions, for erotic and sexual indulgence, indulgence in eating and drinking, smoking, gambling, clubbiness and so forth consume and crush a person. Situations in which feeling and a series of passions drag a person into chaos simply because reason has not assumed command are not rare in life. Experience shows how reason leads a person out of this chaos, for it has sufficient strength to master the most intricate situations. Whoever finds wisdom in this realm of chaos loses life. Wisdom is the light of reason. A wise person strives to attain truth because he is aware of its ontological character, namely its identity with reality. A person realizes that his actual, specifically human life consists in realizing the given moral order.

(62) Psychic activity is the resultant of all the forces hidden within a person. It is therefore incorrect to divide activity into parts and explain each separately, because mental images, feelings and desires in themselves are material for the activity of reason and will. They acquire meaning only within psychic life as a whole; yet the whole is more than the mere sum of its parts. We can understand the meaning of the parts only if we know the meaning of the whole.

There is no doubt that the human being, insofar as he is part of nature, is subject to natural laws. But he is not merely a part of nature, and therefore not every natural law can simply be transferred to human life without qualification. As a spiritual-bodily being, a judging subject and a creator of culture, the human being stands above nature.

We must clarify and recall the following once again: God is the creator and organizer of the broad course of the entire universe and of the psychic life of the human being.

God, the first, absolute being, existing from eternity and unchangeable, preceded material particles. God first created a whole, the form of the lowest spirituality, which He endowed with vital force, a plan, law, order… This spirituality gave existence to material parts, each of which is this one, inseparable from the whole and entirely whole within itself. The parts are a whole one. The form of the lowest spirituality as a whole precedes the parts, meaning that the function of the parts is determined by the function of the whole. The problem of whole and part has its origin in the unity of the entire cosmos. Through my material body and its lower psychic vegetative and sensory form, I belong to this whole. But when I say “I am,” my abstract SELF no longer comes from this whole. It springs from an independent spiritual substance determined by an individual soul created directly by God, animating and determining bodily matter in the highest form and creating with it a new substance: the human being.

The soul itself is never inactive. Sleep is intended only for the matter of the body, so that the cerebral cortex and the esplana may be refreshed by rest. In its continual activity, the soul withdraws into oduší, from which the body is not disturbed during sleep.

The difference between human and animal lies in psychic life. The soul is the cause of feeling, perception and action. The existence of thought is proof that the human being has a soul. Thinking, feeling and willing, as manifested in this earthly life, are only a small part of the human being’s entire psychic life. Its culmination, perfect life, is hidden in the soul itself and awaits its splendid manifestation after the body’s death. It is far more extensive than life mediated through the brain, on which it largely depends, permits. When the soul separates from the body, its operation ceases only in the material organ. At death the body itself disintegrates together with the lower animal instinctive and psychic vegetative and sensory principle, because this originates in the order of matter. The higher spiritual principle, God’s image, characterized by the faculties of reason and will, the bearer of the conscious SELF, remains, together with the aptitude for vegetative and sensory capacity. It seems to us that the unity of the soul is being broken here. This happens only for a time, through the instability and corruptibility of matter. Yet matter carries every possibility within itself and, through its development, continually advances toward new, more perfect worlds and new species of plants and animals. Matter, the animal-spiritual principle, and the immortal rational principle tend toward forming once again an enduring, immortal unity. For the rational principle to live in the fullness of its essence, union with the body belongs to it. After the body’s death, the immortal spiritual principle remains unchanged in its individual SELF, because in the faculty of reason reside consciousness and knowledge of itself. The aptitude to know the material world remains within it, and without using sensory organs it sees, hears, tastes and knows directly in its own being, wherever it is spatially present. In reality, the life of the soul does not cease to exist; only its form, its manner of life, changes.

The death of a human being depends not upon the principle of the form of the immortal soul but upon the form of the vegetative soul. A fatal injury and severe illness disrupt matter in its biochemical order, thereby weakening the vegetative soul in its essence. The consequence is a disruption of order in the unity of all psychic faculties, vegetative, sensory and rational. Here the superior and developed spirit of reason can intervene in this disrupted order through its faith in recovery and restore the damaged matter to order, thereby reviving the vegetative soul in its being and strengthening the unity of the human soul.

The form of the immortal principle of the human soul, although lower in rational capacity than the spiritual form of an angel, is the most interesting of created forms. The human soul has the higher aptitude to enter into unity with the lowest form of universal spirituality, with matter and its animal forms of the vegetative and sensory soul, and to give expression to a human being. It can separate from the body and its psychic forms and live as an independent pure form. At the same time, it has the highest aptitude for participation in the absolute form, the substance of God.

Because he does not know himself, the average person neglects the development of his reason, thinks inadequately and finds this reality difficult to understand. He cannot do otherwise, for his thinking is too material, sensory and instinctive, predominantly dependent upon forms of a lower order. He lacks intuition and the light of reason provided by the immortal form, which sees beyond the bounds of sensory experience.

(62a) Where throughout the matter of space is the human being to be found?

The elementary particles of primordial matter, sitons scattered through space, build millions of spiral nebulae called galaxies, enormous stellar systems, smaller and larger, resembling the system of the Milky Way. A tiny member of this is also the Sun with its planetary family, and thus our Earth. How minute and limited is the activity of the human spirit in comparison with God’s overwhelming activity in the development of the infinite spaces and masses of the universe. What an astonishing and surprising sight! No human imagination, no brain, can form a concept capable of encompassing and understanding them. We know only that they exist and that God’s wisdom alone can be their Organizer.

The particle of primordial matter, the siton, the marvel of matter, was endowed by the Creator with order, a plan and organization for its specific formation. It carries possibilities for physicochemical, vegetative and psychic life. According to the divine idea and a unified plan, the astonishing forces of sitons build in infinite space the worlds of all universes. This great work, having a common foundation, develops uniformly. Surely in each individual material universe there is one or more solar systems whose planets, under a certain order of siton combination, support plant and animal life as it arose and exists on our Earth.

The thought arises whether animal development there, too, has reached or is reaching the appearance of the human being. We may say that it has! For development does not stop. Yet the question remains whether God has raised the human being there above other creatures by breathing into him an immortal soul characterized by reason and will, which, if it remains in God’s grace by not committing mortal sin, can attain participation in His Substance. Here, however, God may make a distinction from the substance of our soul, for the spirit of reason and will does not belong to the material order. The human being there may live according to an order given by God as a perfect, intelligent animal endowed with exceedingly extensive instinctual knowledge and creativity, which nevertheless is bounded and limited, not free in rational creative activity.

14. The Soul

(63) The human soul of the higher order, spiritual in substance, is created by the mere will of almighty God, in the precise sense of the word. It is made neither from Him nor, as some assert, from some universal spiritual material created beforehand. It is created from nothing in its entire substance.

The soul is therefore a spiritual substance, meaning that it is an independent being, immaterial and immortal. Being simple, not composite, it is by its nature incapable of corruption. It has its spiritual functions, knowing and willing, of which matter is incapable.

The soul has a beginning, but will have no end; it is a relative eternity. God is absolute eternity, meaning no change, no past, no future, but an infinite present.

The soul is created from nothing by God’s mere will at the moment it joins with the body and its lower animal principle and order. It cannot arise from a human soul as a body arises from a body, for it is an independent being, simple and indivisible. It is created directly by God and is therefore God’s creature.

As long as the world exists, our created reason will never discern or comprehend the mystery of the creation of the soul’s substance, and it is senseless to labor to solve and understand this mystery.

The human soul does not develop and grow together with the body; rather, it is wholly and perfectly present in its substance in the body of a fetus, a child, a man and an old person. In the human being I know only one soul and the matter of the body, not spirit, soul and body. The soul is a rational, immaterial substance, but by nature united with matter.

This human soul, spiritual in substance, has three capacities: vegetative, sensory and rational. The vegetative capacity enables the body to take food, grow and perform vital functions. The sensory capacity enables it to see, hear, feel and so forth. The rational capacity enables it to think independently and will freely.

(64) The soul’s capacities differ; they are not given equally to everyone at creation. A soul separated from the body understands and wills; the aptitude for its other functions remains within it, so that, if it rejoined the body, it would again make it capable of them.

Let us not imagine that the soul separated from the body ceases to see, hear, feel and so forth. It does not see as we do with natural eyesight, but by permeating matter it knows everything within itself, far more perfectly than we do through our natural sight.

The soul substantially animates the body through its being, and does so through itself, directly. The soul and the body with its animal soul, two substances dependent upon one another, are united into one substance, one being.

To make this easier to understand: hydrogen and oxygen lose their substance and through combination give rise to a new substance, water.

The soul and body are not, of course, joined in this way; the example is only an analogy. Soul and body do not disappear in the human being but continue to exist, united into one substance.

The human being is a material, animated being. All three psychic capacities are essential characteristics of the human being. The principle of vegetative and sensory life is the substantial form of the animal soul. This spiritual principle is identical with the principle of plant and animal life. The soul, with its own activity of reason, cognition and will, and endowed with a higher vegetative and sensory aptitude, forms a personal and essential unity with the principle of the animal soul. It gives the human being a specifically human existence, for all human vital forces spring from the substantial foundation of the soul’s unity. Soul and body form a common unity of being and influence one another through individual vegetative, sensory and rational activities, having a common principle, one soul. The soul with the activity of reason and will is immaterial, has no quantity, does not touch the body and is not touched by it, but acts upon it. After the body’s death, this soul lives a life specifically proper to itself. It therefore does not die, but continues to develop its supersensory activity, manifested in self-consciousness, thinking and free willing. The immortality of the human soul is real and personal, for it is not composed of matter and form; it is pure form. It therefore cannot perish. The soul is elevated above the transient body.

The soul endowed with reason and will is a complete substance and can live without the body, for it was its substantial form, the cause of its moral intelligence and cultural flourishing. Through chemical disturbance the body disintegrates, and the vegetative and sensory souls disappear, yet remain in matter for further possible organic life.

(65) A life appropriate to the soul includes union with a glorified body, for it was created for this. In this respect it is an incomplete substance. This direct union of the soul with the body is made possible chiefly by the exceedingly subtle substance of oduší, which is a component of the body.

The soul is whole in the whole body and whole in each of its parts, for it is a spiritual, simple, immaterial substance. The formative element of personality is the soul, bearing the image of God.

This single, independent being is endowed with reason and free will and has its nervous headquarters in the body, the brain, where its center for all the functions of its SELF lies as long as it is united with the body.

Because the soul is spiritual, whole throughout the body, it also possesses this capacity outside its body in this life, but again through matter, the so-called oduší, without which the body would disintegrate, for oduší is the energetic force binding electrons in the atom. It does so at a distance, though one limited by the law of nature. It can exercise its qualities in every place, as well as in each of its individual healthy cells, which can be demonstrated by experiments, especially in the fourth degree of hypnotic sleep.

The essence of the created soul is movement, activity in itself. In reason reside consciousness and knowledge of oneself. In the soul’s essence lies an inexhaustible source of unsuspected enjoyments of beauty, bliss, joy and delight.

Aware of its dynamic mobility and the nature of its powers, aptitudes and qualities, the soul has an innate striving and inclination toward this source, to experience it in love, thus loving the perfection of its own essence. Through an inner light, the soul knows itself clearly and continually as absolute good, recognizes its excellent qualities, and knows that it is blissful in itself and from itself.

(66) The source of the greatest enjoyments is the gift of love: participation in the bliss offered by knowledge of one’s own essence, in that it is created in the image and likeness of God. This source of activity in the variations of enduring good is also the soul’s inexhaustible foundation for various forms and ideas, for the object of rational abstraction, for expanding thought activity and the knowledge of infinite extents and possibilities.

One’s own knowledge is the object of returning or reflective knowledge, through which we become conscious of our own knowing.

The soul’s activity of thought is perfect when it proceeds from the reflection of the higher powers of the spirit, reason and will.

In the activity of reason, the soul is conscious of itself and its own source, which it values and respects. Because it wishes to experience and delight in it, it can freely decide, through reason and will, upon this or that activity and experience.

This is a perfect psychic bliss, independent of time, space and matter, experienced in the full freedom of reflective awareness with the participation of reason and will. It cannot be compared with experiences offered to the soul by material things dependent upon space, time and matter.

The source of enjoyments and delights, as well as of aptitudes and abilities, is spiritual.

(67) The soul is the cause, or principle, the foundation of activity, life within itself in continual consciousness of itself and its own essence.

According to subject K., every soul experienced, as though in a flash at the moment of its creation, the state described in the preceding lines: knowledge of its own essence through itself, participation in the source of its own bliss, and consciousness of freedom, reason and will. This fact is not merely verified by one or a few experiments. Hundreds of repeated experiments support it.

When the intellect unites in one substance with the embryo during its development, and until its instrument, the brain, is adapted for psychic activity, the soul is in a state of subconscious activity and experience. With the formation of this newly arising psychophysical unit, a state of unfreedom arose for a short time, including in the use of reason and will.

At the same time, this is also a period of certain experiences and stirrings under the influence of interventions by its own matter and by external influences upon subconscious awareness, according to the strength of the reflex action. These pass into the soul’s own memory. During pregnancy, stronger stirrings are impressed upon the genes and preserve traces in the child’s emerging individuality for its future development. Consider difficult births, danger to the mother’s life, experienced catastrophes, artificial interventions and the like.

All this previous activity of the soul and knowledge of itself remain in the soul’s memory, or soul-consciousness, until the experience of eternal life after death, the soul’s final goal.

(68) In respect of its capacities, the soul is not equally present in every part of the body, but is distributed according to the capacities of each part of the organism.

In union with the body, the soul’s second capacity, the vegetative, comes into operation so that the body may grow, nourish itself and reproduce. Gradually the third capacity, the sensory, also operates, directed outward toward the world, so that through the organs of sense it may see, hear, taste, smell and touch. Therefore there is nothing in the human intellect, apart from heredity, innate mental images, experiences and forms of thought, that has not passed through the senses. Human nature, unless in a transcendent state, is arranged so that the soul no longer penetrates directly to the existence and knowledge of a thing, but does so through concepts obtained by abstraction from sensory images, and only sometimes intuitively.

The body develops, and mental images are formed through sensory knowledge. The object of rational knowledge is first perceived by the external and internal senses, through the realization of the object in the esplana, and rational knowledge receives its object from this sensory perception. Mental images realized in the brain’s esplana cells are available for rational cognition.

The vital principle of the human being is his rational soul. The soul is that which gives the body life; the body is the matter in which life appears.

For life on Earth, the human spirit is elevated above its body and is a rich foundation of aptitudes and capacities for activity, which we bring into active expression and use only through diligence and self-education, by developing reason and will.

Sensory cognition announces the reality of sensory perception. Processed by reason, it leads to general knowledge.

The soul is also endowed with supersensory activity. Through reason a person becomes conscious of objects inaccessible to sensory perception. The soul’s supersensory activity tends toward the imperishable: truth, virtue, art, beauty, love and God, and thereby perfects itself. These goals are eternal, like the soul’s own essence. Through this abstract activity, through the independence of reason and will from bodily forces, the soul is raised above matter. The soul’s activity is therefore independent of corruptible matter. The highest goal toward which the soul tends is the glorification of God. Through its capacities it can glorify God even after the body’s death, because it is spiritual in nature.

Through original sin, reason and will passed from their former activity into a potential state and exist in everyone as capacities for activity. To become powers of the spirit again, they must be led to development and maturity through morally directed Christian education. Instinctive, vegetative and sensory psychic capacities develop of themselves as the body grows.

Through the powers of reason and will, a person can attain a noble personality independent of the nature and character of his ancestors. Our ancestors’ nature, character and other qualities are realized in hereditary matter, and this, through its creative forces of life and biochemical laws, produces a particular individual whom nature casts into the world. Through its own powers and its own reflection proceeding from reason and will, the conscious spirit can intervene in its inherited, sometimes morally flawed individuality and, through free choice, cultivate a different individuality, a personality more morally perfect and conscious. A personality is a being existing in itself, self-conscious and self-governing, which can only be a rational and free being. Inherited individuality is contingent, dependent in its predetermination and origin upon the natural laws of the transmutation of genes, the carriers of hereditary traits. Individuality continues to be governed by dispositions, prerequisites, qualities and mechanical forces, and therefore depends upon matter in the greater part of its activity; it is undeveloped in reason and will, mentally weak, unfree, unreasonable and unaware. Such an individual, who is not educated and contributes nothing to his own education, is an average, predominantly instinctive individual. He seeks his success, goal and strength in the collective, the mass, the crowd. The law of association operates in him, as in matter there is a lawful association of atoms into molecules. The harsh lawfulness of matter clings to him, and he cannot free himself from it. There are thus two sources of reflexive activity. One proceeds from the order of matter and the other from the order of spirit. Most people do not realize this, go blindly through life and are governed more or less by the reflexive forces of matter issuing from their own bodies and by the forces of matter surrounding them. It is no wonder that such a life is unsatisfying and ruled by fate. We must therefore learn to know our psychic forces, transform ourselves and, through conscious and free reason, develop a new personality that continually perfects and morally guides itself. Only cultivated individualism raises a person into a personality, making him an independent individual. A strong personality does not rely upon another, stands firmly alone, and has awakened the strength of reason and will, initiative and creative ability, which it brings into action.

Human activity has its firm foundation in the spiritual side of the human being. I paint, calculate, write: my psychophysical personality performs this concrete work. It is the activity of the material body with the immaterial activity of reason. Yet there is someone else who oversees this work, checks it, improves it, advises and reflects upon it. This someone is my higher spiritual SELF, which is free and independent of the body. Its task is reflection upon my lower human activity. From a higher reflection of the spirit, this SELF checks my rational activity and the activity of my external and internal senses, for example the creative imagination. Independently of my activity, the higher SELF thinks on its own and reflectively, reflects upon its own abstract activity, and can reflect without limit upon reflection upon reflection, and so forth. The principle of the higher SELF is the human spirit, the higher activity of the same soul. This SELF has the character of substance and is the bearer of conscious activity. Its activity is beyond time and space, purely spiritual and unbound by the laws of matter. What is immaterial is spiritual, and what is spiritual is immortal.

(69) The soul can sometimes exercise its sensory capacities directly through oduší, without the participation of sensory organs. Wherever it is present, it knows everything directly by means of its own existence.

The rational faculty of cognition is the psychic capacity through which we become conscious of objects inaccessible to sensory knowledge. The object of this faculty is being, existence, in its entire extent.

Reason itself is actuality; it is thought determining itself, the highest knowledge and conviction.

Between the activity of the soul itself and conscious activity lies a still unknown region, a depth, from which various phenomena, actions and experiences arise whose source and motives a person does not know, or whose motivation differs from what he thinks it is.

Thus human consciousness alone does not represent the entirety of psychic life. Present-day psychology calls this unknown realm, independent of consciousness, the subconscious, and attributes to it all inexplicable states of the intellect. In this respect the subconscious remains an unexplained mystery, and the vagueness of this concept leads psychological research to many illogical conclusions.

Experiments with subjects, on the basis of innate experiential knowledge, shed light upon these deep psychic states, or the subconscious activity of human nature, making it possible to define these various psychic states precisely as clarified wholes.

(70) Since we shall continually encounter these differing psychic states throughout this work, I have divided the subconscious into the following basic categories:

Consciousness: The normal waking state, psychic activity in the faculties of reason and will with the help of the gray cerebral cortex, the senses and the cooperation of the esplana.

Upper consciousness: The same as consciousness, but with perfect awareness in higher, educated reason and will.

Upper subconscious: The activity of the esplana, the seat of memory, sensations, perceptions, mental images and the like.

Lower subconscious: The occasional spontaneous activity of the gray cortex without the decision or participation of the conscious SELF, governed by mental images in overstimulated esplana; a conscious pathological state.

Entry subconscious: The withdrawal of the soul from conscious activity into the healthy activity of the first, second and third degrees of hypnosis, trance or ecstasy. It approaches the subconscious.

Lower-order subconscious: A pathological state of the entry subconscious caused by diseased esplana cells.

Subconscious: The activity of the soul in the gray cortex and its radiant oduší, without the participation of the esplana and senses. The esplana and senses can be directed immediately from the subconscious. This is the fourth degree of hypnosis, ecstasy and psychic activity. From this degree of the subconscious arise rare psychic capacities, aptitudes, inclinations, relationships, qualities, visions and extraordinary manifestations and phenomena.

Deepest subconscious: The soul, in its capacities, remains only in oduší, without a relationship to the world. This is the soul’s most pleasant state, in which it is sufficiently conscious of itself, knows its own essence and experiences its perfection.

Soul-consciousness: All psychic and sensory activity that passes into the memory of the soul’s very essence. In it the soul is directly and fully conscious without the mediation of the esplana.

Threshold of consciousness: Thoughts, feelings, abilities and aptitudes that have passed from the subconscious and entry subconscious states into the upper subconscious, the so-called esplana, without the cooperation of consciousness.

Creative subconscious: The soul in a state of deep trance and ecstasy, insofar as it can become conscious within it: consciousness has disappeared entirely, remains obscure, or is also consubstantial. By rearranging the elements of its own bodily cellular plasma, it creates materializations, either of itself, as a double, or of various other animated beings. It achieves the movement of objects and other phenomena, combinations of phenomenal discoveries and fantastic nonsense, when it is in one of the entry subconscious states.

15. Knowledge of the Soul, Its Perfections (Qualities) and Aptitudes

(71) The human soul, spiritual in substance, contains many mysteries of powers, aptitudes and qualities still hidden and wondrous, which come into play in certain states of the soul.

The human spirit and reason strive to penetrate and explain them. This is achieved chiefly through experiments and the perseverance of the human spirit, which struggles for new knowledge and penetrates the folds and inaccessible mysterious depths of the human soul. Clarity and distinctness are the foundation of all scientific character and rational intelligibility. Simple and clear findings are self-evident to us at first sight.

What is achieved through experiments, and my book is based solely on experiments I conducted almost daily for thirty-eight years, already gives us the possibility of looking into another life. For the bodies of subjects are placed in deep trance, that is, bodily sleep, and we have the opportunity to observe the soul’s activity. We gain ever-new knowledge of previously unknown qualities, aptitudes and abilities of the human soul. And what immense truths will open to the human spirit only in the future?

By the natural light of reason we can know the existence of our soul, its capacities and qualities. We directly know many spiritual and emotional phenomena within ourselves. The activity of a healthy spirit gives us natural knowledge of the soul’s existence, which we possess through both ordinary and philosophically trained reason. Well-educated reason is the foundation of correct judgments. It is also a reliable guide for the will in experiments.

(72) The human being consists of two substantial parts: the body and, in a common unity, the animal soul of the lower order and the immortal soul of the higher order. They form a new, single substance or nature, a hypostasis, one person. In its common unity, the soul animates the body through itself, that is, directly through its substance. The soul’s primary act is to praise, glorify and honor its creator, God, and its first function as a principle of life is to animate the body.

This one soul, united with the body, knows only through the senses. With the soul’s cooperation, the senses can then continue to work independently on the basis of acquired sensations and perceptions. The senses can develop their capacities only under the influence of the soul of the higher order, endowed with reason and will.

Knowledge acts upon the will, presenting it with desirable goods and undesirable, repugnant evils, but the will is free to decide. From this comes the consciousness of responsibility.

The rational soul and the body with its animal soul are interconnected and act upon each other. Spiritual activity of the higher order and sensory and vegetative spiritual activity of the lower order depend upon one another in various ways. This unity is formed of two incomplete, mutually complementary substances. Soul and body do not disappear in the human being but continue to exist, united into one substance. These two incomplete substances depend upon one another and attain their highest perfection when joined into the complete substance of the human being.

In another respect, the immortal soul is a complete substance and can live without the body. Every person has his own soul. The soul is a spiritual substance, an independent being. The body, subject to corruption, limits the soul’s manifestations and abilities. Human life in its essence disappears through the disruption of the physicochemical laws governing the processes of matter. In particular, the vegetative soul of the animal order loses the strength of its being and slowly enters the latent state of individual material elements. Human life is led toward death. The unity between the soul of the animal order and the soul of the immortal order is impaired and dissolved.

(73) The foundation of the life of thought is spiritual. A spiritual principle is one capable of existing and acting without intrinsic dependence upon the organism and matter.

The human soul is a rational and spiritual substance; it moves and acts through its own power. The soul has spiritual functions: it knows and wills.

Through reason we think, while free will has various acts of willing. These functions are physically in reason and will. But not accidentally, for they need not be there. When we do not will or think, they are not contained in them; this is therefore a conceptual, logical-metaphysical composition.

In human beings we distinguish reason, will and aptitude, that is, the executive force or principle for what reason has known and the will desires. Will is a spiritual aptitude directed by reason. It desires good and turns away from evil. When the soul lacks good, it longs for it. When it possesses good, by contrast, it rests in it with love and pleasure.

(74) For every activity we have senses, capacities and aptitudes: for activity through the eye, the aptitude to see; for activity through the ear, to hear; for thinking, the rational faculty.

The senses, the sense organs, see, for example, wheels, axles, side ladders and shafts; the soul says, “That is a wagon.” The concept “wagon” is something spiritual. Every inward judgment is a spiritual function. Concepts such as eternity, beauty and virtue are spiritual concepts. Through the eyes the soul can see material things and, being spirit, can abstract from them their idea or universal. For example, the soul sees a car and abstracts from the images the spiritual concept “vehicle,” common to all vehicles.

For this activity to arise, the soul must be immaterial. The forces from which these functions proceed must exist in something as their subject.

It is certain that spiritual functions and forces have a spiritual subject, that within the human being there is a soul which, being a substance in itself, thinks and wills.

Through rational cognition we express or represent an object within ourselves in a conceptual manner. In reason, in the soul, there is a spiritual image of the thing. In the imagination, in the esplana, there is still a material image of a particular vehicle, for there it has its shape as in a photograph. In reason there is only the concept of a vehicle, that is, what we express when giving its description or definition. In a human being both are always present together: imagination pictures the vehicle and reason supplies its concept.

An external object acts first upon the senses and stimulates them. Reason then knows it through these senses, and the will desires or does not desire it. The movement in the senses occurs before reason and will can give it direction, and may persist even against them.

(75) We have turned sensory cognition into rational cognition, at which point we can say that reason grasps and sees something: the spiritual matter, the qualities and virtues at issue, stand immediately before reason and stimulate it directly.

The soul is the substantial form of the body. The human being received a rational soul, which through itself substantially determines, or forms, this body. The soul is the foundation, the principle, of human life, for example of movement, growth and thinking, of everything through which the animal and spiritual life of the human being appears.

Various qualities are created in the human being, mixed with various imperfections and limited in different ways. Every quality grows from the soul’s substance, its being, as from a root. The human being has spiritual and bodily qualities.

Good qualities attributed to the will are virtues, which make a person morally pure. Sin signifies a moral fault, but also imperfect activity, an imperfect deed. Sin is malice against God’s will. A soul cleansed of sin is not immediately perfect in itself and its qualities, but can be brought to perfection through practice. It then experiences delight, peace and tranquility, for it rests directly in God.

A person also has various passions. These are movements of the soul caused by bodily appetite and excitability, contingent acts of the will. We distinguish fourteen such movements: love, hatred, joy, sorrow, longing, aversion, hope, despair, courage, fear, jealousy, envy, anger and dejection. These are affects, or emotional movements of the soul, emotions.

Manifestations of passion must be under the control of reason and will so that these may impart to them their spiritual and rational elevation, presupposing a higher strength of spirit. If a person cultivates this strength in the expression of affects, he acquires awareness of the spiritual value and nobility of personality.

(76) The human soul has divine qualities; it has received something of all the divine perfections: being, clarity, greatness and rationality, so that it is the natural, direct image of God. By creating the soul, God made it a participant in His perfection. It resembles Him and displays the traits of a divine being. We may therefore speak of the soul’s likeness to God and its immortality. God is pure spirit, and the soul resembles Him particularly because it too is spirit. Through its spirituality, the soul is a special image of God. God has revealed Himself to creatures. It belongs to the nature of an image that it be made “intentionally” “like” its model. Possessing a spiritual soul with reason and will, the human being truly represents God according to what God is, namely infinite “spirit, intellect and will.”

The human being is also God’s image through the other qualities of his soul: will, simplicity, freedom and immortality, but also omnipresence, all-seeing vision, creation from matter, knowledge of hidden things, and knowledge of past and partly future events, though always in limited measure. In reason, will and every perfection or quality, the soul depends upon God and is limited and finite, for whatever is created is limited in being and therefore in substance as well.

(77) Not all the soul’s qualities and perfections can be known by natural means. An extranatural path must be taken: deep trance and ecstasy.

The reason of a mature human being is not, and cannot be, without knowledge of his soul and of God in general. God is the light of our reason, because He created it in His likeness by giving the human being reason, which is like light, being an image of God’s infinite intellect, or light. From effect we infer cause, and from quality substance, thereby arriving at a considered judgment and, through the analysis of experiments, at scientific proof of the existence of the human soul. Anyone who judges otherwise has a defect of reason. He lacks judgment, for every complex and enduring order is the work of reason, the intelligence of the soul.

Throughout this book we shall come to know the existence of reason by observing and drawing conclusions from extranatural manifestations brought about by experiments. We cannot see the soul, but we express its aptitudes and qualities.

When I use the word soul or spirit, the meaning is the same. Spirit expresses more the similarity to pure spirits, while soul expresses the quality of being intended for the body.

(78) The human soul is an eternal source of life, a principle of constant activity. The human body depends upon the natural conditions of food, movement, rest, sleep and so forth. The body wears out and ages in its structural substances and those needed to maintain life, passing into fatigue and natural sleep, the so-called potential state. Throughout this it depends upon the supply of fresh materials to gain new strength and become capable of new activity in cooperation with the soul. In this potential state of the body, the capacity to be aware of thinking disappears. A person cannot know himself directly, but only insofar as his body is capable of activity.

In the rested body, the soul enters into cooperation through the reflex action of the esplana from sensations, perceptions and so forth, thereby receiving material for thought activity and willing. The body’s rest compels the soul to pass from subconscious activity into conscious activity.

If a person falls into natural deep sleep, anesthetic sleep or unconsciousness, sensory activity together with the esplana is put out of operation, and thus so is conscious activity. It seems to us that the soul too is in a potential state, but this is a profound mistake. The soul never falls into complete inactivity. This happens only to the material body through exhaustion or some physical disturbance or defect. As long as the soul is united with the body, it enters in its activity into the subconscious, into the matter of oduší, which is released through the breakdown of cell nuclei and permeates the whole body. In this radiant energy it feels freer and less confined in the expression of its qualities, though not in the full exercise of reason and free will, in which it is limited in the subconscious, as will become apparent from the experiments that follow.

(79) The human soul as spirit is continual act without passivity. It does not undergo a change from potentiality, passivity or capacity, into a state of activity.

Our human reason is an active faculty, for it thinks independently. But it is also a passive faculty, for it receives impressions from outside that it did not previously possess. A faculty that receives only external impressions is not perfect, for it receives a perfection that it did not have.

More perfect is a faculty that does not depend upon receiving impressions but is itself activity and can also receive incidental impressions. Such is the human soul liberated from coarse matter.

The human soul as act is activity itself, in which there is no passivity. Passivity signifies imperfection. In the soul, created in the image and likeness of God, there can be no imperfection of the kind we observe when the soul is joined with the body. Of course it is not supremely and absolutely perfect like God, for its being depends upon Him. Yet it is perfect in its created essence, in its received being; it is a part of being.

Only in God are all perfections present eminently, without imperfection, that is, in a higher divine manner without limitation. For God is supremely simple, noncomposite and infinite in intellect, will and every quality.

(80) Although our human cognition is an expression of the most perfect life on Earth, it is nevertheless imperfect. Reason knows through the senses and only from the concepts thus acquired can it reason further. Its reasoning proceeds through a laborious process; normally it cannot think of more than one thing at a time, it will never know thousands of things, and so forth. Far more perfect already is the soul’s cognition through subconscious activity in the liberated radiation of oduší, in which it can also experience and know its own essence as a source of the most perfect activity of every possible enjoyment, beauty and delight.

Knowing everything directly depends upon the wondrous simplicity of the soul’s substantial nature. Through a single act the soul knows everything wherever it is spatially present. In this, the soul’s substance, reason and the act of knowing are one undivided thing, because the soul is a simple substance.

In its spatial presence, which we shall continually encounter in the experiments, the soul permeates, embraces and exhausts a limited space of at most one-fifth of our Earth through a single act of its capacity and knows everything at once. It does not proceed from case to case as we do, but encompasses and knows in a unified way, instantly, everything for which we would need whole years by natural means.

Through its activity, the soul can occupy a certain bounded portion of space, a place. This is its spatial presence. It is present with its entire being throughout this whole space and at the same time wholly in every part of it, while its SELF can simultaneously be concentrated in some portion of it. The soul can be in a space already occupied by something else, whether material or spiritual, because it does not fill space as bodies do. The soul, the spirit, fills space in a limited way, in portions: the soul is where it acts! God possesses omnipresence, the most perfect presence throughout all space, limited by nothing. He acts everywhere at once, or is immeasurable, most perfectly present everywhere in infinity.

(81) Human cognition is different. In the human being, reason is one thing and cognition another. Every day we have thousands upon thousands of acts of knowing. Some arise, others vanish. Thus the cognition of the separated soul is not under the influence of surrounding objects as ours is. An object must stimulate us, touch us, for cognition to arise. It must determine us. Our knowledge of an object is as the object that, in light or by day, touches and stimulates our reason. Two things are needed: our faculty of cognition, reason, and the object. In a separated or partially liberated soul this process is absent. The soul’s cognition is constant activity and does not require an illuminated or sounding object to stimulate it. In knowing an object, the soul depends neither upon light nor upon darkness.

The cognition of such a liberated soul does not consist in simple concepts, universals, judgments or succession as ours does, but in fully clarified, perfect concepts. A simple concept such as dog, bush, vehicle or crow is incomplete because it does not show everything contained in the thing and does not provide the certainty, precision and reliability of complete, perfect knowledge. But this is not so for a soul liberated within the space it has occupied for cognition during experiments. The soul permeates the entire space at once, through a single pure act. For new knowledge it must always occupy a new space. It has excellent and extensive knowledge of every thing it knows. It knows almost everything about each thing that can be known about it. Through its cognition it almost exhausts each object, knowing it, seeing, hearing, tasting and sensing it, from different aspects: for example, what it is, what it is like, where it comes from and what effects it has under various circumstances. It exercises its qualities of sensory cognition directly. The soul is an act of knowing: wherever it acts, it knows almost everything directly and immediately through its own substance as its means, though within limits.

The soul’s simple being is the means and cause of this cognition, but only within a limited space. God, however, sees and knows perfectly and without limit, for He is immeasurable, unlimited and infinite. Divine cognition is pure act, identical with the divine being. Being cognition itself, it is stimulated by itself to every act of knowing; it is, in general, the constant knowledge of everything past, present and future.

(82) The soul knows in advance the actions it will one day perform of its own free will. Its cognition is beyond time. It sees itself in a future decision. A future free decision is knowable to the soul because it lives in a constant present, in constant duration.

Knowledge of future things occurs through an act of cognition arising from the soul’s inner power, through its substance and its inner light, by contemplating its inner will in a future decision, both its own and those of others, insofar as these are not secrets of their souls. The human soul possesses this knowledge, this quality and likeness of God, because it was created in His image and likeness, though in a minute degree and dependent upon God.

The human soul has other capacities and qualities as well. In the activity of its subconscious it can be active in making, though not in creating from nothing; the quality of making belongs to it. It can rearrange elements into new, temporary formations and organize them at will for its purposes.

(83) Human foresight is not a quality belonging only to the will, but belongs chiefly to reason. Foresight is an art and is twofold: a goal, and leading things toward the goal. Will and reason provide the plan existing in the soul’s mind, according to which it leads everything toward the goal. Foresight is a certain knowledge that the will brings about. This guidance itself is called foresight. Through this knowledge, reason illuminates the will, which then carries out the plan, using suitable means and directing and administering everything according to it toward the goal.

In the soul, the spirit, this quality is providence, which it exercises in its actions and in its created capacity. Reason possesses its own ideas, pure models from within itself, and the soul need not depend solely upon its surroundings to achieve its goals.

God’s providence is the predetermination of everything created, joined with His care for creation and its guidance toward the appointed goal. God determines and realizes the plan according to which everything is created and directed toward its goal. This plan and all governance are given from eternity. Governance takes place through natural laws, through the activity of each thing according to its nature, and through the laws God has inscribed in human reason.

(84) Some say: “People are born with the same abilities, aptitudes and inclinations; everything else is merely a consequence of upbringing and environment. Everyone is capable of performing any work; all that is needed is to train him.”

Others maintain: “We are not equal in abilities and aptitudes.” Both views are inadequate. The soul is a potential and has powers for all abilities, aptitudes and inclinations, but not every soul possesses this power with the same dynamism. This unequal strength of activity has a differing influence upon the aptitudes and capacities of genes inherited from ancestors, in which it operates variously and unequally. If the soul does not possess these genes with aptitudes and abilities in the material part of the body, it can learn everything through its own will, reason and diligence, with only this difference: according to the innate strength of activity and differing emotional relations to the subject, one person will excel another in abilities, aptitudes and creativity. They will not be equal.

Let us have faith in the human being, in his worth, his spirituality and the immortality of his soul.

The soul, the spirit, is a spiritual, noncomposite substance, immaterial, essentially unchangeable, spaceless and, on the basis of these qualities, immortal. Being simple and without parts, it cannot be divided in any way, and therefore has a higher life than a composite being, knowing itself through its reason and will.

(85) The soul, saved from sins and purified, can contemplate its being and its quality and loves it. The soul knows itself clearly and continually as a great good, can contemplate its own being, and loves itself with enduring love. It experiences within itself an uninterrupted, independent higher life of thought of great perfection. It is perfectly unified in its substance. Through an inner light the soul knows within itself its aptitudes and perfections, that it is God’s image and resembles Him, and that it participates in His life and goodness. It knows that it is blissful in itself and from itself, and with a loving gaze knows created things. Joined with bliss is joy, which it continually experiences. It knows that it moves in absolute freedom.

These states of the soul have their laws and conditions; see the following paragraphs. It knows that bliss and joy will last forever. Eternity is duration: that which endures and remains in its existence, in its being. Eternity is the unbounded, whole and perfect experience of life. “Unbounded” means having no beginning or end. In this, eternity differs essentially from every created duration, which has at least a beginning and is therefore bounded at least at one end by nonbeing. For example, our soul did not exist before its creation. Eternity is duration all at once: the stars, the sea and the human being endure, and as long as they exist they change. More perfect is a duration in which there are fewer changes. Gold scarcely changes; it has a more perfect duration.

Higher is the duration of spiritual substances, for they are indestructible and change only accidentally, not substantially, in their essence, and do not move from place to place as matter does. Yet even this duration has its deficiencies. Spiritual substances too are created and must be sustained by the Creator. They are not completely without change, for they know and will, which signifies change, at least contingent or accidental change, in their reason and will.

In God, duration is absolutely perfect. In Him there was no change from nonbeing to being; in Him there is no change from one being to another; in Him there were and are neither substantial nor accidental changes. In God, therefore, there is duration without any change. Such duration, which did not begin, does not end and does not otherwise change, is called eternity.

16. The Brain

(86) Many scholars have already investigated this mysterious instrument of the soul in order to uncover the secret between matter and soul, but despite all their efforts they could not arrive at satisfactory results. The cerebellum in particular has remained entirely veiled in mystery, and it is merely conjectured that it perhaps serves this or that vital purpose.

It seems that as long as a person’s psychic capacities are bound to the brain and its sense organs, he cannot cross the boundaries of his knowledge. Yet in the fourth degree of hypnosis the soul manifests itself and knows everything directly. A logically thinking person finds it very difficult through thought to arrive at true knowledge of the world, because his picture will always bear the marks of imperfect cognition.

Our senses grope like the feelers of a blind animal in an unknown environment. They are insufficient for scientific knowledge. Here metapsychology and metaphysics will have the final word, for intuition will outweigh scientific knowledge and gain mastery over laborious scientific research. Through exact science it is impossible to reach a complete understanding of infinity and thus ultimate truth. One must turn inward, and then the pure subconscious is our helper.

(87) The human soul, however, is inquisitive and will not rest until it reaches its goal. What others have attempted, I too wish to attempt, intending to investigate the mysteries of the brain’s psychophysiological performance. The finest instruments accomplish nothing here. I am taking an unnoticed path, the only one by which the desired goal can be reached. It consists in the hidden powers of the human soul, which lie dormant in the subconscious of us all and can, by suitable means and practical experiments, be awakened, developed to a high degree and used for research.

Love, patience, time and sober reason are needed so that the researcher himself does not fall into confusion. I studied, and above all conducted experiments in this field, for thirty-eight years. In recent years I devoted several hours daily to this science. For a year and a half I set myself the task of presenting a scientific demonstration publicly, receiving patients from all over our republic from morning until evening. I had them observed and examined by people with awakened psychic sight. This concerned mentally ill people especially. I was particularly interested in individuals who came to me from every direction asking me to investigate and assess their unusual powers.

I kept some of these people under observation, repeatedly evoking the given phenomena in them and verifying valuable results through witnesses. In mentally ill people with various disturbances, I purposefully removed unhealthy manifestations.

I was aware that hypnotic and somnambulistic phenomena are the most significant in all psychology and the most important for understanding the human soul and its manifestations. These were merely tests for scientific knowledge, and my strength would not have sufficed for them for long.

Many a reader will find it difficult to imagine this work. The investigation of the brain’s thought activity alone, the result of which occupies only a few pages of this book, required two to five hours of careful observation daily, both in the waking state and in hypnotic sleep, for an entire year.

(88) From continual experience, already convinced of certain specialized cerebral processes, I arrive at the conclusions described below. I neither say nor imagine that I have already uncovered everything. No individual can do that. This is only a small part, but a valuable one, and it will be a long time before all the brain’s capacities are investigated. Even then we shall still stand before the mystery of the soul, which is not a product of the brain but something wholly different and distinct from matter, something that will remain a mystery to humanity in this world as long as it lives.

The soul is not represented equally in every part of the body with its full activity. It has various capacities to which the body’s individual parts correspond. It acts especially in the most important organ, the brain.

The soul’s capacities differ and are not given equally to everyone at creation. We arrive at this knowledge in the fourth degree of hypnotic sleep, hereafter simply degree of hypnosis, when we uncover differences in the capacities of souls. In this life the soul’s higher and more perfect capacities are hindered by an inadequately developed cerebral center, so that they are only rarely exercised. Consider the great figures of various nations. They will be fully exercised only in the higher and more perfect life after death.

The finely graded performances of our body and their wondrous coordination are governed by the nervous system. This is a system of organs that brings our body’s performances into a harmonious whole. We distinguish the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, the totality of nerves connecting the central nervous system with the various organs.

(89) The cerebrum is the soul’s workshop. Every movement, sensory impression, scientific finding and so forth has its place in the gray cortex and convolutions of the brain. We have established that the consciousness of our SELF resides in the cerebrum on the surface of the gray cortex, or substance.

The cerebellum is closely connected with maintaining bodily balance.

In this life no psychic activity is given to us without a material accompaniment. Every change in the world is movement, and thus everything bodily, consciousness too, is movement; a psychic state is also a phenomenon of movement.

The regulating principle of thought is the human soul, which makes decisions from the source of living activity, yet does so in conscious freedom. Spiritual activity belongs to the human being, and therefore the perfection of human life lies in the perfect activity of the spirit, in which its enjoyment is found.

Beneath the cerebrum, at the back of the head, lies the cerebellum, covering the medulla oblongata, which continues into the spinal cord. The respiratory center is in the medulla oblongata.

Nerves for both the upper and lower parts of the body emerge from the spinal cord, branching and forming the finest nerve network. We distinguish two groups of nerves. One leads from the brain to the body’s surface; these are the so-called motor nerves and carry out the wishes of our will. The other leads from the body’s surface to the brain; these are the so-called sensitive or sensory nerves. Motor nerves are situated in the front part of the spinal cord, and sensory nerves in its posterior columns.

(90) A newborn child is helpless, the most wretched of all creatures, because its cerebrum and cerebellum are as yet undeveloped. Because the brain is the soul’s organ, the soul must develop its natural aptitudes for life in the brain’s convolutions on the basis of impressions.

In a newborn child the internal organs are active: the heart, lungs and digestive organs, chiefly through the drive for food. Thus at this time only those parts of the brain serving this activity are fully developed. These convolutions are already perfectly formed at birth and entrusted to the ganglia for automatic operation. The other individual senses and capacities develop gradually and become refined over time to a certain degree, depending upon external influences. Here the upbringing and work of parents are important. Developing abilities requires much practice and effort on the part of both parents and child.

An example: we know how difficult walking is for a child. First it must exert its spirit strenuously to keep its balance. If it wants to take a step, still greater exertion is required. In this way an individual convolution gradually forms in both cerebrum and cerebellum, where this ability becomes increasingly impressed through learning and mastering walking. We might say that at first the child walks with its brain. Through further practice the motor nerves continually strengthen and acquire their capacity.

At the same time the gray nuclei, the automatic executors of movement, grow stronger. They then no longer depend upon the gray cortex, but work only according to the wishes of the will. So it is with all bodily and mental performances.

(91) Through continual education and the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, the brain’s appearance changes. The more mental abilities it acquires, the more cerebral convolutions form. As intelligence increases, the brain’s surface continually develops in its convolutions and in the depth of its grooves, made possible by the formation of a clean, new preparatory surface. The denser the convolutions, the deeper the grooves of the cerebral cortex.

The more intellectually educated a person is, the greater the number of grooves and convolutions in his brain, whereas the brain of a simple person has far fewer. Intelligence does not depend upon the brain’s weight, but rather upon the number of convolutions and grooves. It was found that the brain of the late French writer Anatole France weighed only 1,017 grams, compared with the normal weight of 1,300 grams. Yet it had extraordinarily intricate folds and thus an enlarged surface area.

For mental capacities to be exercised and developed, the density of cells matters more than the weight of brain matter. No mammal has more than five thousand cells in one cubic centimeter of cerebral cortex, whereas in the human being the density of cells in the cerebral cortex reaches fifty thousand per cubic centimeter. As for the surface of animal brains, rabbit and bird brains are almost smooth. The brain of an orangutan, with all its folds, furrows and convolutions, has a surface area of barely five hundred square centimeters.

By contrast, the surface of the human cerebral cortex extends over about 2,200 square centimeters.

Yet intelligence depends less upon cell density and cortical area, brain weight and number of grooves than upon purposefully filling all the esplana with knowledge. The faculty of thought is in a potential state and is brought into activity by the spiritual form of a thing abstracted from mental images impressed upon the esplana.

(92) Acquiring knowledge can be compared to climbing a mountain. We climb ever higher. With every step the horizon before us broadens. With every step our sight discovers a wider vista. And when we finally reach the summit, we see the whole countryside.

Through education we likewise ascend to immeasurable heights. Sometimes in tiny steps, sometimes in larger ones, according to opportunity and effort. Often we do not even notice the ascent. It is unobtrusive, but after some time we feel confidence, recognizing that our mental horizon has broadened, that we understand more perfectly than before, judge more soberly and are wiser and more reasonable.

Every human brain, apart from isolated cases, is already capable of developing to the highest intelligence. We can compare it to a negative not yet developed, which we wish to place in developer. The negative plate appears empty, but gradually turns into a beautiful picture captured photographically beforehand. This happens, of course, only if we proceed correctly and let the developer act until all details are properly brought out. If the developer acts insufficiently and the plate is handled improperly, we produce a weak image. The developer is our soul, which through its diligence must bring out, create and develop the previously invisible grooves and convolutions already laid down and intended for this purpose. With little or insufficient mental diligence, the brain remains weak and undeveloped.

(93) The human being has a soul expressed as the human spirit. An animal has a soul with drives and instincts. When drives and instincts manifest themselves in a human being through a failure to understand and comprehend himself and his soul, they are designated as a lower nature arising from an arrested development of his intelligence, neglected through his own fault.

In the human spirit there is a potential, hidden strength that is not fully captured by the performances already accomplished. Therefore everyone, even individuals who have been tested, can through the strength of their will develop new performances of intelligence, redirect its previous course, deepen it and move from the general toward reconstruction and further building. The same applies to other psychic powers: temperament, determination, assertiveness, constancy and so forth. Testing rather passive people establishes probability. In people with independent mental activity and creativity, it is impossible to determine the limits that bound their activity.

(94) The cerebrum is formed of two halves, or hemispheres, joined deep inside by whitish fibrous matter called the corpus callosum.

Nerve fibers issuing from the gray substance converge in the corpus callosum, which joins the thought sent from both halves into the center of the cerebellum’s nervous system. From there it passes to the appropriate convolution on the surface of the cerebellum, in which the automatic ability to control the motor nerves of the bodily organism has already formed.

Both halves of the cerebrum always work in the formation of a thought, throughout the entire extent of the cerebral cortex. Both halves always develop evenly in their convolutions: what is on one side is in the same place in the other half.

If impairment and dying of a convolution in one half gradually occur, the capacity contained in it strengthens and awakens in the corresponding convolution of the other half, at first at the expense of neighboring convolutions. At that time the patient feels a kind of decline in mental strength. This impression later disappears, however, through compensation in the other half of the brain.

In some cases one convolution after another in the same half dies, and everything is compensated for in the other half. Of course, the scope and endurance of thought are no longer the same, so we must not overstrain the preserved half.

(95) The cerebrum is divided by deep fissures into several lobes, of which the frontal and occipital lobes are particularly extensive.

Nerves issuing from the two halves of the brain cross in the medulla oblongata, so that fibers from the left half proceed into the right half of the body and vice versa. If a disturbance occurs in the right leg or right hand, it must be sought in the left half of the brain.

From the medulla oblongata emerges the spinal cord, which fills the canal of the interlocking vertebrae of the spine. To a certain extent it is a kind of continuation of the cerebrum and cerebellum.

In the spinal cord, strong nerve bundles are permeated by ganglia, which are also scattered throughout the body and are kept active by the familiar gray cells, neurons, interconnected by the finest fibers. These cells are particularly permeated by the soul and animated by oduší.

Under the most powerful microscopes the gray cells appear as blackish-gray matter, and the gray substance of the cerebrum has the same coloration. The same matter is also found in the middle of the brain.

(96) Nerve fibers lead from the gray substance into every division and organ of the body, connected with the brain, spinal cord and ganglia.

The ganglia provide for the automatic activity of the stomach, lungs, heart, arteries, kidneys, liver, glands of the reproductive system and so forth. Some are situated in the organs themselves; others run in knotted cords along the sides of the spine, sometimes gathered into special plexuses.

The best known to us is the solar plexus, situated in the region of the stomach. In people with weak nerves, feelings of fear and other unpleasant sensations arise in it.

All the ganglia are connected with one another by fibers and form the network of the sympathetic nervous system.

(97) So that the soul may fully control the brain, its instrument upon which the maintenance of life depends, the cerebral cortex contains defined areas for individual activities. There are separate centers for sight, hearing, smell, touch and so forth. If, for example, the visual center, which is in the occipital lobe, is engaged through sight, stimulation sets this center in motion, and at the same time the whole gray cerebral cortex directed toward the stimulated lobe becomes active. According to the level of mental abilities, judgments, reason and will, which are bound to the entire cerebral cortex, we form various concepts and impressions, pleasant or unpleasant according to the nature of the object seen.

All thoughts, judgments and manifestations of higher mental activity are aroused on the basis of impressions perceived through our senses. These are the feelers of our consciousness. On the basis of these impressions the brain develops and reason is refined, and the more we educate ourselves, the more the quantity of gray cortical matter increases.

We have learned that in the brain, especially its gray cortex, there is an extraordinarily large number of kinds of nerve cells, differing from one another in the size and form of their bodies and in the endings of the extensions that form passages from one nerve cell to another. Each kind of nerve cell lies only in a precisely delimited place in the gray brain matter and there forms, alone or with several other kinds, a center for special functions and the performance of various tasks.

(98) With aging, nerve cells shrink until they finally disappear gradually. Meanwhile, radiation causes a loss of all nuclear components and protoplasmic formations of the cell body. The nucleus lives by a special activity that it has at its disposal for about one hundred and fifty years. The protoplasmic body of the cell does not; it must continually renew itself.

Mental activity benefits the brain’s nerve cells, preventing them from aging. In this activity they revive and rejuvenate through continual replacement of protoplasm and achieve a proper exchange of worn-out substances. Mental inactivity leads to decline and the accumulation of a special fatty substance called lipofuscin in the protoplasmic structure of their cell bodies. The accumulation of fatty substance in the cell body leads to damage, hence incapacity for mental activity and finally the cell’s destruction. The cells have become nonfunctional because they aged through inactivity. Thus activity, work, leads to the prolongation of human life.

Human life proceeds from an inner source of activity and vital phenomena, sensations, perceptions, impressions, mental images, pictures and concepts. It is an individual life, manifested in consciousness, freedom and responsibility.

Behind an unknown physical law lies an unknowable “real” world possessing the metaphysical value of reality. In every case truth is hidden behind things, not in them.

(99) Every human act is an action upon nature. The psychic and bodily condition one another. During the soul’s activity, action begins with certain electrical processes in the brain cells, which are transmitted to the muscles through chemical-electrical events in the nerves, and from the muscles pass into the external world in an uninterrupted chain of causes and effects. With the soul’s cooperation, a pure mental image, a nonbodily event, sets the entire causal chain in motion. It is certain that there are also bodily events without bodily causes, whose cause lies in the soul’s activity. The transition between bodily and psychic events is continuous; they act upon one another, and we must include the soul within this causal bond of the causal structure.

The human soul is a special autonomous agent that rules sovereignly in the body and decides what will happen. The fundamental character of psychic activity differs from material processes. Psychic life is the creation of something new, continual change, abstraction, synthesis and growth; no moment resembles the preceding one.

The creative activity of the human spirit forms experiences by changing and reproducing new activities that were not yet contained in the esplana.

(100) The soul is capable of meditation and can pause at a perception, isolate it from other perceptions and observe it in the relationship of its parts.

The soul’s dynamic quality creates new and higher formations from previous sensory knowledge, its intelligence, which through passive reproduction of mental images leads toward the intended goal and creates the spontaneity with which it decides upon actions suited to given purposes that change according to circumstances.

When I think about consciousness, I think with it.

A consciousness without its own source of activity and its own dynamics, without contents in the esplana, would be nothing. The contents of consciousness are the source of knowledge of reality. When we observe the contents of our consciousness, we find them in constant movement, never at rest, subject to continual change. These psychic states are unique, meaning that one and the same content cannot occur twice in consciousness in two different contents, and that the continually unfolding stream of consciousness remains in memory as a unity.

(101) The thought I express does not stand isolated in consciousness, but is a tiny segment of what I have already said and what I still wish to say. Neither past nor future is directly contained in it. The only thing I experience is an awareness of connection, though its position may also be potential; that is, at any time I can call up what preceded it and reproduce past contents of consciousness. I am then conscious of the future as a definite goal toward which I am moving.

As to how thoughts and sensory impressions, mental images, perceptions and concepts are preserved and accumulated in the cerebral cortex, science has so far voiced mere suppositions. I have taken it upon myself to resolve this mysterious, unexplored point through practical experiments.

17. Brain Activity and the Upper Subconscious

(102) The soul’s actual workshop is the gray substance, the cortex, which is why we also call it the soul’s center. This substance is composed of an innumerable number of exceedingly fine cells, neurons, interconnected by very delicate fibers. They are nourished from below by the cells already known to us, which supply them with nourishment of the highest quality. For perception to be possible, a psychic instrument, the brain, must exist for the psychic dispositions. Through the senses the soul receives sensations and perceptions of the external world in the following way:

Objects in the external world stimulate the sensory apparatus. This stimulation produces vibrations in the sensory nerves. These carry sensations to the gray cortex, which is likewise stimulated. The soul, residing in the gray substance, becomes conscious of the perceptions received. These are classified by reason according to their content and, according to their intensity, stored in vacant places in a kind of little cloud, present in immense numbers on both sides of the entire gray cortex. These two opposite realms of little clouds are the seat of the “upper subconscious.” I have called the individual clouds “esplana.” Each neuron is occupied by several hundred esplana.

In this upper subconscious, the SELF formed from childhood for this world is stored and made available. Thus a sensation or perception, through sensory apprehension and with the help of the esplana, passes into psychic consciousness as knowledge. Behind every perception is the soul, which participates in it. Through knowing, we have the thing within ourselves, in the soul, and in the esplana. It is a psychic reproduction of the thing. From the standpoint of psychophysical parallelism, no psychic activity is given to us without a material accompaniment.

(103) When we wish to think, a wave motion, a kind of flowing or rippling, occurs throughout the gray cortex as a result of the soul’s rational capacity, and thoughts are thereby formed in it. Capable subjects confirm this, as will be apparent from the experiments that follow. Their foundation consists of sensations, perceptions, impressions, mental images and previously formed thoughts stored in the esplana and called into consciousness. These are classified, combined and arranged anew, then immediately, reworked and formed in the upper subconscious, stored in the appropriate vacant places in the esplana to be available for further creation. The brain serves the soul in forming a thought and awakening a memory, but not in preserving them.

How are perceptions, mental images, thoughts and words, words being the expression of mental images, captured and stored in the esplana? It happens as follows:

Everything the soul has received, become conscious of and created is stored automatically and with its whole course simultaneously in both sets of clouds, or esplana. Weak, everyday thoughts, mental images and perceptions pass into the lower, faintly luminous clouds. What is stronger, intense, especially vivid and significant passes into the upper, more brightly shining clouds. There, in the nuclei of the clouds, everything is sorted onto individual rays issuing from the nucleus and is captured upon them in the form of luminous nodes. Related thoughts of similar content are captured in nodes along individual common rays, so that such a cloud can record a sequence of related thoughts and mental images along its separate rays. The longer and more extensive an event or connected series of thoughts, the more rays, and possibly clouds, both lower and upper, it occupies. In the lower clouds, the event is stored in luminous, vertically layered corpuscles. When we work mentally, investigate a problem, study foreign languages, work on an invention and so forth, this activity occupies a certain region of the brain developed, together with its esplana, through that particular activity.

(104) When we are active in this way, although we put the whole gray cortex into operation, the region to which the activity belongs is subjected to exceptional exertion. That is, it is stimulated and awakens the clouds in the direction of study, which through vibration awaken all the sensations and perceptions and pass them to the gray cortex for rational psychic activity, which rests upon the whole gray cortex.

Perceptions, mental images and thoughts that have met simultaneously in the gray cortex, in consciousness, form groups: when one member of a group is recalled, the others associated with it are also recalled from the esplana. Mental images are therefore associated and recalled according to the law of simultaneity. When we remember an event, its images awaken and are renewed in the same order in which they entered it, and are recalled into consciousness in that same order. Recall in a different order is almost impossible.

The laws of association, the linking of mental images, are bound by the laws of contiguity and similarity.

Sensations, perceptions, passions and feelings occurring simultaneously or immediately after one another tend toward connection, so that if an image of one thing later arises, those of the others arise at the same time, reviving of themselves because they are related. The same happens through the resemblance of an object seen.

(105) We perceive material things through a psychic likeness or form produced in the faculty of cognition by an objective stimulus, creating within it the thing known.

During the thought process, the upper and lower clouds, the esplana, have a mutual direct fluid connection through the gray cortex.

The lower clouds, individual cells, appear to the subject as a bright nebula in which separate parts can be faintly distinguished.

The subject recognizes the upper clouds by their stronger glow and distinguishes individual, especially bright portions with shining rays within them.

Both sets of esplana, or clouds, are formed of an exceedingly fine, special fluid substance and cannot be observed by even the most powerful scientific approaches and methods. Only an advanced subject, specially guided in this direction, sees them.

(106) Since esplana are the finest substance, we must not suppose that they occupy some space in the gray cerebral cortex. Just as electricity permeates conducting bodies, so the esplana permeate the matter of the gray cerebral cortex.

The conscious SELF awakens to life through the movement of the entire gray cortex. Consciousness is the collection of mental images we possess at a given moment, with the participation of the soul’s activity. We need not even have these images; in that case, consciousness is a higher reflection upon one’s own SELF.

Awareness of something rests upon consciousness that we are thinking. Thinking requires continual interaction among the esplana and their thought formations, images and impressions, both the old esplana and the new. The old esplana are needed for me to express myself as a human being, think about things, learn and so forth. New, empty esplana are needed so that I can store new thoughts and mental images, concepts and impressions in them. This happens automatically and flawlessly if the nervous center is healthy. During rational reflection, fully formed thoughts often enter our consciousness. They have reached the threshold of consciousness already complete from the subconscious and its activity. See the section “Diviners and Prophets.”

When a healthy thought is formed in consciousness, in the gray cortex, through the soul’s activity, only those esplana whose content is connected with what we are thinking about are stimulated to stronger vibration. For the thought passing through the gray cortex acts upon those of them that have a relationship to it. A thought can never stimulate esplana whose contents bear no relation at all to its meaning and have no affinity with it. The other esplana therefore remain at rest, exert no influence upon the gray cortex and vibrate only faintly. This psychic activity establishes a mutual connection between related esplana and the gray cortex, in which the soul’s conscious SELF chiefly resides and expresses itself. Through this, our thinking, reflection, pondering, understanding and research gain a certain scope and depth, and at the same time a reflection, a kind of mirroring and continual self-monitoring in the esplana.

(107) To give us a better idea of thought activity, I offer an example: at the theater we follow a play whose action passes from the visual and auditory lobes to rational judgment in the gray cortex. From there the whole action passes simultaneously into both the lower and upper clouds, the esplana, where it remains and is realized. If the action in question is insignificant to us and does not entertain us, it passes or is projected onto the lower esplana. Only some more significant manifestation that catches our attention more vividly is recorded more strongly in the rays of the upper esplana, where it remains. After a time, all that remains of the action are those moments that passed onto the rays of the upper esplana and were maintained by radiation so that we can picture the action in its main points. If they have little value for us, after a longer time they cease radiating, and years later, even if we wish to revive the action, we cannot remember it. For as the old event disappeared, the esplana became capable of receiving new, fresh impressions and events.

Manifestations that sweep us away, excite or frighten us pass as a rule into the upper, luminous esplana, but also into the lower ones.

(108) If we wish to call a once-experienced event into the mind again, a wave motion flashes through the entire gray cortex, including the old convolutions. The will stimulates those esplana that received and stored the event. The stimulated esplano vibrates. If the event is more extensive, several vibrate, thereby awakening the lower esplana; in the upper ones the nodes on the rays light up, enlarge and expand. The event awakens within them and, according to the law of simultaneity, passes into the gray cortex, into the consciousness of the soul’s center, where we can see and experience the whole event again. It depends upon the strength with which the event was experienced: accordingly we picture either the whole event or only some of its parts. Sometimes, however, a sought-after thought ripples through the entire brain substance and yet we cannot remember the matter. No esplano responds with vibration. Strenuous thinking produces a stronger wave motion, during which the relevant esplano sometimes vibrates for an instant, but immediately becomes still again. Then we say, “I’ve got it, I’ve got it—but again I remember nothing.” In this case only a very slight effect upon the gray cortex occurred, and because the esplano stopped vibrating, it could not light up and expand. The event disappeared, for when an event is recalled the esplana must continually vibrate in their rays and nodes. Only through vibration, strong oscillation of the esplana and the spreading apart of the relevant little nodes does the forgotten event revive upon them and stimulate the gray cortex into our awareness.

(109) In very old convolutions the esplana are difficult to stimulate, glow only faintly, and the gray cortex is hard to stir; the convolution does not want to move. This is readily achieved in hypnotic sleep, however, when the forgotten event awakens.

Neuron cells, capable of and subject to chemical processes, pass through the soul’s activity into the excitations in which we think. Esplana cells are formed of a more perfect element less subject to chemical changes, and can therefore preserve sensations, perceptions, mental images and so forth within themselves more permanently throughout life.

Thoughts, impressions, mental images and judgments not only disappear from the esplana but are also transformed. They cannot be compared to an unchanging object that is preserved. We therefore cannot expect photographic fidelity from normal memory and must always allow for its errors. Extensive losses of memory, amnesia, are most often conditioned by disease of the gray cortex, and the esplana consequently also suffer from malnutrition.

The storehouse of memory is almost unlimited. Seventy to ninety percent of esplana cells remain empty and unused. Thus the more we know, the more easily we acquire further knowledge. Knowledge is acquired through association. The more experiences accumulated in memory, in the esplana, the more capable the mind is of forming further associations, or thoughts.

(110) Many events, experiences, lessons and precepts that we do not bring back into consciousness are forgotten over time. They have partly or completely vanished from the esplana. It surprises us that sometimes in fever, hypnosis or anesthesia we utter things completely forgotten: they have been recalled from soul-consciousness.

If we become conscious of one thought with ever-increasing intensity, it then radiates in its individual nodes two to six times more strongly than the others. If such a thought is diseased, we call it a “trauma.” A sensitive can easily receive these thoughts, healthy and diseased alike, telepathically and report them at our request. But these are only settled thoughts that have passed into their places and with which our will is not at that moment in contact. A sensitive therefore cannot tell us a thought just being formed and not yet complete, nor one currently connected with the preceding thought, but only one stored in the esplana and radiating intensely.

Inward attention directed toward a mental image, memory or thought is like reflection. If its purpose is the description and analysis of psychic activity, it is called introspection, or self-observation.

Human thinking is not purely a matter of content; it is underlaid by feelings and desires that give it a personal character.

(111) In a newborn child we found formed and forming clouds of esplana in innumerable quantities, together with the gray cortex, over the entire extent of the brain’s surface, in which the soul manifests itself in its purity and innocence. We found empty places, esplana. I repeat: empty places, waiting for what will be sown there. The esplana are prepared for the sensations, perceptions and impressions of this world, for the formation of personality, as regards its qualities, good, evil and so forth.

Here we see the beauty of the child’s pure soul. There is nothing here from its own reason or its own will. What matters is what valuable and noble things are stored within it, for it is itself helpless in receiving both good and evil things. Such a child, with its completely empty luminous clouds, learns easily and readily remembers everything in which it is brought up. It truly depends only upon what good or evil is sown in them and what educational opportunities we give the child. Those who influence a child’s upbringing become the cultivators of its soul, for its own reason and will come into effect last, and even then only from accumulated sensations, mental images and impressions hidden in the esplana.

Frequent cases of delayed development of understanding in some children compared with others are caused by inadequate development of the esplana. Understanding and normal perception appropriate to their age arrive later in them. Proper living habits and the stimulation of brain activity can accelerate the development of these esplana. From an educational standpoint it is wrong to drive such a child into feelings of inferiority through punishment or poorly chosen admonishment.

(112) In older people fewer esplana are formed, and the newly formed ones cannot retain perceptions. Memory thereby weakens. Past events from long ago awaken in the esplana, whereas fresh events disappear from the new esplana.

When our life is in danger and death threatens us, a powerful, violent wave motion arises in the gray cerebral cortex. All the esplana, lower and upper, suddenly vibrate strongly. At this moment our entire life appears before us and we experience it again. We live through a moment in the presence of good and evil deeds.

All esplana also need nourishment. They receive it through the evaporation of nutrients by way of the neurons of the gray substance; phosphorus substances predominate. If these diminish and insufficient evaporation causes malnutrition, as often happens in anemic people and those engaged in intense mental activity, the esplana draw nutritive substance from the neurons of the gray cortex. If this is not possible, they weaken and perish. The gray cortex then declines in its capacity, thereby also weakening the will, and various mental disturbances arise, which I discuss in later sections.

In mentally active people, new esplana of the lower nebulae and the luminous upper ones continually form each day, especially at night, together with neurons of the gray cortex, for they need more gray substance. After a night’s sleep we always learn something by heart more easily. As intelligence grows, the gray cortex with its esplana curls inward, continually increasing its surface area. It is no disadvantage at all that thinking takes place in tight convolutions, nor does this harm the nebula of lower and upper esplana, or the upper subconscious, as I have called this realm of clouds.

(113) If we reflect upon the structure of the human brain, a comparison with the universe suggests itself. Is the brain not a universe in miniature? The matter of the brain represents cosmic space and the scattered neurons are fixed stars. Individual esplana with their little clouds are then our Sun with its planets; the great clusters of immeasurable worlds of esplana, with their sea of clouds, are the nebulae of the Milky Way.

18. The Activity of the Esplana

(114) We have looked through an open door into the soul’s workshop. Let us proceed farther into this workshop of the psychic world of the esplana and examine some of its details.

The soul’s first instruments are our sense organs, for the sensory reception of all sensations. Sensory sensations arouse the corresponding reaction in the nerve pathways. The sensation itself has a passive, waiting character. Only when we become conscious of it through the reflection of the esplana, which it entered and upon which it was impressed with the soul’s cooperation, does perception of the object arise, so that we then see or know it.

In perception we know that we see, and therefore we look; we know that we hear, and therefore we listen; we know that we sense, and therefore we taste, and so forth. Through cognition we acquire sensory consciousness of the existence of our sensations.

The psychic state of the inner sense creates the unity, harmony and wholeness of the mental image.

Let us understand this: diverse sensations arising from external impulses unite into the unity of objects. For this, every individual nucleus of an esplana cloud is available, perceiving, receiving and bringing together within itself several sensations from different senses, such as warmth, cold, sweetness, brightness, music and so forth. The broader content of sensations arising, for example, from looking at the sky, that it is spacious, dim, filled with stars and the moon, is already sorted in the cloud’s nucleus in the order in which we previously received them. The sensations attach to individual rays issuing from the cloud’s nucleus in the form of smaller clouds or nodes. Each raylike extension can receive and retain an innumerable quantity of sensations, perceptions, impressions and mental images.

In this activity of sorting, distinguishing and at the same time unifying in the nucleus of the esplana cloud, the soul participates with its central inner sense, which can simultaneously perceive the activity of the external senses and all newly received sensations.

All these sensations, already formed perceptions, impressions and images, are for the soul a unifying object of a single view, passing through the central nuclei of the lower and upper esplana and permeating the center of the cerebral cortex into psychic consciousness as knowledge.

(115) The feeling and consciousness of our own existence are the only reality we experience directly.

Everything new that we experience is not entered, stored or impressed into the brain’s esplana at each moment as exact representations and images of perceived reality. Rather, it is processed almost with lightning speed, formed and compared with earlier experiences, broken down, evaluated, as though tasted, consumed and further “digested,” and only then used as a new guideline for the needs of our personality.

What is stored in memory, in the esplana and simultaneously in soul-consciousness, is already individually and tendentiously processed material, sometimes simplified to the point of complete blandness, at other times richly colored with details and embellished with additions acquired through earlier experiences. These spring, in continual activity, from the depths of the soul’s consciousness, insofar as a deeper interest or enthusiasm participated in the conscious experience.

Perception is not merely the passive reception of stimuli from outside. Rather, behind every readiness of a sense organ the soul participates, with greater or lesser psychic tension according to its interest.

Every new experience entering consciousness is evaluated at the very moment we experience it, according to our previous experience. To a certain degree, every new experience also influences everything that has passed through our consciousness and in a sense forms its history and experience.

Every new experience and reflection enriches our experience of our relationship to the past. When we then compare present and past experiences, we often marvel at our earlier criticisms and sometimes even feel ashamed of them.

(116) Only a very subtle capacity in a subject can analyze the existence of esplana and the functional significance of the intimate central inner sense for the processes of thinking and rational cognition.

The arising of sensations and perception depends upon a stimulus given to the sensory faculties. Through its action and impulse, a thing determines its likeness. Through knowing the thing we are determined and moved to activity for which we have a natural aptitude. The impression, the effect of sensations, differs psychically: pleasant or unpleasant, producing delight or displeasure. It is a kind of psychic judgment materially expressed in perception.

The distinctive character of sensations and perception is not exclusively physical, chemical or physiological. It is a psychic event, thus supraphysical and supraphysiological, conscious.

We perceive an object accessible to the senses directly, and only through reflection upon it do we establish that this perception occurs through a psychic disposition. The perceptive senses belong to a unified whole, a being composed of body and soul, possessing a quality beyond the physicochemical, that is, psychic, of the soul.

Otherwise, a sense is a passive capacity that receives an impulse from a thing. Only when it receives the impulse does it pass from a passive into an active state.

Sensations and perceptions do not disappear from the psychic world of the esplana; they remain as a supraphysiological foundation for both imagination and memory. As we have learned, we can at any time call up a representation of an absent event or object. We can become conscious in various ways and think about things present and absent.

(117) Every sensation and perception gives birth to, creates and calls forth its own likeness, its image, and therefore we retain in the esplana visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile, olfactory and muscular images. Imagination is the faculty that reproduces and combines images and creates new formations of representation. It is an associative and constructive faculty.

In psychic activity, perceptions relate to present reality, while mental images relate to absent things. Mental images are of two kinds: one consists of psychic likenesses of things that inform us about immediate reality; the other consists of actual representations or images.

Every kind of sensation has its representation of sounds, colors, tastes, scents and so forth. Healthy esplana have the capacity to retain images. This capacity is called memory. There are various kinds of memory, classified as auditory, motor, visual and so forth, according to which representations predominate.

In a healthy person, a mental image represents things far more weakly than a perception. In a mentally ill person, when a hallucination forms, the reverse is true. We can therefore, especially in hypnosis, give the patient healing suggestions to counteract hallucinatory representations.

A mental image is a halting of thought: it is born when thought, instead of continuing on its way, stops or reflects upon itself.

Mental images have motive force. Sensory activity goes together with muscular movements and their sensations. If we imagine an object of our liking, for example good Pilsner beer, we immediately feel the secretion of saliva and so forth. All our mental images have a response in the muscles, so that the body is in continual vibration.

(118) Mental images have a dynamic force in psychic life. Every mental image, if we will it, tends toward realization. Images may arise through a direct intervention of intellect and will. The activity of imagination has great significance in mental development. Through its function it supports mental growth and contributes to the formation of the soul. The more intellectual knowledge a person acquires, however, the less he is subject to imagination. In artistic creativity, imagination is a productive and constructive faculty. It itself combines images and representations of things and actions, creating new combinations and connections. The combining of images succeeds best in dreaming, but must be monitored by rational reflection.

(119) Suppose, for example, that we wish to listen to a concert in a hall. Through the senses, which are bound to the gray cortex, we receive sensations: various melodies, the hall’s decoration, important people and their clothing, the conductor’s movements. We examine the atmosphere in the hall, refresh ourselves during the interval with drinks, fruit or delicacies, and so forth. These sensations continually pass with lightning speed through the gray cortex and the nuclei of the lower and upper esplana. At the same speed, according to the kinds in which the senses received them during the soul’s activity, they are rapidly sorted in the clouds’ nuclei and attach in their received order to the rays of the parent esplano in the form of cloudlike nodes. An individual ray or branch attaches to itself the sensations received by the eyes, another ray the visual sensations, another the sensations of taste, and so forth.

As we receive sensations through the senses, we become conscious of them only through returning reflection. If we wish to recall everything experienced at the concert, rippling activity occurs throughout the gray cortex. In accordance with the desired thought, only those esplana to which the thought relates are stimulated. The esplano’s nucleus is stimulated and set in motion. In the simultaneous progress of stimulation, the nodes of the branches issuing from the esplana become active: the entire event has awakened. This heightened activity of the esplano stimulates the cerebral cortex. Sensations, perceptions, impressions and mental images from all the senses, in the same order in which we received them, pass through the central esplana and impinge upon the cerebral cortex, and consciousness of the whole experience arises just as we received it at the concert.

(120) If we attend another concert, we can recall the first hearing both beforehand and during it, and judge the character and level of both concerts. We can already evaluate and criticize. During the second hearing, if we are attentive and interested, all the esplana from the first concert are brought into activity.

These new sensations are again sorted in the esplano’s nucleus and attach to the same raylike branches on which related sensations from the first concert are found. This esplano can receive further new related sensations from all the senses many more times. The esplano grows, becomes more powerful and enriches itself. This growth occurs only to a certain level, however, after which a new esplano takes over.

If we wish, we can picture in our minds at any time the concerts we have experienced. We recognize that our judgment is now different and greater, that we are more experienced. Why? The stimulated esplana now create a more perfect content of all the sensations. These have met in the esplano’s nucleus newly arranged, better associated, combined and formed. In this unification they impinge upon the cerebral cortex for a new awareness. We recognize that with every new hearing our intelligence and education increase.

(121) An esplano has universal capacities. We come to know them as follows: we are musically educated, have heard many compositions, possess experience, and wish to evaluate and criticize passages from individual hearings. At this wish the gray cerebral cortex stimulates all esplana connected with music. A general musical impression enters our consciousness. We want only particulars from it and force ourselves to remember. This wish acts upon the esplana so that those sensations received with interest are stimulated in the desired direction and together impinge upon the gray cortex. We become conscious of several melodies simultaneously. Because we wish to become conscious of each melody separately, according to the law of simultaneity those sensations we received with the greatest interest are stimulated first. The central formation of the esplano’s nucleus has its own capacity to awaken separately, on its projecting branches, individual series of sensations that met within it simultaneously. It can then do the same for others in turn. During this activity of the esplana, the subject observes more intense radiation from the central nuclei, and also alternating radiation from individual nodes on the rays, continual changes in the strength of radiation with alternating brightening and fading.

(122) To understand this phenomenon, we may partly compare an esplano to the cylinder of an automatic musical instrument. We can record several kinds of songs on one cylinder and listen to each as we wish, alternating them at will.

Esplana have the ability to transform the content of received sensations, worsening or improving them. This occurs on the basis of inward rational activity, because we have arrived at a new judgment. Our expression differs from the original; it is different. Even if we wished, they often could no longer manifest themselves in their original form. Through the reforming of sensations, our original expression has vanished without a trace.

Let us picture an esplano itself in this way: the nucleus forms its actual center, which shines more brightly. Around it circles a more gently luminous nebula. From the whole nucleus, except the underside facing the cerebral cortex, countless straight branches in the form of rays extend in every direction, shining like the nebula around the nucleus. In a person who has already become conscious, the projecting rays of the esplana are studded with innumerable luminous points of different sizes in the form of little clouds or nodes, bearing sensations, perceptions, impressions, images, representations and so forth. The varying size of these luminous points relates to the intensity of the indifference or interest with which we received the thing. This variation in the actual intensity of sensations affects the soul’s psychic state when memories are revived.

The side of the esplano facing the cerebral cortex serves the contact poles of the neuronal nuclei of the gray cortex and the esplana nuclei for mutual transmission, the interpenetration of wishes and returning esplana reflections.

(123) When we wish to think about a particular thing, the stimulated cells of the gray cortex emit oscillations in the form of raylike discharges of particles. These particles stimulate the nuclei of the esplana, and in the direction of the wish only those esplana that preserve it within themselves are stimulated. At the same time, a similar luminous contact forms from the underside of the nucleus toward the cells of the gray cortex, carrying and mediating all the sensations and experiences we once received.

The luminous nodes, bearers of sensations, perceptions and so forth, lie on the rays of the esplana and likewise have the form of a little cloud, like the central parent esplano. For simplicity I also call them esplana.

In its delicacy, the very substance of the esplana is easily disrupted. Poor memory or memory loss depends upon the degree of this susceptibility to damage.

Good, healthy blood forms a healthy cerebral cortex with its esplana and a good memory, particularly if we exercise it. Exercise consists in repeating thoughts. We achieve greater success in exercising memory if we do so with interest, in the soul’s full concentration and attention.

Through repetition of thoughts, the esplana grow and strengthen, and thus we attain lasting memory, especially in youth, when in educating ourselves we fill virgin esplana with our sensations. These are qualitatively more capable than those formed in later years. We therefore revive our impressions and mental images from youth more easily than those from later years. Sensations, perceptions and impressions that had a more marked influence upon the soul’s inner life and feeling in childhood, and those that made our carefree youthful years pleasant, remain in memory into advanced old age. They took firm root in the esplana and became still more powerful and strong because we gladly recall them.

Thoughts that have not been in our memory for long can easily be forgotten without renewal and recollection, because they were insufficiently impressed upon the esplana.

(124) The subtle matter of the esplana is also easily damaged in its substance if our blood is unhealthy, if we poison ourselves with various toxins, tobacco, alcohol, strong medicines, lack of sleep and the like. All this acts chiefly upon the esplana forming at that time and destroys them. In older people, newly formed esplana often disappear after only a few days, together with the acquired representations.

People subject to these harmful influences develop reduced psychic dynamism and poor memory. Through a lack of the spirit’s creative strength they have little interest in anything leading to the education of personality, because they must draw their capacities from previously acquired dispositions of the esplana.

(125) In such a case, however, we come to recognize that newly formed esplana can be destroyed by certain influences and poisons, together with the sensations, perceptions, mental images and concepts acquired recently.

In mentally ill people we can destroy morbid thoughts and hallucinatory representations that have not yet taken firm and lasting root in the esplana.

We achieve the best effect in treatment by placing the patient in hypnotic sleep and acting through suitably chosen suggestion so that morbid perceptions, thoughts and representations disappear from the esplana. Through this suggestive blow to the system of diseased esplana, we directly destroy the materialized formations of disordered psychic activity.

The foundation of diseased thoughts and representations is psychophysiological. This means that morbid representations have been impressed upon the esplana system of cells. Once the esplana are broken up, no representation can be aroused again and no memory renewed, if the particles composing the esplana and containing past impressions have been destroyed and scattered.

(126) Another way to destroy the matter of diseased esplana is to strike this esplana system through an artificially induced shock. This produces sudden circulatory weakness, with a destructive effect upon recently formed esplana, because they are young and unsettled.

This method of treatment consists in using certain medicines in strong doses. The patient experiences shock, circulatory collapse. This is a dangerous state. Sudden weakness with loss of consciousness occurs, followed by severe convulsions resembling those of epilepsy.

This jolt affects the esplana. We observe that the most recently formed insane representations have disappeared. Why? The matter of the esplana formed during the preceding period has vanished, disintegrating together with its diseased sensations, perceptions and representations. Meanwhile the older, more firmly rooted diseased esplana have been shaken at their foundations by the shock and their strength has weakened; the patient’s soul is becoming free and clear. By inducing further shocks, we achieve further therapeutic successes.

Such shock therapy brings improvement in thirty to sixty percent of cases of schizophrenic psychoses, often with complete recovery.

(127) The best results occur in recent cases, when the matter of the new esplana is still young and undeveloped. Esplana that have grown and become powerful resist the impact.

The effect of shock consists in a powerful shaking of the esplana, through which young and fresh esplana disappear.

Older diseased esplana, manifested on the basis of heredity and in forms of stupor and catatonia, in which a certain kind of inhibition or restraint comes to the fore, can no longer be treated so well.

In stubborn cases we must repeat the shock several times. With every repetition the matter of recently formed esplana is weakened and dispersed in its substance. As the esplana disintegrate, the morbid thought formations materialized within them weaken and disappear, as do healthy ones received during the same period.

(128) All thoughts materialize in the esplana and simultaneously pass into soul-consciousness, into the soul’s memory. It is therefore unsurprising during treatment that a patient does not immediately recognize an object impressed upon a new esplano, although he knew and occupied himself with it recently; it is now foreign to him.

Only gradually does he recognize that he has seen the object before. He does not recognize it because, with the loss of the old esplano, the object exists in the new one in isolation, in a different likeness and representation, no longer connecting the broader content of related sensations in which he formerly knew it.

For recognition, the soul recalls from its own activity, from itself, the thing once seen, of which it becomes conscious through repeated recognition.

The recovered person can also recognize the cause in which his illness lay. New knowledge has entered new, healthy esplana. Because the record is still young, unsettled, faintly radiating and alive, it no longer torments the soul. It would become morbid if he dwelt upon it with disproportionate mental anxiety and continually occupied himself with it to the point where it became intrusive.

Larger doses of insulin, Cardiazol, high-frequency current and the like can be used to induce shock.

(129) In this shock we destroy both the matter of the esplana and the morbid representations. In eliminating diseased esplana, healthy esplana formed during the illness are also destroyed together with their contents. There is no need to fear this loss of healthy esplana, however, if the treatment is performed by an experienced medical specialist. Healthy esplana with intelligence acquired in an earlier period can no longer be destroyed. Through the continual formation of gray cortex with its new esplana, we have the opportunity to educate ourselves further.

By contrast, treatment through hypnotic suggestion does not destroy the esplano itself, but removes only the luminous nodes attached to the esplana’s rays. Because we know them as morbid representations and thoughts, repeated suggestions can act upon them directly in this direction to bring about their disappearance. Although this method of treatment is more laborious, it is healthier, more direct and more effective. For just as we can remove morbid thoughts and representations through suggestions in hypnosis, we can at the same time instill, through new suggestions, healthy thoughts that educate waking consciousness.

Treatment through suggestions by another person, and also autosuggestive treatment by the patient himself, acts upon diseased esplana in the same way even when the patient is fully conscious. The course of treatment is, of course, slower and more difficult. The explicit method of treatment is described more fully in the sections on mental illnesses.

19. Soul and Body — Sensory Life

(130) We know human nature as the seat of life, sensory perception and impressions, and rational activity. The principle of all this is the soul.

The fundamental element of thinking is the soul in its full extent, namely all inner activity with sensations, feelings, perceptions, concepts, desires and willing.

Feelings are the sole elements for the law of associative connection. Through knowing a thing, the soul is impelled to activity. Sensations and mental images are the stimulus for the soul to pass from subconscious into conscious activity. The stimulus causes the passive state of the soul’s entire cerebral workshop to become active. Sleep is rest and replenishment for the entire cerebral instrument. During sleep only the esplana, through their autonomous activity, can stimulate the gray cortex and thus enlist the soul for conscious activity: we awaken. The soul itself also has the natural ability, through its own activity, to leave subconscious activity and enter conscious activity, setting the gray cortex together with the esplana in motion, and vice versa.

(131) In sensory knowledge of a thing, reason and will intervene and thereby influence the sensory side of life. If something is attractive to sensuality, it loses its attraction when reason intervenes with reflection and explains the opposite. Reason grasps the essence of both good and evil. Through illumination in reason, we are brought within the proper ethical bounds.

The highest degree of human knowledge manifests itself in wisdom, which knows and realizes order.

The will is the directing motive force; it can act more perfectly than sensuality and determines the proper direction in life. In the soul, reason knows and commands, while the will leads. It depends upon the cultivation of the will whether it prevails over lower appetites, passions and feelings and employs the soul’s dynamic forces for right actions in life.

The will has motive power not only over other faculties but also over itself. It determines direction and moves toward actions prudently established by reason. Through constant repetition, good acts are impressed upon the esplana, upon the soul’s plasticity, and become a readiness available to the will. Through continual effort the will can perfect its power and strength.

The internal and external senses exert an unfavorable influence upon the will through thought activity. Unruly fantasy and lower passions in particular diminish the will’s decisiveness.

If we do not come to our senses, an illness of the will develops, through our own fault, from its natural state. A person with a weak and diseased will does not control himself and cannot subordinate his activity and life to a serious goal. Then, in place of order, instability and fickleness arise, particularly evident in hysteria. A lack of rational energy develops, and the will then succumbs to various impulses that sometimes go so far as to reject free decision-making.

(132) Thought activity depends upon the anatomical and physiological conditions of the brain-esplana system. If this system is damaged, thought activity is also impaired according to the degree of damage. Memory therefore also depends upon healthy blood and a vigorous, healthy, supple gray cortex, rather than a diseased and tired one, so that thoughts and memories may be intense and thus capable of stimulating the esplana to associative activity.

The bodily organs assist the inner structure of thought by supplying the material with which thought works. The senses and imagination supply the mind with its object.

From this we can understand the physiological facts that a healthy and perfect brain with its esplana works more perfectly and, through associative activity, better prepares material for intellectual work. Such work is indirectly bound to previous nervous, sensory and especially esplana activity. If any of these activities is impaired, thought activity also suffers through the natural relationship of one activity to another and its indirect dependence upon the supply of material for thinking.

(133) From esplana consciousness we become aware of content and know sensations, perceptions and mental images that determine a concrete thing; yet it also contains concepts whose qualities are not concrete but abstract.

Within the content of consciousness is a part known through the senses, representing the concrete features of a thing, and an abstract part, in which the representation of the concrete thing has been processed into a concept. This now expresses the thing’s content and is the distinctive mark of intellectual cognition. In consciousness there is knowledge as a whole. This abstraction belongs to the physical order. Abstract activity can advance farther, to a degree of abstraction in which a pure order of thought, or metaphysical order, exists. There the intellect concerns itself not with the properties of matter but with the essential character of things, which it strives to express through a perfect concept; there it has the character of the absolute.

This further independent processing of sensory perception goes beyond sensory perception, more deeply toward the thing, without departing from concrete facts. These findings about intellectual activity belong to spiritual-scientific investigation, which should satisfy today’s striving for a deeper knowledge of the human being and his spirit.

Intellectual cognition is deeper than sensory cognition because it gradually penetrates to the essential core.

The whole faculty of thought is such in its nature that it knows by abstraction. Therefore not a single one of its acts can be conceived as nonabstract.

There is nothing in the intellect that has not passed through the senses, yet the object in the intellect is abstract and universal. Thought activity bears the mark of abstract, universal concepts. Within us is the life of the spirit, the highest psychic possibility.

(134) Intuition as immediate vision:

Intuition in its proper sense means apprehending a thing in concrete reality.

In a subject, intuitive knowledge is far more perfect because it is directed toward the being of the thing as it is, in its entire universality insofar as it can be seen. A clairvoyant possesses perfect knowledge. This occurs through an inner light, through the object acquiring psychic existence in the mind. From this standpoint intuition is regarded more metaphysically, whereas in concrete intuition it is regarded more psychologically. All these cognitive faculties belong to the human soul, the sole principle of life. Human intelligence is imperfect by nature; its degree of penetration, understanding and knowledge is small, and it must work its way toward true knowledge of reality and truth. The opposite applies to a clairvoyant, who knows reality through his inner light.

Logical judgment and intuitive assumption are not in balance in the average person!

(135) Appetitive tension in animal sensory life:

Human sensory life has another aspect besides perception. When we imagine a thing, it either attracts or repels us. If it attracts us, it arouses our willing or desire. The principle from which striving proceeds is the sensory will. Besides sensory appetitive tension, a human being possesses a higher striving, the rational will, which follows rational knowledge. Human will is also a volitional tension of a higher kind, following intellectual knowledge of good and evil. It has its manifestations of passion, higher than sensory passions, which can therefore be called feelings.

From the relation of appetitive tension to good or evil, all the principal passions can be observed. Life defends itself against obstacles and difficulties through passions and emotions signifying assertiveness and strength. Within the human being are capacity and excitability. Their manifestations are passions that support appetitive tension in overcoming difficulties and troubles. Love is the principal source; from it proceed all the passions: desire, joy, longing, hatred, flight, sadness, hope, despair, courage, fear, anger, aspiration, striving and excitability.

(136) Passions and feelings have two aspects: physical-biological and psychic. The biological aspect denotes the organic manifestation, which, particularly when uncontrolled, disrupts blood circulation, the respiratory apparatus, heart activity and so forth. Outwardly it appears in movement, gestures, shouting and the like. The psychic aspect denotes changes manifested in consciousness as pleasant or unpleasant. These are already sensations that do not constitute passions and feelings, but presuppose and express them. To the subject, a passion or emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant organic change, perceived as a change.

As an expression of appetitive tension toward good, only love arises. If the good is distant, longing arises. If the good is attained, longing is stilled and an expression of satisfaction, joy, arises.

(137) Volitional life:

The will freely wills or does not will. This decision to will or not to will depends upon reason and its judgment. A free act of will proceeds from the will itself. In psychic life it is evident that we want things we desire through the senses and are conscious and aware that we desire them. We have a longing for sensory good, which acts upon the will through its attractiveness. Through reason’s free sensory judgment, which must be practical and universal, we distinguish good things from harmful ones. Only the human being possesses these abstract reflections. The human intellect can form a concept of good in which everything good in particular things is concentrated and contained, and within it arises an ideal of good, a concept of universal good. This ideal exists in the abstract order proceeding from the source of the soul’s activity. Willing is a free act of human will, and its object is universal good. The rational human will is a faculty that is the immediate principle of willing and of the acts by which a person strives to attain universal good.

The foundation of freedom is in reason; freedom itself proceeds from the will. Consciousness of freedom means consciousness of strength, of what I am capable of and what is possible for me. To complete, to perform the entire act or not perform it, is the mark of a faculty that decides freely.

The more perfect the deliberation, analysis and reflection upon what is better, the freer the act of human will. To will evil presupposes imperfection and error. It is the mark of an imperfect faculty, imperfect freedom. Freedom is a quality of intelligence and will through which a person can determine himself from within. Yet he must also know the hereditary qualities and vices that he eradicates beforehand in exercising free decision.

(138) The feelings of the will are composed of various psychic elements. There are feelings of religion, feelings of duty and feelings of morality. The chief agent is the intellect. If a person devotes his whole life to good and the will, he experiences within himself satisfaction and the consciousness of a fulfilled goal, blissful calm.

The deepest experiences are religious and metaphysical. In a metaphysical experience a person experiences ultimate and highest meaning, for he makes things his own through his inner spiritual light. Experiences of bliss consist in the soul’s activity. The psychic cause of boredom therefore always lies in a lack of activity.

Passions or emotions are similar, however: longing, joy, anger, courage and hope. They are expressions of appetitive tension in the lower faculties, appetite and excitability. They contain an organic and a psychic element. The organic manifests itself through physical change; the psychic becomes apparent after a previous sensory perception of an object that arouses attraction or aversion; a mere mental image suffices.

(139) Passions are directed by the feelings of the will, proceeding from its spiritual capacity and giving the passions a spiritual character. They then become purer, better directed and disciplined, because the rational side of the spirit has come into play.

The feelings of the will are more perfect. Love as an expression of will is more than the passion of sensory love. It is friendship arising from spiritual beauty, belonging to the supersensory and metaphysical order. Bodily beauty arouses the passion of love and is not constant. It is changeable and can be effaced by a stronger beauty. Through love the spirit can rise to higher, supersensory things, to beauty, an ideal, God and so forth. Aesthetic feelings arise, containing intellectual elements.

The feelings of the will presuppose a higher strength of spirit. If a person cultivates the powers of the spirit in expressions of the will’s feelings, he gains awareness of the spiritual worth and nobility of personality. In this lie integrity of character and responsibility; the person perfects himself.

Passions and feelings are the motive force of appetitive tension in both desire and will. They influence both faculties to turn their activity toward attaining good or removing evil. They are dynamic elements of the motive faculties, making activity intense and becoming the true principle of individualism in the spiritual domain.

Passions arouse physical movement, for example joy in overflowing movements expressed in laughter and song. Sadness, by contrast, appears in slackening muscles, declining vital functions, tears, grief and so forth. A person is cheerful and therefore sings; he is sad and therefore cries, and so forth. Often, if outward expression is prevented, emotions and passions also disappear. All emotional and affective states are bound to psychic and biological manifestations; they are the work of an animated organ composed of two elements.

(140) Among the psychic causes of emotions is also hidden melancholy, belonging to the order of the lower-order subconscious. A person is sad and does not know why; within him are melancholy and sadness caused by undirected mental images released and detached from the soul’s conscious activity, which then possess motive force and evoke emotions and feelings. Mental images in themselves do not affect everyone alike: they sadden one person and cheer another. Thus an image itself is neither sad nor cheerful. The basis of physiological teaching is that feelings and emotions are born solely from the play of liberated mental images that struggle in consciousness by their own strength like intruders, causing pain. Their combination under direction, and their attachment to the soul’s conscious activity, produce joy.

Emotions concealed and hidden in the subconscious, perverted, burdened by heredity, suppressed by the will or unawakened, also affect melancholy. They must be released and made conscious by being subjected to analysis.

(141) Thinking is a psychophysical process. It is not merely the result of work, imagination, associative procedures and cooperation in linking scattered mental images. There is also a twofold efficacy, physical and psychic, forming a whole that produces purposeful activity. The human being is a unified psychophysical reality, and all his vital manifestations have their foundation in the principle of life, the soul. Insofar as the body is animated, its life is biological and can be observed biologically. But as soon as it manifests itself through psychic phenomena, instinct, sensory cognition, spontaneous will, anger, longing and passions, it reveals itself as psyche, soul.

The higher part of the soul is the human spirit. These are not two different principles, but simply the second, higher part of the same soul. Spirit is the bearer of conscious activity. Its activity is beyond time and space. Spirit thinks, seeks meaning and content, evaluates life, understands things and life, and reflects upon itself through its own human activity, taking an interest, thinking and evaluating. Through the spirit’s reflective activity, a person consciously repeats what he experienced immediately, directly and indistinctly. In doing so, he can correct and direct everything that was vague and unclear in the immediate activity. People living only in an immediate relationship to things and life are full of confusion and vagueness. They often form various complexes in their mental life, for example a feeling of inferiority, and suffer from them.

Through the spirit’s reflective activity, a person becomes conscious of his own SELF as the bearer of all experience. Through deliberation he can know more precisely the motives and reasons for decisions. In this deliberation the spirit of freedom and at the same time the highest lawfulness of life manifest themselves.

(142) Full consciousness monitors the activity of the external and internal senses, for example imagination. The normal state means wakefulness of spirit through reflective intellectual work and the will’s free decision-making. Thought activity judges and reasons; the will tends toward ideal good and leads the others there as well.

Psychic life as a whole joins all the faculties together; each influences the others. The senses are subordinate to the faculty of thought; the will has power over them all, while in turn all the others influence the will in their own way. The will’s decision depends upon reason’s decision. Reason grasps the essence of good and therefore recognizes the disproportion between good and individual things containing a part of good.

Excess energy should be moderated by a positively instinctive grace and moderation of spirit and feeling. To this end, passions and drives must be suppressed so that a person may acquire instinctive grace. I must love and seek balanced activity in which both spirit and body participate, the body as the soul’s mirror. I must act rightly in order to attain beauty and goodness in life.

(143) Intellectual cognition is spiritual. This also applies to the faculty, and the principle from which it proceeds is spiritual, independent of organic structure and matter, self-subsistent and active. Organic and material activity is incapable of reflection: the ear does not hear that it hears, and the eye does not see that it sees. Reflective activity is therefore immaterial and spiritual, unbound by the laws of materiality.

The will and its freedom reveal the same qualities of immateriality and spirituality in human life, that is, in the soul. Thus the will’s striving for ideal good also demonstrates the immateriality of volitional activity and its principle. Spiritual and independent activity operates in the human soul; its source is therefore also spiritual and independent. The human soul is simple, meaning that it is not composed of quantitative or essential components. It is therefore incapable of decomposition. That it truly has no quantitative components is evident from the nature of its spiritual activity. Activity is not bound to space, time or quantity, and neither, therefore, is its principle. The soul is the capacity to reflect upon itself and its activity; it therefore has no material parts. The soul itself is independent and self-active, perceiving directly, and consequently does not depend upon sensory thought activity, upon content and material in the esplana. Dependence upon sensory perception and imagination, on the contrary, has the effect of tiring us.

(144) The first task of the human soul, already in an infant, is to animate the body in union with it; the living body gradually grows, perceives and thinks. The soul animates it and is the principle of all vital acts until it creates within the body the conditions necessary for its activity. As long as the body lacks the conditions for perceiving objects and the sensory faculty is not working, the soul is incapable of its spiritual activity. The soul animates the body and makes it capable of vegetative and sensory life. The capacities for thought and will, which are not organic, remain in its spiritual potentiality.

The soul is the constitutive element of the living body and is therefore in the whole body it animates. Because it is simple and indivisible, it is whole in the whole body, yet it is not whole in every part of the body in its thinking, rational and volitional activity and capacity. Its power and faculties are situated in the body according to the organic components. In its spiritual potentiality, under certain circumstances it can also exercise its aptitudes, capacities and powers in any part of the body, so that it sees, tastes and hears through, for example, fingers, the back or calves; with the same capacity it can place itself in space and make its activity known, as will be set out in later sections.

(145) From dynamic mobility are born passions, manifestations of sensory appetitive tension arising from representations of good or evil and producing an organic change in the person as well. Within passions lies a powerful vital force driving a person toward objects of liking and satisfaction. Because they are joined with organic change, passions are contained in sensory appetitive tension and not in the will. The will is a spiritual faculty tending toward good.

A person’s whole life, including his passions, must be subordinated to the guidance of reason and will, for passion acts upon the human organism and carries it along, so that under the power of passion a person is as though paralyzed or intoxicated, and his reason is affected. Through self-education, with a prior judgment of reason, a person can attain competence and virtue so that the will also moves other faculties. Reason itself can order and determine its own activity in its deeper way.

(146) The mark of a reasonable person is the ability to reflect rightly upon what is good and beneficial for him and what serves a properly guided life. He must be practical and active in order to support inclinations toward good conduct according to true judgment and standards. If someone lets himself be guided by pleasure or displeasure arising from passion, neither the impulse nor the fact that the purpose is his duty, that he should choose and act toward a goal, is clear to him. Rashness, inconstancy and negligence are widespread today and often arise from sexual disorder.

Passions in themselves represent a psychic force that can be used well or badly. Under the influence of passions a person can act more quickly and consistently. The passionate side often has the upper hand in human conduct over a disorderly way of life. Passions become morally good or evil if they are voluntary, that is, if they are used either according to reason or against it.

Passion is an elemental force of life that can, through self-education, be employed for intense work and joyful activity. If not used correctly, however, it can harm and destroy life. Human imagination has a great influence upon the mobility of the passions. A passionate expression depends directly upon a representation in the imagination. These representations, whether normal, exaggerated or outright morbid, possess motive force in psychic life and a natural relationship to action. Imagination must be educated so that it has a naturally good, ethical and noble influence upon the expression of passions.

We must not surrender to extravagant daydreaming and delusions about life, delights and pleasures, for fantasy distorts real life. It behaves especially turbulently toward manifestations of sexual life. Reality is soberer and has its own laws. Imagination must be used healthily under reason’s control, insofar as reason tends positively toward noble representations serving beauty and art.

(147) Neglecting the education of passions and drives, especially sex, deforms a person’s life.

Associated clusters of misguided thoughts, feelings, affects, impressions and representations suppressed by upbringing and social life form “complexes” from childhood onward. These become indelibly impressed upon the esplana of the so-called upper subconscious, becoming systems of forces and creating a mysterious unrest in the individual’s soul. This happens because these thoughts and representations were not rationally explained but forcibly suppressed at their inception, thereby becoming disconnected from associations.

Among the various suppressed complexes, we place first those arising from the sexual drive. This remains the strongest. If it is driven back into the subconscious by the coercive methods of improper upbringing, it occupies half the strength and thought of all beings whose selfish SELF was unable to submit, and provokes outbreaks of the most varied excitement with all the passionate fits encompassed by the sexual drive. Then the whole near and distant orientation of that individual’s life remains dependent upon the “emotional impact” of the earliest years. Normal, natural sex, however, is a source of vital forces for healthy bodily and mental development.

A child who accepts the violent disciplining of its transgressions passively and without resistance does not have these complexes. The so-called psychological traumatism that might later revive dangerously in adulthood does not form in such a child.

This unrest of complexes in the upper subconscious disturbs and exhausts the nervous system. Various psychoses arise, and a state of a kind of “turning inward” develops, making the person nervous. It often inspires the soul, endowed with various degrees of higher capacities, for the human soul extends far beyond consciousness, to activity for beauty and love of a particular work.

(148) In many painters, sculptors, musicians, poets and writers, the cause of their creation was a fundamental restless complex from childhood that awakened the gift of creativity within them and made the subconscious visible by forming through their imagination shapes that they projected outward. The inspiration of their works was merely an outpouring of a substitute kind of joy arising from inner pain.

For such a work to arise, there had to be a complex of suppressed sexuality, whether through the intervention of the law of heredity or through other interventions. Neurosis developed and became a contributing cause, a reflex stimulus to the soul’s activity: the creation of inspired representations springing from spiritual beauty.

A person whose happiness and contentment almost shine from his eyes never creates or invents. It is only someone who has a sense of beauty that follows rational knowledge and wills, or a person continually inwardly dissatisfied and driven, who does so.

Almost every artist is nervous, and every nervous person occupies himself with an intense inner life, thoughts and feelings, full of subjective reflections and fantasies. He thus belongs among introverted types, for these inward reactions are most significant to his soul. The opposite process is extraversion: a person turned outward toward the world, whose psychic contents rise to the surface and establish complex and significant relations with external objects. The extrovert makes acquaintances easily, adapts quickly and is everywhere at once. The introvert is outwardly inconspicuous; his relationships with his surroundings are relatively sparse, his reactions to external stimuli slow, his adaptation indistinct and difficult to change.

(149) Introversion occurs mainly in people with nervous disturbances arising from neuroses, suppressed representations or an inherited disposition. Such a person seeks to heal and cleanse himself by rational means: he thinks about how to free himself from his neurosis and is inspired to create a work. Where reason and will do not come into play out of love for oneself, the nervous illness worsens, and those affected often end up in institutions. In people whose spirit is strong and intellectually educated and whose sexuality is particularly developed, it inspires the soul to great works and deeds, but the body is prematurely disrupted, consumed and destroyed. In girls, however, a weak spirit, developed sexuality with hereditary inclinations, insufficient cultivation and neglected intellectual education lead to prostitution.

If psychoanalysis makes the suppressed complexes and perverted impulses of erotic life conscious in refined and therefore nervously ill beings, it destroys much of the fine art that might have arisen from these causes in many of them. The stimulus to the highest stage of the development of learning and culture is neurosis, and many a work of art is a product of drives. Sexual feeling and the feeling for beauty are two functions of our supernature. Each has its sources, distinctive features, laws and development.

Complexes in themselves will be nothing unless the soul has a special power to create forms from its own capacity and feelings.

A normal person without a hereditary burden overcomes these impulses of varied complexes and suppressed representations through his own reason without difficulty. Only those whose ancestral disposition provides a basis for neurosis founder upon them, or succeed only through psychoanalysis, which makes them conscious. Under favorable conditions the artist responds to them subconsciously.

(150) Sex and eroticism are not everything in art. They are precisely among those elements common to many bodily functions, whose synthesis was placed in the service of these multiple functions on the basis of a given quantity of strength, to act as a stimulus but not as the law of creation.

The source of a human act is reason and will, that is, spiritual faculties. Reason, in which consciousness and free decision culminate, is capable of creativity and reaches its goal through its activity. We must therefore recognize the independence of this spiritual level in the human being, its potential and function.

Within the human being is rooted a rational and free course of life. He possesses an idea of action that passes through the mind, often only fleetingly, and acts according to it. An act is fully human only insofar as it is considered and free, rather than merely animal. An animal does not deliberate; it lives in the present, whereas a human being reflects upon the past and future.

If we wish to diminish rational activity and divert it from reality, let us subject someone, for example, to the daily repetition of the same song. Its melodic chords will continually sound in his soul and act like compulsive and intrusive representations. In this way they will occupy the spirit’s entire activity and redirect it.

(151) Reason supplies the determining element of the will: to determine an act means to lead it toward a goal and give it its proper form and meaning.

Human activity arises from psychic capacity and competence and leads toward the goal it wishes to attain. Good arouses a striving for satisfaction through the creation of a work of art. Such good has an attractive power for the human being. It awakens volitional tension and is a motive agent for the soul. Good becomes the goal of activity and capacities, and thus of the entire soul, for the human spirit is set in motion precisely through its capacities and activity to attain the goal it has set itself.

The psychic image of the goal pursued is reproduced in the person’s mind and awakens sympathy, manifesting itself as longing and love for good; thus the prerequisite for the work is born.

This psychic activity satisfies the person, arousing within him a bliss that is proper to him and at the same time his best activity.

We seek not only the bliss of the final goal but also natural bliss, which in this world is transient, yet awakens love, happiness, joy, contentment and calm. This conception of happiness and bliss emphasizes the perfection of the human being according to his highest values and faculties, from which flow blissful joy and love.

(152) The whole human being is created for activity and equipped for it with his faculties. Anyone who seeks happiness in inactivity, flight from life, sadness or longing for death is therefore mistaken.

The best human activity is the activity of reason, insofar as it is active according to its cultivated powers and leads and directs the activity of the will and senses so that they act according to spiritual strength, virtue. The whole of human activity thereby acquires its natural, proper rhythm. The powers or virtues of reason are wisdom, understanding, science, rational ability and art. The last two belong to the practical order; wisdom, understanding and science perfect reason in the order of knowledge.

An artist with a hereditary disposition for art is distinguished by sensitivity. He was born with an extraordinary sense of beauty. Love of art drives him toward creativity arising from the source of the soul’s activity. Love of the work is an inclination of a psychic nature, and art adds beauty to the strength of life. Love as an expression of will is more than the passion of sensual love. It is a longing for beauty and the ideal. Aesthetic feelings arise here, containing intellectual elements that spring from spiritual beauty. A person decides freely through his reason and will, and it is the human soul that is the sole principle for the creation of the work. From the relation of volitional tension to beauty and art, within the human being are capacity and excitability, passions, the first of which is love, containing both an organic and a psychic element so that the rational side of the spirit may operate. Love is the principal source of all passions, which signify assertiveness and strength for overcoming difficulties and troubles in creating the work. The rational human will is the faculty that is the immediate principle of willing and of acts by which a person strives to attain what he has resolved upon. Every beauty impels toward activity. This is an effect proper to it, from the lowest sensuality to the highest spirituality. If we removed feeling and love from an artist’s soul, his work would be cold and harsh.

The sensitive artist has a great power of sublimation and a certain weakness of repression amid very powerful impulses. It is an eternal dissatisfaction. If the “principle of the soul,” following rational knowledge, and impersonal inventiveness adapt themselves to this constitution, a work of art arises.

(153) With the body’s death our sense organs and the esplana, together with their sensations, perceptions and representations, perish. They were intended for the active operation of the soul’s conscious life during earthly existence.

In life after death the soul will no longer depend upon sense organs and esplana with their sensations, perceptions, concepts and representations; it will not need them. For whatever once attached itself to the esplana in simultaneous awareness also passed into soul-consciousness, into the soul’s inward memory.

In the afterlife the soul continues in its activity to think, understand and will. The aptitude for vegetative and sensory capacity, that of the sense organs, remains within it in case it should reunite with the body. The soul itself is knowable within itself and self-subsistent, with uninterrupted self-acting psychic activity in which it senses its divine origin. For the pure soul this will be the most perfect and exalted life within itself. It will move in absolute freedom, thereby attaining perfectly direct knowledge of its own essence in bliss and infinite joy.

20. The Child and Upbringing

(154) With the help of the best sensitives, I found in a newborn child already formed and forming esplana together with the gray cortex in innumerable quantities, still clean and empty, waiting for what valuable and noble things would be sown within them. The esplana are prepared to receive the sensations, perceptions, impressions, images, representations and concepts of this world for the shaping of psychic life, for the human expression of the child’s still pure and innocent soul. They are prepared to be enriched through education with various kinds of knowledge, to form an exalted consciousness of all virtues, character, wisdom and feelings, and to attain all-round intelligence for good, or conversely for evil.

The esplana, these luminous little clouds, are nothing other than a variety of almost immaterial cells whose essence is radiant energy, capable through its special arrangement and properties, under the soul’s activity, of receiving all sensations perceived by the senses.

I have called this immeasurable world of the first esplana that a child brings into the world “virgin esplana,” in distinction to those that form only through the gradual growth of the gray cortex.

These virgin esplana possess the greatest vitality, lasting into the most advanced old age, whereas esplana formed in later years have shorter vitality. They are therefore the first bearers of the foundation stones provided by upbringing for the person’s future spiritual life and the formation of moral personality.

(155) Upbringing should be built upon this foundation already in the primitive state, when esplana arise from the child’s sensory observations. Education must therefore be understood as an art. These foundation stones, provided through proper upbringing, never vanish from the child’s soul but remain as a pattern, either good or dangerous, for the further constructive rational and intellectual activity of all psychic life.

The child received this pattern of all the foundation stones, sensations, words, impressions and images, passively, and therefore they remain permanent. It received them because it had to, without any abstract activity of its own to form particular concepts and representations, thus without the ability to correct or possibly reject them itself. As reason awakens, this abstract activity of the child’s own gradually begins to develop. First we must understand the child and its development; only then can we bring it up properly.

(156) Psychically, a child is originally pure naturalness and trust, marks of true subjectivity. An educator must not restrict naturalness, trust, courage and productivity through unsuitable rules or “drilling.” This would impair and restrict the child’s original freedom in relation to its surroundings. It would abandon full contact with objects and, according to the strength of the inhibitions imposed by drilling, become rigid and irritable, so that it would then avoid certain important things and situations.

We must therefore respect and, rather, encourage the subjectivity of the child’s personality. The mother, as the first educator, must not say to the child, “You’re stupid, foolish, clumsy; you can’t do anything. I can’t send you anywhere; you spoil everything…” and the like. In doing so she would suppress the child’s original nature, might arouse timidity and truly turn it into a fool and a backward person.

She should instead say, “You’re a clever, capable child; you can do it. But just now you overlooked a mistake,” which she explains, “and next time you should avoid it.”

(157) Through bad upbringing and mistaken drilling received by the child into its virgin esplana, rigid conditioned reflexes arise. Such a little person is convinced that something dreadful would happen if he crossed a prohibition imposed by the drilling, and therefore clings to it under all circumstances. Where he is unsure of success, he prefers not to go, avoiding unpleasant experiences. As experience advances, the number of such self-limitations grows, and irritation and fear replace the healthy confidence of the child’s subjectivity. Through drilling, they slowly form a rigid shell around the subject, within which its SELF is fettered in its psychic expressions, tormented and suffocated. It is a kind of psychic sclerosis arising because the psychic SELF does not wish to suffer again and falls into still greater suffering. This process of distancing oneself from reality intensifies toward isolation, helplessness and even despair, because it has become attached to the wrong goal.

A crisis erupts: the psychic SELF has the choice either to perish or to come to terms with reality regardless of the drilling. This self-awareness and self-discovery do not always come in full measure and often leave traces in the esplana that cause mental disturbances.

(158) From child psychology we now know that an upbringing based predominantly upon commands, punishments, beatings and confinement at home, rather than explanations, persuasion and reasoned admonition, leads to bodily and above all psychic deformation of the individual.

A child brought up in this way cannot react during childhood and puberty to this harsh mental and bodily tyranny except through defiance, psychoneurosis, vegetative neurosis or habitual disorders.

When, however, the child grows up, becomes independent and gains freedom of action, no longer bound by teachers, parents, employers, surroundings and society, all the suppressed drives and desires erupt, often with their full brutality and explosiveness, as protest and retaliation for all the incomprehension, humiliation and suffering of childhood and adolescence. It is then no wonder that they become sadists, usually venting themselves most often in dreams, but also through drinking, fighting, beating wives and children and tormenting subordinates, even committing atrocities and murders.

After such an upbringing, noble human feelings degenerate into animal ones, good gives way to evil, and homosexuality and perversions of every kind flourish, along with fraud, violence, bombastic phrases, deceit, lies, brutal force, theft and murder.

Ignorant, unreasonable and misconceived upbringing leads to humanity’s misfortune. Such an individual becomes a wretched person, and both he and his educators must expend great effort to repair and reshape everything and lead him out of this psychic perversion.

(159) We must all attend to the refinement and development of good qualities. The principle of each person’s soul is an extraordinary foundation of aptitudes, inclinations, capacities and qualities brought into the world in a potential state. Many good qualities and aptitudes are also inherited from ancestors, realized in material genes through which they are transmitted to offspring. Everything is in a potential, sleeping state and must be awakened through good upbringing, encouraged to grow, develop, mature and find expression.

If only certain abilities, feelings and qualities are cultivated, do not be surprised that the others wither. And do not expect your child to feel love and respect for you if you have not awakened and cultivated them within it. Do not demand that it take an interest in diligence, cleanliness, piety, beauty and obedience when you have not instilled these qualities. They cannot be sought or expected in your child unless it later acquires them laboriously, through its own reason and will, in a good social environment.

(160) A newborn human being brings two foundations into the world for acquiring intelligence. The first is the soul itself, whose essence is an inexhaustible source of aptitudes and capacities. The second is hidden in the genes, the bearers of hereditary traits and potential creative forces of the human being. Inclinations toward good and evil are inherited, bodily dispositions of form and qualities, susceptibility to illnesses, traits of character, but also those inclinations, aptitudes, capacities and gifts most necessary for life, and thus already a certain degree of intelligence. The experiences of our ancestors are stored in the genes, in particles of pyrotons, and influence the development of human personality. Both foundations are in a potential state, meaning that capacities for activity are available. Through well-chosen upbringing and education we then bring them into activity, expression and use. All the primal experiences and occurrences of entire nations are stored in the genes. A nation that has lagged in cultural development will not reach the level of others, even with the greatest effort and accelerated schooling of its members, within a single century.

The human being was created by God. God is the highest active Good, and every creature bears traces of the Creator’s goodness. Only the human being himself corrupts his own nature through evil.

(161) Children are also born with inclinations toward crime, future criminals. Not all the bad and burdened can be reeducated if we have waited until their school years to begin upbringing, if crimes committed by ancestors over centuries have become too strongly materialized in their genes and passed with increasing strength from generation to generation. A pure soul thus unites with a burdened embryo that has inherited in its genes a strong disposition toward criminal tendencies. In the absence of proper upbringing, only a small opportunity is needed for these tendencies to pass from potentiality into action and leave patterns in the esplana for the child’s further development.

On the basis of these first sensations and representations, reason and will develop with inclinations toward crime, and conscience then pronounces incorrect judgments. These strong, innate criminal impulses are destructive to the development of the child’s psychic life, for they damage at its root the original foundation of its pure vitality and trust.

Thus in a burdened body the person is psychically deformed, and dangerous born criminals and sadists appear in human society, often attaining prominent and leading positions to its detriment. A born criminal and sadist cannot help himself and must be separated from healthy society in good time. Only in the first years of life can well-chosen upbringing instill in his virgin esplana a moral foundation that then permanently counteracts inclinations and desires leading toward evil.

The strongest impulses for building human psychic life therefore come from earliest childhood.

If we fail to awaken good qualities through education in a child or in ourselves, bad qualities will predominantly assert themselves, for they have greater dynamism. These are phylogenetic forces, spiritual realizations in the material body. This inheritance greatly influences the formation of personality. A new personality is realized in empty esplana. What form shall we give our own or a child’s personality? Unless we consciously determine it ourselves by choosing and selecting the best virtues and moral character, the child, or we ourselves, will become an insignificant, instinctive person governed predominantly by inherited forces leading toward fatality.

(162) The basic drive of every individual is the striving to assert himself. A feeling of inferiority in childhood therefore threatens as a special cause of mental breakdown.

At issue is the renewal of the human being, the whole person in his most fundamental relationships, and whether he will succumb in the struggle or come to himself.

People do not easily free themselves from the pattern into which they grew during the first years of life. If we turn our attention to childhood, we find inexhaustible material that serves to remove human faults into which an adult need not have fallen had his parents already awakened him in childhood and guided him through upbringing toward useful sensations, impressions, images and the like.

The child’s first principle of life is the soul, from which proceeds the proper activity of the inner vital forces. It is impossible to restrict upbringing to lifeless forms.

(163) The child’s soul is in a state of subconscious activity. This is the purposive and causal agent of future psychic life that participates in the development of conscious activity.

Its own activity directs and brings everything toward the organism’s internal goal, its maintenance. In it lies the origin of all forces and capacities reacting in their own way, and it also gives the living being its distinctive character and nature.

A child perceives in a kind of wholes, or forms. In child psychology we therefore encounter perception of forms. This depends upon the individual’s sensory perfection. Only when its senses and experiences, supported by earlier sensory perceptions, report upon a particular thing in the external world can the child perceive and know that thing. The elements of thought are bound to the existence of matter and are therefore understandable especially in a child.

(164) A child already brings intelligence, the totality of intellectual capacities, with it at birth, but this develops only through life as it gains its own experience. Intelligence together with experience forms mentality. Education improves the activity of intelligence considerably and can increase its performance. Without innate intelligence inherited from ancestors, mental development slows. Intelligence springs from dynamic psychic capacity through well-chosen upbringing. A child who excels in this psychic capacity generally achieves excellent performance. For example, a particular thought connected with a proposed task appears quickly and precisely in consciousness.

The complex of psychic states develops from childhood. Various childhood incidents leave deep affective traces that often become the beginning of a future neurosis. See the section “Soul and Body,” on suppressed childhood complexes.

The lower entry subconscious is a source of unhealthy psychic activity and sexual inclinations that greatly influence life. Normal sex is a source of vital forces for healthy bodily and mental development.

(165) All material activity is governed by attraction and repulsion. A child wants this and that, takes everything and makes it its own. The empty esplana receive everything under the soul’s activity. It is precisely here that we must remain watchful, guard and consider for ourselves what we may allow, what we may provide, what we may say before the child and what we should leave unsaid.

At the first stage of a child’s development there is a primitive conception expressing things as the child determines them at first sight. The initial intuition of the child’s reason expresses them very imperfectly. And it is precisely here that we lay in the empty virgin esplana the first foundations of the individual’s future intelligence.

Everything the soul contains comes from sensory perception and sensations. The soul awakening in consciousness attracts everything, and internal association begins in the esplana. The first pillars are built, upon which the entire future structure of mental thought and outlook will rest. These pillars already mark out the precise basic outline of the future psychic structure.

All sensations are the sole elements that press from the stimulated sense organs into the esplana and arrange themselves according to the law of associative connection. They are material for the rational formation of human personality, so that they may emerge in consciousness as already completed concepts of various impressions, images and representations for psychic expression.

Psychic elements then appear in a combination displaying new qualities not possessed by the elements of sensation. From the subconscious, from an inner impulse, the central spiritual force has come into play and intervened, unifying, ordering and influencing the course of representations. With the child’s later development, volitional activity already comes into operation, freely joining and guiding or restraining. Through will and willing, thought receives a new direction insofar as the child strives to understand the thing. The child decides freely.

(166) Reason and will are formed and developed on the basis of the first sensations we have supplied through upbringing. Their selection therefore matters, so that thought may have a meaningful character for the child’s free decision-making.

We must know how to present truth and reality to the child, how to explain, expound and give reasons. We must never crossly dismiss or punish our child for its continual questions without instruction, thereby leading it into further errors, confusion, withdrawal and selfishness. Unless we employ this method of upbringing, we teach the child distrust and uncertainty in action, thereby creating a perverted character. It takes special intelligence to give a brief and calm reason for every command or prohibition so that the child understands the purposefulness of our behavior. Even punishment must be received as a lesson. All upbringing must proceed without agitation; we must know how to preserve authority, seriousness, dignity and respect.

A child’s willing is an innate capacity and the key to upbringing. We place all emphasis upon it already in the primitive state, as representations of sensations arise from sensory observations, perhaps originally entirely subconscious. By directing attention to a particular object, only later does the impression of conscious willing, choice and desire for the object develop from them and take root in the esplana, and finally a command to the nerves and muscles to act. This is so that the object may be mastered and occupied by the hand and become the possession of the willing will.

Here, in the child’s upbringing, there is only a small step toward choosing among various goods. A child already beginning to understand has, in religious education, only a small step toward choosing between moral and material good, between God as the highest and irreplaceable good and a transient good or possibly evil.

This strength of will and willing of good, this training, rests less upon constant repetition and compulsion than upon the object itself as a goal, upon its beauty and attractiveness. In upbringing, what matters is the art of explaining so that the goal and object of will and willing are properly and perfectly clarified and portrayed. Then in practical life, various obstacles to the will, weariness and disappointment cannot throw it onto wrong paths toward evil and undesirable ideals. Even if this happens, it will be only for a time. The first object, the certain and exalted goal stored in the virgin esplana, absolute good, God, will triumph.

(167) It is catastrophic how many children today are brought up without God, and how readily parents allow their preschool child to grow up without becoming aware of the existence of God and religion. God, who is omnipresent, sees and knows everything, rewards good and punishes evil, becomes an important agent in the development of a child’s thinking, turning the child away from evil intentions and making it better. A child finds complicated psychological reflections upon good and evil difficult to grasp without a clearly defined concept of God. The idea that it should be good so that everyone will like it is often less attractive, and promising material rewards for good behavior awakens in it an inclination to bargain over every good deed it performs. A child taught that God exists is more readily brought up and, as it grows older, will think twice about actions contrary to good morals.

It seems we do not quite know how to deal with our new generation. We rob small children of religion and of the benefits it brings to their young lives. The grown child, the adult, then lives in material uncertainty and mental doubt. He longs for something to hold firmly and in which to find support. God, faith in Him, love, hope and the order proclaimed by His commandments again become a guide for all who wish to emerge from the chaos surrounding them.

(168) All perceptual facts a child has acquired through observation with the help of its psychic activity retain their form throughout life.

In this primary manifestation of human cognition lies the spirit’s ability to penetrate more deeply into things, yet the perceptual facts remain the same; they are merely transferred to a different scale, while the foundation remains.

From a primitive definition, in which there is a healthy core of intellect apprehending the nature of a thing indistinctly, the child proceeds discursively, through conversation including with itself, from the basic elements toward knowledge of the thing, until it arrives at precise awareness and expression. The basic elements we provide the child determine its expression and representation for later life.

All sensations, perceptions, concepts, impressions, representations, feelings and passions attach to and become impressed upon the esplana, from which the child recognizes a face or thing dear to it. Memory gives it awareness of this.

Training the memory is very important in youth, for representations and memories from youth have the greatest influence in shaping psychic life.

A child develops mentally on the basis of experience, acquiring knowledge through external and internal observations, watching and trying things. From the beginning a child lives in reality, experiences it and continually reacts to it. This involvement in reality precedes every act of knowing and enters into it. Only later, after the appropriate attention, does rational understanding occur.

This thinking requires concepts, which are still absent in the first observations. On the basis of concepts identifying reality, why a horse pulls a wagon, why a tree bears fruit and the like, the child receives these objects experientially and forms judgments about them. This is the path of inner experience, resting upon concrete facts and actual experiences. By living into and penetrating the whole matter, an image of eternal objectivity arises for the soul.

(169) All knowledge should proceed from a fresh experience of reality. It then receives a healthy direction from the very beginning and creates the knowledge of sound human reason.

The child’s thought activity is preliminarily apprehended through the external and internal senses and receives its object from sensory perception. There can be no concept without a representation. Representations arise in every act of thinking. A representation is inwardly bound to thought activity. It can distract thought toward another object with which the pupil has occupied himself, engaging him so completely that he cannot concentrate on tasks and work; it can also arouse passions and fasten attention upon one point so that thought is bound to it. Passions, fear and longing for amusement and pleasure influence and darken reason’s judgment, absorbing its attention and fastening it upon one aspect of the matter, which may be neither wise nor just and noble. The unruly fantasy of youth is a source of unruly passions, and these in turn influence the higher faculties.

To educate a pupil and bring his inner judgment to expression, material must be presented through the joining of two concepts, so that a clear thought can become embodied and concrete in representations and images, allowing him to recognize and become conscious of his mistake.

(170) Through various activities we awaken the pupil’s different capacities; reason and will are enriched and clarified, so that pupils understand one another and exchange thoughts concerning the common and abstract characteristics of things. Later they recognize that things are contained in sensory perception in one way and in intellectual cognition in another.

The content of consciousness is expressed through concepts. In essence a concept is spiritual and supersensory. For concepts to arise, both sensory activity with its representations and active abstract intellectual activity are needed.

The creative abstract faculty gives the object of knowledge a spiritual character so that it can be understood; it is brought into the movement of thought so that the pupil may grasp and understand the thing.

This activity is not a product of the senses. The activity of the faculty of thought, or the creative intellect, cooperates here; through its spiritual activity the content and meaning of the thing, its concept, are abstracted from the sensory representation.

Concepts are adjusted and made precise through combination and separation. This is the second step of intellectual work, from which arise currents of thought, either affirmative or negative.

Intellectual work consists in abstracting concepts from sensory activity, combining them into more complex concepts and separating them under the guiding clarity of first principles. This is a discursive procedure, a mark of the imperfection of the cognitive faculty of thought, yet necessary for knowledge to advance. The principal intellectual work and activity consist in understanding the meaning and content of a thing. All other intellectual and logical constructions occur so that the mind may proceed more deeply into its own activity, thereby broadening and deepening rational knowledge.

(171) Reason is divided into speculative, that is, reflective or theoretical, and practical. Theoretical reason is satisfied with knowing truth, perceives truth and is perfected through it. Practical reason applies knowledge of an act to carrying out a work. Rational reflection supplements and perfects empirical findings. Reflective thought activity moves within universal concepts and the absolute, whereas practical activity concerns the concrete and relative. Practical activity applies abstract concepts and principles to conduct and creation.

New things always give children greater pleasure and arouse their attention more. The familiar produces monotony and boredom and cannot engage attention or activity. The psychic cause of boredom always lies in a lack of activity. We therefore introduce more mental activity into teaching and strive to enlist the pupil’s cooperation. In this way we awaken in him greater joy and liking for work.

Virgin esplana are fertile soil for the growth of every kind of flora. Everything depends upon the selection of varieties. If I sow bad varieties, the crop will be poor. If I choose the best, I can expect a splendid harvest. Thus, with the help of the child’s subconscious activity and its virgin esplana, through a bad or good selection of tried principles and rules, we can cultivate different kinds of character and intelligence.

(172) By understanding the qualities and importance of virgin esplana and forming a correct view of pure and good humanity, we must work through well-chosen upbringing from the cradle onward so that good and suitable individuals grow up for the state and nation.

Do not let your children act according to their whims. A capricious upbringing with exaggeratedly costly clothing, idleness, exclusive food, indulgence in every sort of pleasure and unrestrained freedom in which children do whatever they please, without following the path of virtue, educating themselves in good or observing God’s law, breeds every vice and an inclination to commit crimes.

Knowledge of God’s law gives protection against much evil. The crisis of this age lies in the lack of spirituality in our lives. It is good to be joined with a higher principle, God.

The human spirit forms the conscious SELF, whereas lower activity, vague and dreamy, does not provide a self-aware and conscious relationship to life.

We therefore also awaken spiritual life in the child, leading to full self-awareness and complete inner freedom of spirit. It leads to inward independence from immediate experience. Spiritual independence means depth of understanding and relationship, calm and order in life, and the subordination of the lower to the higher.

From full consciousness of one’s own SELF also proceeds conscious activity capable of effectively intervening in the immediate current of the life of soul and body, so that a young man’s or young woman’s activity acquires the spiritual expression of life and the beauty of humanity and nobility.

(173) Many people ask why one of their children has good aptitudes and inclinations while another has bad ones. Parents lament that this child seems not to belong to their family at all.

It is known that people are born with outright inclinations toward evil, so that in the future they become dangerous to human society. The law of heredity intervenes mercilessly here, so that inclinations, aptitudes, traits of character and tendencies toward evil are inherited from ancestors. This general phenomenon applies to the plant kingdom just as it does to the animal kingdom.

We must distinguish aptitudes, inclinations, qualities and capacities naturally given in the foundation of the soul itself from aptitudes, inclinations, qualities and capacities inherited from ancestors, which have already been exercised and can be awakened by suitable methods.

The degree of intelligence and other pleasant and unpleasant aptitudes, inclinations and qualities are essentially contained in the germinal hereditary units. It depends upon upbringing and education that bad aptitudes and inclinations, which develop only under the influence of internal and external agents, do not manifest themselves. If they are given no opportunity, they are subdued and disappear for a time, though only for the individual himself; they remain hidden in the cellular corpuscles for further generations.

These inclinations and aptitudes do not always appear equally in children of the same family, although all the children have received them in equal number. In one child good inclinations and aptitudes may come to the fore, while in another the bad ones predominate. It depends upon the mental state in which the child was conceived, whether the man, the woman or both were intoxicated, angry or coarse. Conversely, good inclinations and aptitudes come into play if the parents were in a balanced state of mind, in a good, virtuous and loving mood; or they may have been sad, distracted, frightened, timid or anxious, which influences the emergence of inclinations and aptitudes tending toward hysteria, shyness, inferiority, indecision, avoidance of society and so forth.

These mysterious, hidden inclinations and aptitudes often awaken and come into play when a woman behaves during pregnancy in ways like those described at conception. At other times this happens if the child is entrusted to and left in a bad environment, left to itself, or in a family where it continually hears and sees almost every fault and imperfection.

(174) We have reached the very sources of psychic capacities. We have studied their hidden potential strength, as well as inherited inclinations and aptitudes for various qualities and capacities that we can determine by our own will, that is, stimulate to expression, acquisition and full development through a carefully chosen educational principle for various branches of learning and the awakening of genius.

Newlyweds hold the key to this source. Even before entering marriage, they should acquire clear knowledge of the rules set out above. The path to upbringing is direct, the conception clear. It depends only upon heightened interest and our own intelligence whether, from free reason and responsibility and through our own effort, we wish to give the nation, in our future children, conscious, capable and self-confident workers: craftspeople, farmers, artists, laborers, politicians, scholars, and good, kind and precious mothers or conscious women.

Future spouses can find out which ancestors excelled in a field and possessed particular aptitudes and capacities, including in a negative sense, such as alcoholism. These exceptional aptitudes and inclinations have also passed to you and are secretly hidden in the germinal corpuscles of your cells, waiting to be awakened. You must clearly picture and become conscious of these capacities or this genius in your reason. If you wish your future child to be similarly gifted, or even to surpass its ancestor, you must exert your full effort to evoke and realize this intention. This is the path to regenerating the hidden forces of every individual.

(175) In men these hidden hereditary aptitudes are stored with a greater possibility for regeneration. Therefore, if the spouses’ hereditary aptitudes are not the same or at least similar, the wife joins in supporting her husband’s aptitudes through upbringing. If particular aptitudes for genius are found among the wife’s ancestors, the husband then joins in supporting the regenerative awakening and expression of hereditary aptitudes on his wife’s side.

After thoroughly learning all your ancestors’ leading aptitudes, and before entering marriage, a point I emphasize, form in your mind a clear and precise model, for example a painter, a distinguished artist. From that moment onward, at least twice daily for several minutes, you will picture him clearly and enter into his work and creation. Awaken in yourself an interest in paintings, which you will seek out, observe, criticize, perhaps buy, arrange with pleasure in your home and discuss. In marriage and during pregnancy, the woman will then herself gladly continue the procedure described, and together with her husband, in firm faith, will daily recall their resolution that their future child will bring these aptitudes into the world. After the child’s birth, both spouses will adopt all the advice and rules concerning upbringing described in the preceding sections of this book. They keep in mind the idea that a child has been born to them with an extraordinary sense of beauty and creation.

(176) From the first three or four months, when the child begins to follow things around it with its eyes, though still subconsciously, the spouses will carry it daily before paintings, sculptures or drawings so that it can observe them, and will talk with it about them even though they know the child does not yet understand. The child’s soul is awake in the subconscious, perceiving everything, preserving it within itself and impressing it upon the esplana. From the fifth or sixth month, the child will itself begin to recognize and watch these things, and gradually understand them.

Let us then continue upbringing in this direction, choosing suitable toys, whether picture books or three-dimensional objects of artistic value made from unbreakable materials.

For a future machinist, fitter or designer, following this guide, let us choose various little machines and mechanisms. For a musician, little violins, pipes or other miniature musical instruments.

From the earliest years we shall then speak daily with the child about this art intended for it, taking it to exhibitions and galleries and the like. We shall buy exercise books, pencils, brushes and paints, so that the child will gradually work in this field on its own and acquire a comprehensive interest.

During the school years we shall not forget, in the free time of holidays, to continue upbringing toward our goal. We shall use various opportunities to awaken the child’s imagination and breadth of outlook, capacities so necessary for a future artist, so that when we can provide specialized education, our child will already be fully mentally prepared.

In this upbringing we shall not forget to instill in the empty esplana all the other general qualities, aptitudes and virtues needed to attain high intelligence.

(177) This systematic educational commitment by newlyweds to activity, awakening the hidden aptitudes of ancestors and instilling new aptitudes and capacities so that they find expression, has great psychophysical and physiological significance for the child. We have almost occupied its entire psychic state for our educational intentions. We have taken possession of its hidden aptitudes and inclinations and the virgin soil of pure esplana, so that we ourselves may cultivate them by sowing good seed. As the planting is, so is the harvest. For its future years the child has received the fundamental seed, an endowment for existence and rules for life, with which it then manages on its own. Yet it can turn back only with great difficulty, for it has put down deep roots in this direction into the virgin soil of the esplana.

If a girl is born instead of a boy, let us not regret our efforts, but strive to bring her through education to the same level we had prepared for the boy.

This educational procedure demands a certain effort, sacrifice, self-denial and time from the parents. Yet the knowledge that it is an effort for their own child and the joy they take in it, while giving the nation the greatest gift by raising individuals of pure humanity, will leave no sense of sacrifice in this effort, but rather a confident pride in contemplating the coming new, conscious generation.

(178) To begin a child’s upbringing only in its school years is too late. Innate aptitudes and genius, being prepared, also awaken spontaneously in children, but then only in isolated cases.

If we discover no distinguished individuals among our ancestors upon whom we could build the child’s future upbringing on a regenerative basis, at least two months before entering marriage we shall form in our minds a new, individual, clear and precise model and image of the future child. Let us then direct our thoughts toward this representation daily and discuss it together.

If parents wish their child to become a skilled cabinetmaker, they must observe beautiful models of furniture, its manufacture and completed works, for visual perceptions under the soul’s activity not only attach themselves to the esplana but are also simultaneously realized in the corpuscles called chromosomes. They will keep all this in mind in marriage during sexual intercourse and then during pregnancy. Both spouses, or at least the mother herself, will continue daily to cultivate vivid autosuggestive representations, thereby acting in the direction of the chosen future aptitudes of the unborn child. After birth they will guide the child toward the goal in the manner already described.

Before another child comes, if the parents wish it to receive hereditary inclinations and aptitudes for an occupation different from those of the first child, two or three months beforehand they must form in their minds a new, precise and clear model, for example a skilled tailor, teacher, forester and so forth. Both parents will picture this new representation enthusiastically and willingly two or three times daily for several minutes, occupying themselves with it from every side. They will then continue the child’s upbringing according to this new model in a similar manner to before.

(179) If a girl is born, she can receive the upbringing the parents had previously intended for a boy and train for an occupation that until then was predominantly male. If the parents had formed an image of a specifically boyish existence and do not wish it to pass into the little girl’s life, these aptitudes and inclinations will remain hidden in all the cells, especially the germ cells, to find expression in the next generation, in their daughter’s marriage. This applies particularly if her parents inform and instruct her about this possibility and how, through her own influence, she can bring into expression the aptitudes and inclinations implanted in the cells.

The parents of the newborn girl will then begin from three months with the upbringing appropriate to girls. From the first nursing, the mother should act upon the child through her mental images in the chosen direction. If she also wishes to influence her daughter’s bodily beauty, she does so by looking at beautiful faces, pictures or models before pregnancy and throughout it.

By this procedure, influencing the child’s upbringing even before conception through action upon our own cells from which a new individual is to be conceived, the highest success will be attained in later generations. For this purpose parents should keep a family record in which, besides information about their ancestors, they list all the ancestors’ inclinations and aptitudes and their own. At the same time, in their children’s new marriages, related aptitudes and inclinations should meet on both the bridegroom’s and the bride’s side. Through this procedure of comprehensive upbringing, all-round success can be achieved by cultivating select individuals and generations.

(180) Every nation and every century has its great figures, its geniuses. Exceptional innate gifts in a particular field are usually possessed by isolated individuals, and occasionally also by their biological sons. These geniuses had parents in whose cells, by a concurrence of circumstances, related capacities, aptitudes and inclinations lay hidden in the same number and strength. At the child’s conception these combined and, through their own power, awakened and found expression in the future individual, the genius. In the child’s parents these aptitudes and inclinations may already have manifested their elements in some preliminary form, although they met in marriage by chance.

This fortunate genius could not go on to bestow his gift upon his son or sons, because his partner did not possess in her cells the innate hereditary forces of related aptitudes and capacities, so that the gift inherited only from the father appeared in the son in a weaker degree. The son could not match his father’s genius, although he made every effort to do so. Had the father known what his genius rested upon, he would have sought a wife with approximately the same aptitudes and capacities to understand his genius and educate herself in the same field, so that these hereditary inclinations would again have found expression in their child. This would be especially so if the parents gave the child ample opportunity to develop its aptitudes through upbringing to their highest exertion.

(181) In our own interest, let us seek future partners with aptitudes related to our own, so that they may again find expression in our future children. Truly intelligent individuals with excellent aptitudes may then arise from them.

Individuals may, of course, also attain genius through their own diligence if they begin studying their chosen field in youth, while the virgin esplana have not yet been filled with unnecessary things. This means strenuous daily work and an intensely exerted will. See my book The Cultivation of Reason and Will — The Human Being of Tomorrow.

If we marry later in life, let us not be afraid to have children. They will receive not only hereditary aptitudes but also the intelligence and knowledge we ourselves have acquired over the years.

Beginning a child’s upbringing from the cradle is easy, because the virgin esplana are empty and no resistance arises in education. More difficult is the upbringing of older young people who have gone astray through bad and improper guidance. In this case correction may take years, because we must once again bring in only the best material and, during rebuilding, persuade them rationally why we are laying these new foundation stones of a better upbringing.

(182) In youth, every central esplano still has empty places on its rays. We therefore choose related patterns so that, according to the law of association, they combine and attach in sequence beside the patterns of mistaken representations. If there is insufficient space, they attach to new esplana formed daily. We shall renew and cultivate these new valuable patterns daily through suggestion until they become strong enough to match the unhealthy patterns in their effect and surpass them in quality. Reason and will then acknowledge them, so that the old patterns wither and shrink, allowing the reeducated individuals to be permanently corrected and cease being a burden. The first patterns do not disappear completely, however, but remain hidden in the esplana, ready to awaken again over the years at a suitable opportunity in a bad environment. Reason prevents this from happening by subjecting both patterns to inward judgment, in which the good one then triumphs.

If, after this discovery of new paths in children’s upbringing, education is expanded and conducted by all participants with comprehensive awareness, hereditary inclinations and aptitudes will improve and continually rise, so that future generations may attain the ideal psychic values of pure humanity.

We must now also consider the child from the standpoint of protecting mental health.

From the first moment of conception until almost five years of age, the child is governed and shaped predominantly by only one form of the soul, the vegetative capacity, equipped with the sexual drive to preserve the species and the reflex reaction of the nervous system.

Until five years old the child remains an instinctive and emotional being. Within it the sexual drive develops, and it comes into conflict with itself, with its SELF, and with its educators. Physicochemical reactions form the basis of its psychic manifestations.

From the sixth to the twelfth year comes a period of sexual quiet, and the child develops mentally in relative calm. From the age of twelve the period of sexuality returns; the child passes through puberty, maturation.

This bodily and mental development of the human being can be damaged, for the habits of life are formed in early childhood.

The vegetative instinctive soul is at the same time the driving force for the development of the intelligent soul endowed with reason and will. In every soul there are energies in motion or at rest.

(182a) Every child is susceptible to a psychic injury, a trauma, through which it loses its independence or remains in love with itself; that is, its instinctive SELF is abnormally bound to its own SELF. Instinctiveness and the personal SELF stand out independently with particular strength in mental development. This distinguishes it from other types of character.

The expressions of such a person’s life serve his own SELF, which demands only what serves his instinctiveness. If the child is not guided through reasonable upbringing, if it is pampered and spoiled with various pleasures and all its capricious wishes are fulfilled, if it is the center of attention and also comes from a burdened family, though that is not the chief reason, we raise a sly, cunning, malicious, obstinate and insolent type. Here belong polished swindlers, delusional liars, sick and unrestrained psychopaths, depraved individuals and the like.

The lack of feeling and capacity for contact observed in these people tempts us to regard them as “schizoid psychopaths.” When pursuing their own advantage, they can outwardly appear highly intelligent, attractive and refined in their manner of life. Their self-satisfied instinctive SELF wishes to be gratified in every way at others’ expense and extorts much through its animal instinctiveness. From an ungratified SELF they sometimes threaten others’ lives. Their soul of the higher order has not been educated in the moral virtues of reason and will so as to be capable of displacing the conflicts of early childhood. Only a morally educated higher SELF can resist unhealthy drives. Need, strict law and fear of death may bring these individuals to restrict their self-indulgent instinctive appetites. Fear of punishment and fear of the police are elements that create a conditioned reflex preventing acts against another individual or social groups. We punish a member of human society by this outdated method, employed predominantly by culturally undeveloped nations, only in the greatest necessity, for the realization of the conditioned reflex impairs the qualities of hereditary living matter and psychically devalues society’s future generations. Psychic realization in one’s own matter is only part of realization in matter generally. The best conditioned reflex for educating individuals and improving the qualities of hereditary living matter is Christian principles.

Through rational examination of reality, arising from observation of psychic phenomena and observation of the biological developmental transition from stage to stage, the animal origin of the human body, together with its psychically lower instinctive vegetative and sensory principle, is demonstrated. In all animals, the essential manifestation of living matter is the vegetative and sensory spirit, endowed with drives and instincts.

In bringing up a child, we must take this fact into account so that its psychic development tends toward conscious moral refinement and enhancement. This depends upon educating the higher principle of the soul, endowed with reason and will, which is, however, in a potential state and forms a unity, one soul, with this lower animal principle. We must ensure that its development is not left to unconscious psychic forces.

If until the age of six we leave the child to itself in its mental development, pay no attention to its relationships with the environment and give no explanations, we raise a type different from those described above.

(182b) A child is an instinctive and emotional being. The capacity of the vegetative soul, together with sexuality, has the strongest dynamism in development. The child seeks food, eats, grows and develops sexually. At the same time its sensory capacity develops, and it gradually establishes relationships with things. On the whole, its expression of life is fully determined by the instinctive soul and its instincts, together with structural and functional properties in relation to the internal and external environment. Only at the end of the second year do reason and will begin to awaken. In later years the child can already freely choose for itself between good and evil. At the beginning of development, reason is inexperienced and works in unity with the instinctive soul. A child lacking an educator to guide, advise and explain is left to itself. Through its already developed dynamism, the animal vegetative-sexual-sensory soul takes the educator’s place, providing and setting its selfish and often perverse direction in life. The rational SELF is deformed, and natural qualities of temperament and character change.

A direction in life governed by drives and instincts creates a limited rational SELF that cannot assert itself in practical life through clear rational judgments. It remains predominantly in lower, instinctive spheres that provide pleasure to which it repeatedly returns. The self-satisfied SELF receives its existential foundation from willful, sensual and sensory instinctive experiences realized in its virgin esplana, determining the direction of further development in life. The child obstinately clings to emotional experiences from early childhood.

School education intervenes too late, and reeducation is difficult. The instinctively self-satisfied SELF remains fixed upon early developmental periods. The lower psychic life resists. We then encounter obstinacy, defiance, rage, conceit and hatred. Such a SELF detaches from external objects, concentrating and attaching itself to objects determined by lower psychic life.

In this type, the rational SELF remains occupied and captured throughout life by drives, that is, by the vegetative-sexual-sensory capacity, which continually maintains an active predominance. It never develops fully in reason and never becomes a being of higher qualities, morally free and creative. It lacks self-criticism and a healthy imagination.

The instinctive SELF demands and has material needs, chiefly sex, food, housing, games and sport, and in women, fussiness and vanity in dress. In public it wants to be admired and important; it longs for and pursues offices and prominent positions. Its spirit, like that of all animals, lives only from material reflex action and is incapable of free, abstract creative activity. It does not understand metaphysics. Its cultural development depends exclusively upon the cultural realization of its ancestors’ hereditary matter, which is either favorable or unfavorable to its development. Its character improves or deteriorates. In these people we see that culturally they never surpass their lineage.

The ruler of this type of person is the animal instinctive soul, whose being depends upon the existence of matter, the common hereditary legacy and agent of human bodies. From its innate nature this soul feels vigorous and capable of expression in a collective whole. Animal souls are potential, possible, throughout all matter. By this lawfulness their being instinctively tends toward the whole, the mass. Such an individual cannot produce a personality from within himself and cannot become self-reliant and independent. A strong personality capable of setting itself a proper goal in life is provided only by an educated faculty of reason and will, possessing intuition and inspiration for existence.

The demands of life in this self-satisfied type are governed predominantly by animal greed, in which treachery, cunning, deceit, ill will, envy, lies, theft, egoism and often masochism appear. A human being sometimes sinks so low, and is therefore dangerous and often worse than an animal.

The greater part of human society, with various deviations, falls into this backward and low type. Only well-chosen education of all three psychic faculties can bring humanity to true flourishing and humanity. If we educate the faculty of reason in moral qualities with a conscious, strong will, it becomes a higher faculty and influences the lower animal capacity, sublimating and ennobling its drives. A human being is not a mere mechanism or machine but a living being with an almost miraculous capacity for continual regulation. Living bodily matter, the genes, consists of dormant potentialities, and in every person something of all people exists; the hereditary qualities of genes can continually be improved.

(182c) Through ignorance of upbringing and the influence of a harmful environment, we can also raise types with a traumatic stimulus, neurotic types. Almost every instinctively self-satisfied type is marked by self-love and is therefore unreliable, weak in character and unprincipled in public, state, political, military, religious and other service. He cannot tolerate blows from outside and often betrays the program or idea he upholds. The neurotic type is more principled and constant, rarely abandoning his position.

Upbringing must begin in the very first days of a child’s life; otherwise unfavorable dispositions arise for reactions that society cannot tolerate. If these dormant dispositions are not recognized in early childhood from an educational standpoint and guided so that the individual learns to adapt to the world, serious disturbances threaten him in regard to his place in society.

We must understand the child adequately. In its first years it borrows the strength of its SELF; its strength arises by “leaning upon” someone, so that it can deal with its instinctive side and the real world. We must therefore have a healthy emotional relationship with it, so that a sudden change in its behavior toward deviations and dangerous traumas, caused by our own fault, does not escape us.

Today we also know which specific causes, as an accumulation of traumatic injuries, bring about childhood neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. They are specific disturbances in the course of sexual arousal experienced by every normal child. Few children, however, resolve the matter by themselves, and so they may develop with an impaired drive. Reasonable intervention is therefore needed so that, through the choice of proper upbringing and pedagogy from the standpoint of mental hygiene, psychic conflicts and thus neurosis (masturbation) are prevented. The aim of mental hygiene is to foresee the course a person’s mental development would take and when we can intervene where the dynamics of psychic processes are impaired.

(182d) The processes of sexual arousal and gratification show how mutually dependent mental and bodily hygiene are. Sexual hygiene is largely hygiene of the imagination. A practitioner of mental hygiene must thoroughly know the child’s inner life and its unconscious components, supplementing this knowledge with a clear general understanding of the psychic development of a healthy and normal person.

By nature a child is an emotional being, reacting strongly through the senses to external stimulation, and its excitability enables the educator to teach and raise it without hindrance.

In early childhood the conscious SELF is developed only slightly. The drives, by contrast, are relatively strong. During latency, between the sixth and twelfth years, the conscious SELF establishes its most important and strongest positions. Every child passes through a period of defiance during the normal development of its SELF. Some individuals experience it more severely, violently and for longer, especially children who were spoiled in their first years or, conversely, raised very strictly and harshly. Both these mistakes occur particularly in training for cleanliness.

During the period of defiance, every outburst in the child brings a storm of affect that passes into a complete blocking of the will. In this period the child is continually susceptible to anxiety and hatred concealed behind wild, defiant courage, alongside a strong longing for love and forgiveness. Many mental disturbances are caused by a neurotic environment and parents who cannot control themselves.

Breaking defiance, like breaking the will, especially by immediately resorting to beatings and threats, is a bad procedure. The educator has thought of nothing more useful than to behave obstinately and defiantly as well. He thereby causes forcible suppression from which negative conditioned reflexes may arise, evoking various kinds of fits, epilepsy or the falling sickness, infantile convulsions known as psotník or božec, and so forth.

Internal conflicts cause the child the greatest difficulties in maturing. The animal primitive within the child struggles, loses and wins in its battle with the cultivated human being imposed upon it, so that it may become moral and sociable. Defiance and refusal belong to developmental manifestations. Certain enduring experiences of conflict with educators in dealing with childhood defiance may play a role in the development of an unbalanced personality and in severe schizophrenia. Through proper upbringing and hygiene of defiance, we also prevent later affective spasms of the respiratory system, disturbances of sleep and speech and general neurosis, the so-called “illness of anticipation” of unpleasant things, menstruation, childbirth, public appearances, a trial and the like. The picture of childhood neurosis consists of unsuccessful repression, excessive fixation and the formation of disturbing symptoms.

The desire for movement, shouting, the destructive drive and attachment to primitive pleasures are natural instinctive expressions of a healthy child. We also see these traits in older people and entire nations. They have remained primitive children.

All the animal and sexual passion of the individual and of humanity is already contained in germ in the instinctive structure and instinctive psychic dynamics of the first five years of life. Its foundation is hereditary matter with its instinctive realization of ancestral experiences, and the instinctive capacity of the vegetative soul.

Only in times of severe conflicts and crises do these animal energies regroup and become a bond of love for the educator, though only sometimes, partially and temporarily, until the years of puberty, tending toward sublimation and spiritualization toward new goals. Heredity and educational influences create, already in the first five years, the pattern of the most important reactions to the demands of learning and growing up.

In its first two years a child is compliant. Only at the beginning of its third year can it understand the meaning of a prohibition and the need to be reasonably punished if it disobeys during the period of defiance. If we punish a child in its first two years, we suppress its relationships and trust; it becomes backward and in later years appears mentally inferior. Punishment without explanation and the ensuing defiance deafen and blind the clarity of understanding. We must avoid what arouses defiance and try to divert the child, for example toward play. In children excessively prone to anxiety, we prevent a neurotic disposition through play, for neurotic anxiety disrupts development. A child remains an instinctive and emotional being for a long time; reason awakens and assumes control only gradually. The child builds essential parts of its SELF from emotional experiences. An educator’s success in winning this primitive SELF as an ally depends upon the emotional strength of his approach to the growing child’s instinctive life and conscience.

The child later forgets the experiences that formed its emotional relationships in early childhood. Yet never entirely, because traces remain in the faded esplana. We speak of the repression of a content or representation. Many of these repressed experiences are very unpleasant. Others, for various reasons, have not yet been inwardly mastered; a conflict clings to them that the child could not resolve alone, and a complex forms. The complex revives when a teacher behaves like a person with whom the child formed a relationship in early childhood. The teacher thereby disrupts repression, so that the old unconscious conflict can easily be transferred to him. The conflict also erupts when the child defies the teacher. The teacher must understand the laws of transference well in order to judge the effect of his educational and purposeful interventions. Knowledge of the general theory of drives contributes to understanding each individual situation.

Unresolvable conflicts between drive and consciousness have been discovered at the core of neuroses. Illness appears when what has been repressed floods consciousness. The conscious SELF is healthy, but is overwhelmed by unresolved unconscious conflicts. In neuroses that began in childhood, we start with bodily and mental prophylaxis, in the sense of harmonizing bodily and psychic processes through upbringing. In treatment it is necessary to enlist the child’s healthy SELF as an ally and adapt it to its environment.

(182e) Prolonged childbirth also causes severe trauma. The child then displays anxiety, fear of something unknown. A neurotic child already has mental illness within it, all the more so if it is connected with an experience of pain. Every anxiety and fear disrupts the child’s development, increasing and reinforcing morbid sensitivity. If a child is sexually aroused, it concentrates poorly and easily forgets what it has already learned.

Fear and anxiety manifest themselves covertly, usually through disturbed heart activity, palpitations, homesickness, impaired muscular function, trembling, stomach and intestinal problems such as vomiting, diarrhea and constipation, loss of appetite, urinary incontinence, sleep disturbance, bed-wetting, nausea and headache. At other times anxiety passes into childhood neurosis; a phobia develops, fear of road traffic, dogs or horses, anxiety about examinations and stage fright; the child blushes, stammers and so forth. States of anxiety are conditioned by certain mistakes in the education of drives and conscience in early childhood. These arrested the emerging SELF, intimidated the conscience or caused them to develop pathologically. If groundless states of anxiety appear, their real cause must be investigated. It is necessary to advise, explain, converse, calm, encourage and strengthen the child mentally.

A normal child finds it difficult to master the early period of its first sexual development. Around the sixth year of life, however, the development of the drives enters a latent state. This makes learning and sublimation easier for the child. If anxiety neurosis persists in a pupil in later years, this means in most cases that it has not yet retreated into latency.

From twelve to sixteen years, the psychic manifestations of puberty begin, conditioned by the acquisition of reproductive capacity and the revival of sexuality. There is a kind of repetition of the first development of instinctive life in early childhood. These processes occur together with bodily growth and secretion from the sex glands, thymus, pituitary gland and so forth. We thus speak of a twofold beginning of human sexuality.

Between these two periods of heightened instinctiveness, between the development of drives in early childhood and puberty, lies the already mentioned period of latency, a time of comparatively calm development in which the child is readily receptive to sublimation and the principal parts of its personality develop. Overt manifestations of sexuality rarely occur during this time. Through positive or negative emotional relationships with people around it, the child forms its own personality. We speak of spiritual transference between child and adult. In its course, relationships revive that already existed in early childhood and were never inwardly mastered. This applies above all to the revival of strong relationships with one or both parents before and after puberty. Unconscious fixations from early childhood awaken. The individual going through puberty tries to avoid these conflicts through various defensive attitudes. The typical adolescent “young lout” adopts such an attitude. It usually manifests itself in an exaggerated emphasis upon a new and “excessive reason,” which is in fact a product of inner uncertainty and instability. In this period the defiance of early childhood is resurrected.

(182f) If the latency period was characterized by lively interest in concrete things, for example discoveries, adventurous journeys, collecting stamps, butterflies and beetles, sport, technology and so forth, this behavior changes in some individuals during puberty. They begin to occupy themselves passionately and exclusively with abstract matters such as philosophy, religion, politics, the meaning of life, questions of love, friendship and marriage. The everyday behavior of these adolescents is, of course, generally in enormous contrast to their thought processes. Their characteristic intellectualization is one expression of their dreaming. An experienced educator can usually bring the adolescent back to earth quite easily from the heights of abstract and obscure speculation. On the other hand, we must not conceal from ourselves that many theoretical scientists and scholars have emerged from such young people. In reality they never emerged from puberty. Depression, discontent and obsession also often arise. The discontented person suffers if he loses his object; the obsessed person suffers if he does not attain it. In both states a real danger of suicide can arise. Erotic conflicts and developing neuroses may be hidden behind obsession. The task of mental hygiene is to cultivate and support in every person the development of a strong SELF capable of resisting the danger of obsession.

In this period, falling in love with the other sex and experiencing the loss of that love may give rise to a fateful neurosis and later melancholy.

(182g) In a child suffering from vegetative neurosis, whose chief symptoms are nausea, disturbed sleep, lack of appetite, sweating, itching skin, cold hands and feet and so forth, mental disturbances predominate in the overall picture of the illness. Without an established cause the child loses its cheerfulness, stops laughing, does not speak or monotonously repeats the same words. It sits gloomily in a corner, complaining, sighing and frowning. It is apathetic and hostile toward its surroundings. Outbursts of anger and depression alternate. Some children strike out with their heads and hands, tear their hair and bite their fingers and nails, so that a picture of acute psychosis may develop. Sometimes impaired consciousness, delirium and hallucinations occur. In this case we treat not only the spirit but also the body, as I describe in the treatment of mental illnesses.

The foundation of tension in the educational atmosphere, where symptoms of illness and deviations of character occur, always includes, beside rational factors, instinctive-dynamic psychic factors.

Behind agitated and exaggerated zeal in an otherwise healthy-looking person, a threatening conflict or oppressive sense of guilt is usually concealed.

We repress and sublimate mistaken experiences, although a person would prefer to agree with his drives, for pleasure is precisely what accompanies them. During emerging conflicts, when the rational SELF struggles against them under the influence of conscience, fear, ethics and so forth, a sensitive individual develops inadequate sublimations and thus neuroses.

General disturbances of one’s own SELF, such as overstimulation and excitability, formerly regarded as constitutionally conditioned, loss of defensive capacity, susceptibility to anxiety and flight from one’s environment, may become permanent abnormalities unless mental hygiene intervenes in time.

Every neurosis, and individual psychoses as well, are trauma-induced transformations of the psyche.

The conscious SELF of neurotics suffers from overstimulation, excitability, loss of defensive capacity, susceptibility to anxiety and the like. Psychopaths who cannot transform their abnormality into a more cultured form and are incapable of sublimation, whose rational SELF exercises faulty censorship over psychic experiences, inevitably founder in adulthood. They reject society.

(182h) Every psychic trauma first brings a sudden overload that may immediately lead to a disturbance of the SELF and a temporary suspension of many functions. General disturbances appear. An accumulation of traumatic injuries giving rise to neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis is caused by various stimuli: a bad social environment, inconsistency, sexual seduction, excessive strictness, spoiling and other causes brought about by educators who cannot fully control themselves. Such and similar environments create neurosis and resist recovery.

Mental tension and shocks from dangerous situations stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and increase adrenaline secretion, resulting in higher blood pressure, blood sugar and blood flow to the tissues, and reduced movement and secretion in the digestive system.

We must devote special attention and care to children with physical disabilities. Do not provoke them; love them! If we belittle them, we raise a treacherous, debauched, mentally inferior, unclean, insolent, hot-tempered type, inaccessible to deeper feelings, who makes up for a lack of intelligence through insolence and brutality.

A physical disability leads to neurosis if the child is not loved or cannot love its caregivers. Above all, the essence of nervous illness must be sought in a disturbance of the SELF during childhood and puberty. The outbreak of mental illness depends upon an excessively strong conflict between drives and the SELF. Even if we create in a child the conditioned reflex that it can do nothing, “You mustn’t; you don’t know how,” without explaining everything appropriately, the child will develop less well and later develop a neurosis.

Success in maturing into a unified, conscientious personality with a firm will depends only partly upon heredity, for it is partly determined by the environment. Failure in the parents’ marriage profoundly affects the later failures or fate of the child born from it. The child suffers amid family disharmony, quarrels and insults between spouses. Such a child is frightened, now protesting defiantly, now excessively submissive. The child tries to moderate and balance this induced anxiety or continual susceptibility to anxiety both by suppressing drives and by uncontrolled instinctiveness, leading again to new conflicts and disturbances of the child’s soul. The more disharmony there is in the actual psychic contact between parents and children, the more readily attempts to raise the child through strictness and kindness, punishments and rewards fail. A lack of relationship within the family makes it harder for the growing child to develop into a healthy person. Divorced marriages, in which the child depends upon one embittered parent, greatly influence disturbed development.

The child develops an increased tendency toward anxiety, making the development of self-confidence more difficult. Anxiety thus becomes a fundamental quality retained into adulthood. Such a person is then so anxious in life that he cannot decide independently and cannot choose in situations requiring a choice. He is afraid both to enjoy and to deny himself reasonably; he is tossed between love and hatred and exaggerates the attacks society makes upon him in life’s struggle, instead of recognizing without anxiety the extent of the actual danger and averting it. Thus psychic misfortune is not infrequently carried from one unhappy family constellation into the next generation, without heredity’s influence. If the child is raised healthily within a happy marriage, the instinctive influx of energy leads it only toward healthy development.

Every individual can gain psychically by overcoming trauma, provided he processes it rationally as an experience and thereby removes its danger. Logical measures are necessary to reeducate an individual with a tendency to retreat into a personality with a combative attitude. Overcoming trauma is accelerated by the conscious SELF’s “pulling itself together,” remaining indifferent to internal traumatic symptoms, paying them no attention, rejecting and ignoring them. At the same time it selects a healthy external stimulus from the environment, society or nature for the spirit’s activity of thought. The soul has relationships with the external world. If we neglect them, they turn into relationships with inner traumas and their symptoms and become anxious hypersensitivity.

If we place someone in our care under treatment, he must not be discharged into his former environment immediately afterward. The connection with the caregiver should persist for a time and must be loosened only gradually.

Humanity cannot live without real support. By discovering the psychic conditions of early childhood and its traumatic disturbances, psychoanalysis has given mental hygiene new and effective means. A human being is formed not only by what is innate but chiefly by what he acquires.

21. The Subconscious

(183) The actual lower subconscious is the place of hidden forces, capacities and psychic stirrings, the source of thoughts, the birthplace of inventions, art, ingenious psychic aptitudes and so forth. All this can be awakened through diligence, brought into upper consciousness and stored for life in the esplana of the upper subconscious.

In subconscious activity, the will, judgment and ability to arrange thoughts toward a conscious goal are greatly constrained.

This subconscious, dwelling in the neurons of the gray cortex, is an independent activity in the soul, which resides chiefly in the gray substance, the cortex, the soul’s center. Subconscious psychic activity manifests itself in various ways:

In the fourth degree of hypnosis it operates independently, without our consciousness and without the esplana, upon which nothing from its psychic activity is impressed. A partial exercise of reason and will nevertheless occurs.

Under the influence of a hypnologist or a spiritist circle, it wishes or expects.

It also acts during conscious activity at important moments in life, in decisions made amid danger, daring acts, the creation of works of art, inventions and the like.

A mystic attains it through deep concentration, immersion in his SELF, in the furthest depths of the soul. At these sources of the moral law he feels divine peace and calm, a participation in bliss experienced from the source of the soul’s own essence, the likeness and image of God Himself. He knows true union with God, consisting in the mystic’s will being at one with God’s will.

(184) We attain a great work only through almost uninterrupted and persistent thought. We can bring inspiration into creative work by calling upon a psychic capacity to help conscious activity. For this subconscious higher SELF to be roused for our subconscious activity, we must work at it daily; inspiration will then come of itself.

Subconscious creative reason penetrates into conscious cognition in the form of logical structures. Thoughts that solve problems generally arrive suddenly, surprising the discoverer without warning. They provide our consciousness with already completed, resolved wholes, before whose genius every objective experience often yields. It is the spirit of constant activity, whose inward mobility has before it all concepts in the form of clear representations and ventures to draw conclusions from them. Many of these are taken from deeper layers of the human race’s primal experiences and occurrences, stored in the genes.

Under these circumstances conscious activity is decisive, while subconscious activity powerfully assists, advises and so forth.

It also operates during conscious activity in people who, through practice, will or illness, fall into hypnotic or magnetic sleep, ecstasy, when the third and fourth degrees of hypnosis alternate.

In this case subconscious activity gains the decisive influence. Conscious activity is in a passive state in which it cannot deliberate. It is a calm witness to the developed activity of the subconscious, offering no resistance, but itself records these events in the esplana, and upon return to a clear waking state becomes conscious of either the entire event or at least part of it.

In certain mentally ill people, conscious and entry-subconscious activity operate either simultaneously or with one predominating, producing chaos. This pathological activity of the soul is caused by the evocation of the lower-order subconscious.

(185) The soul’s continual subconscious activity does not appear to a subject as waves, flowing or rippling in the gray cortex, but as intense radiation while the cortex is completely still, for example when subconscious activity is evoked in hypnotic sleep. The cause of the intense radiation is oduší, with whose help the soul works. We consciously control scarcely a quarter of its entire capacity, while three-quarters remain confined by the subconscious in such a way that we cannot consciously encompass the whole, and seventy to ninety percent of this gift continually eludes us. If we were granted the ability to master the entire capacity of the gray cortex, both our reason and our will would increase.

Although some hidden gifts of the subconscious are already known from verified facts, we still face the hard question of why these hidden powers remain restricted for us. We do not know. Yet before our eyes lies a biblical account thousands of years old, mentioning the exceedingly perfect reason and perfect will of our first parents. They knew and understood much.

Only after the fall of our first parents, who were also deprived of other gifts and graces of God, did the darkening of reason and weakening of will occur.

(186) In hypnosis, especially the fourth degree, many unexpected psychic capacities can be awakened and evoked, particularly surprising in people with inadequate intellectual education. Rays of divine light, the light that once completely illuminated reason, have remained within it. For example, they speak and understand foreign languages so that someone who knows the language can converse with the subject; they produce admirable drawings, see into the past, psychometry, see spatially concealed objects, cryptoscopy, sense and reveal another person’s thoughts, telepathy, and see at any distance, spatial clairvoyance. I shall later give more evidence of various similar kinds. Not all subconscious capacities can be evoked, at most about ten to fifteen percent. The others remain in a potential state, awaiting expression in the future life.

This is proof that before their fall our first parents possessed heightened psychic capacity and were not strangers to the psychic gifts now hidden from us. These were natural to them, for they excelled in extensive knowledge and the harmonious ordering of the capacities of their own willing.

(187) As punishment for disobedience, their impairment occurred, a kind of exclusion from the brain’s activity. Its shape and appearance did not change, but the human soul lost its full claim upon its apparatus. The psychic SELF had to withdraw from most formations of the brain’s gray cortex into oduší, although previously its creative activity had fully corresponded to the divine gifts. A kind of restriction and confinement within certain lawful bounds occurred. The soul did not have to abandon any neuron entirely, but from that moment it could unfold within it only in a limited way, in the fluid of oduší. The excluded place remained separated from the conscious SELF, so that, no longer having a claim upon the delimited arrangement of neurons, it could not be aware of itself in them, although the soul is fully connected with them. We see that this is so in experiments in the hypnotic state, where the whole gray cortex is again active without waves or rippling, but with an exceptionally increased illumination and vibration of oduší. Yet after awakening the conscious SELF knows nothing of what it said, did, saw or experienced in deep sleep. In this case we work directly with the soul, without the SELF of upper consciousness. During waking, the subconscious psychic SELF is incapable of doing anything without the conscious SELF. The joining of the two belongs to God, and if we do it ourselves, confusion, a state of derangement, arises in the subject upon awakening.

With the soul’s loss of its full claim upon the brain, the cognitive and volitional faculties weakened, along with other gifts. The darkening of reason and weakening of will brought psychic misery and an inclination toward evil.

(188) Here it is not enough merely to wave a hand contemptuously and say, “That is a biblical fairy tale for little children.” We must reflect upon the remarkable agreement between the biblical account and observation of the soul in the hypnotic state, when we work with the subconscious and that excluded psychic activity manifests itself. This assessment of reason requires unprejudiced, philosophically trained reason, unspoiled by philosophy, of course, proceeding in experiments from epistemology and empiricism. We must pause over the phenomenon that, most often in sensitives who fall into the fourth degree of hypnosis, we encounter another psychic SELF, different from the conscious SELF. What is peculiar is that this subconscious SELF is not at all acquainted with the SELF of upper consciousness. I was particularly surprised, in people who utterly disbelieved in the soul’s existence and eternity, that this subconscious SELF completely refused to obey a command to look into the activity of its upper subconscious, the esplana, and was displeased when compelled to do so. This subconscious SELF was horrified on becoming conscious of the deeds stored in the esplana and absolutely refused to acknowledge them as its own. It saw psychic misery, the horror of sins and the defilement of its soul. The same followed when it became conscious of evil deeds that had passed into soul-consciousness, and only upon an emphatic command did it reluctantly reveal the deeds impressed upon the soul.

Explanation:

(189) 1. The preceding paragraph must not be understood to mean that two souls exist together in our body.

In consciousness the soul perceives and expresses itself through our senses. But if we place a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis, an extranatural phenomenon is evoked. In this state the soul cannot express itself through the senses unless compelled by the hypnologist or trained through its own cultivated abilities. With the same SELF it withdraws into the subconscious state, where it contemplates and perceives directly through oduší.

Because in this state it cannot look into the esplana, being deprived of free action, it has no knowledge of what occurred in consciousness in the natural state and therefore does not recognize it; it behaves freely and independently. True knowledge of itself, of both SELVES, occurs after separation from matter, the body.

Under the hypnologist’s guidance or through its own ability, one or more senses through which it perceives or expresses itself can be awakened. In this state the subconscious SELF awakens in its higher capacities.

The normal faculties have entirely ceased, and therefore it does not know the conditions of the SELF in the conscious state, because it cannot look into the places in the esplana containing its deeds.

The subject hears, sees, feels, perceives and so forth without the mediation of the senses. At the hypnologist’s command it can see, hear, taste, feel and so forth directly through oduší, but it is also possible to apply the subconscious SELF to any sense. Liberation from the coarse body perfects the soul, freeing it from the bonds of matter.

(190) 2. If I wish to communicate with the subject, I must awaken the faculty of speech, which the soul controls directly from subconscious activity. What it experiences and says in this state, however, is not impressed upon the esplana.

The soul acts more freely and openly, freed from matter’s imperfection. It follows that the conscious and subconscious SELVES are independent, mutually autonomous activities within one and the same soul.

An event, an experienced deed, stored in the esplana fades from them if it is ordinary and unimportant to us, but passes into soul-consciousness. Very often evil deeds that have entirely vanished from the upper subconscious trouble the soul in natural sleep, being recalled from soul-consciousness, while the soul also resides in oduší.

In the subconscious, fully evoked by hypnosis, the soul itself speaks to us. If we address a question about the soul to the subconscious SELF, it answers that it is immortal, pure spirit, acknowledges God and urges obedience to His commandments. During public experiments, some spectators ask the sleeping person through the hypnologist, “Which church gives us God’s true revelation?” The sleeper remained silent for a moment and then said, “The Catholic Church.” Everyone present was surprised, for the sleeper belonged to a different faith. When told that he belonged to another church, he denied it and was displeased when ordered to look into his esplana and become aware that this was so. The researcher will ask what religious confession the hypnologist belongs to; the answer is Roman Catholic. He will therefore suppose that the hypnologist influenced, transmitted or supplied awareness for the subject’s earlier statement. If he chose to believe this, he would be greatly mistaken. The hypnologist sometimes very much wishes the subject to speak according to his wishes, but in vain. The subject always emphatically defends his own knowledge. Another example demonstrates this: hypnologist D., who did not believe in a personal God, asked whether God exists and received from the subject he had put to sleep the answer that God does exist.

(191) In the fourth degree of hypnosis, the subject’s soul exercises its capacities: the liberty and freedom of spirit with spatial presence, in which it contemplates and knows everything directly. Dependence of the subject upon the hypnologist’s intellect is the soul’s unfreedom. Only an incapable subject unable to enter the fourth degree, reaching only the second or third, draws his statements from the upper subconscious, the esplana, of the hypnologist or other people.

I put similar questions to other subjects, always, of course, before witnesses. When told after awakening that they had spoken contrary to their views of life, some were astonished and would not have believed it without witnesses. Others reflected.

Why does every spiritist medium, without exception, acknowledge a personal God?

It is precisely through the sensitive in his subconscious that we arrive at the firm conviction that the human soul is Christian and immortal by nature. This knowledge of the soul’s immortality exists in every person, but is darkened because it is suppressed by the desires of the body and the world. Only in the last moments of life, but also in illness, does the psychic SELF break through from the subconscious into consciousness until it establishes itself there. Then a person seeks the priest whom he previously rejected, wanting him to bring relief; the priest immediately becomes sympathetic to him, and both agree upon the soul’s immortality.

I repeat that the fourth degree of hypnosis is necessary; upper consciousness must have disappeared entirely. This degree of sleep with the subconscious SELF is most capable of all manifestations. The other degrees of sleep are merely preliminary and therefore inadequate; conscious activity has not yet ceased.

(192) Today’s materially minded people do not know it and know nothing of its hidden gifts, which, as later paragraphs will show, are surprising.

This degree of the subconscious, from which true knowledge of God and sin proceeds, is the state in which, with the person fully conscious, God spoke to human beings in the Old Testament and they could speak with God.

If we wish to be soundly worthy of the gift of the subconscious, rather than as charlatans in so-called black magic, we must adapt ourselves and approach its qualities, for this psychic SELF demands it. Only when we remove vice after vice and draw ever nearer to God does it open to us, allowing us to glimpse its possessions and wealth of supernatural beauties and divine gifts.

Then the subconscious suddenly makes itself known and penetrates into the person even in the waking state, giving inner calm, greater judgment, conscience, instinct, a brilliant idea, artistic creative power and intuition that often illuminates entire groups of mysteries like lightning. The subconscious is the source of the human being’s most exalted part, his divine principle.

The saints have attained, experienced and deserved this most of all. Their miracles are known, and even the best hypnologist must regard them from a respectful distance, acknowledging his own weakness.

(193) The lower, deepest subconscious, the soul’s activity in oduší at the gray cortex, has no esplana. But everything stored in the upper subconscious, in the esplana, simultaneously passes into soul-consciousness, as does everything the soul acquires directly. Only at the hypnologist’s command is a completely forgotten deed that once existed in the esplana renewed and passed through the gray cortex.

In these cases I was always interested in my subject, Mr. K., who could look into those places in his esplana where the event once resided and determine precisely what was now stored there in place of the earlier event. After awakening he was always surprised when I revealed a secret of his about which he no longer knew anything at all, but which he remembered anew when it was recalled from the soul. He was surprised when I told him what was now kept in the original places, and always wondered how I had learned it.

The soul’s subconscious activity never rests; in oduší no fatigue occurs, but constant activity. It needs no respite even in sleep, when body and senses rest. On the contrary, the more the body falls silent and the more the soul is freed from the pressure of consciousness and animal thinking, the more intense the activity of the subconscious becomes.

(194) Human personality is not merely a collection of conscious reactions, but also includes unconscious, subconscious processes. The subconscious is an important part of the human psyche. The role of consciousness is protective and balancing. The subconscious mind holds contents unavailable to consciousness and also preserves qualities and traits that the waking personality possesses only to a very slight degree. The conscious SELF is a complex, a small bright island in the ocean of subconscious life.

The human soul has great, unsuspected capacities in the subconscious. As an example I shall use subject K. In the waking state I place before him writing in a foreign language completely unknown to both him and me, which we do not read. The subject glances over it with interest, word by word, without reading it. We must not read the writing so that no one can object that we have impressed its content upon memory, upon the esplana.

I then place the subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis, call his subconscious activity into expression, read him the first sentence, set the writing aside and ask him to continue. The subject immediately follows on fluently, as if reading. To establish accuracy, someone present can record his recitation and compare it afterward. Thus we have evidence that the soul in the subconscious state has the ability to understand directly, rapidly and certainly, unlike the conscious state, in which it manifests its faculties through the brain and esplana and supplies knowledge acquired piecemeal as though from a storehouse; in other words, it expresses itself. Phenomena occurring beyond the boundaries of psychological laws are called metapsychic.

(195) In the subconscious state the soul preserves everything known in its own soul-consciousness. In the waking state it stores what is known in the esplana and in soul-consciousness.

The conscious and subconscious SELVES are two different states proceeding from one and the same substance of the soul.

A manifestation of consciousness does not also produce a manifestation of the subconscious, for these are independent, mutually autonomous activities. During conscious activity we do not discern the soul’s activity in the subconscious.

Through effort, fervent longing and strenuous willing, and if we are perfectly adapted to the soul’s qualities and value, certain gifts shine through from the subconscious into consciousness.

It is very difficult to understand the relation of the conscious SELF’s state to the subconscious SELF’s state, and conversely. Between them lies a great gulf, sometimes bridged at extraordinary moments.

In the state of the conscious SELF, we have knowledge of the subconscious SELF’s state if research through subjects has informed us about it.

In the subconscious state, our subconscious SELF has no knowledge of the conscious state, of the capacities of our reason and free will.

(196) The subconscious SELF is continually active, which we do not observe in the conscious state. If we ask the subconscious SELF and give it the appropriate command, it manifests its great capacities: for example spatial visions into past and present, cognitive ability, artistic gifts, languages, drawings, the movement and transport of objects without contact, materialization and others, but only insofar as we have specified the task.

After completing its mission, it returns of itself to its own activity, but to the body’s potentiality. Let us understand: the subconscious SELF is continually active, yet the aptitudes, capacities and qualities of both soul and matter are in a potential state for the subconscious SELF’s activity.

It follows that in the subconscious state the soul is bound to corporeality and cannot act freely, unlike the conscious state, in which it expresses itself entirely freely and rationally.

The subconscious SELF is also an unsuspected foundation of other aptitudes and capacities, but in this life it lacks the conditions necessary for their manifestation.

In some sensitive people, under strain of will and danger to life, subconscious activity spontaneously manifests itself beside conscious activity and snatches the person from danger in time. Many people who went through the greatest battles of the world wars returned home uninjured and recount the strange chance by which they escaped death. Because I knew that the cause was subconscious activity through the release of oduší, in which it participates spatially, I tested them through suggestion and found that I was right. They were sensitive people, sensitives. Yet everything proceeds from one and the same essence of the soul, whether in the subconscious or conscious state.

(197) The human soul does not develop or grow together with the body, but is already at creation a simple, immeasurable, perfect and undilutable substance with free will and reason. No one should therefore be surprised that automatic writing appears in small children, even infants, or writing in a foreign language unknown to the child. This is evidence of the existence of the immortal soul and its subconscious activity, manifesting and radiating from the child’s subconscious.

Locke’s proposition, “There is nothing in the intellect that was not in the senses,” upon which materialists and monists build their teaching, belongs to the past. It should correctly read: “There is nothing in the material esplana that did not first pass through the senses.” The senses and esplana are only one path to knowing the world. The human soul, however, has other, direct paths. It possesses unknown aptitudes and capacities that can manifest themselves in a transcendent state. In deep trance the soul not only masters all our knowledge and understanding at once but extends it to things not yet known. In deep trance it can recite poems it has not learned, solve difficult arithmetic problems in a few seconds, create material and semimaterial formations, divide its psychophysical being into two, bilocation, increase its bodily weight or levitate, play any musical instrument, speak foreign languages, acquire knowledge of history and so forth. We learn all this experimentally by investigating unknown phenomena. An example: the parents of a nineteen-month-old child, now the teacher Mrs. Peřinová, recorded the following incident. While the child slept, people were discussing Sienkiewicz’s Quo Vadis? None of those present could remember the heroine of the novel who was thrown to the lions. The child sat up in its sleep and said loudly, “Lygia.” That was the heroine’s name. Then it lay down again and slept on.

In the city of Coimbra, the priest Ignatius Martinez of the Society of Jesus experienced the following: while he was teaching catechism and no one would recite the given prayer, a six-month-old child recited it to everyone’s astonishment.

Knowledge and understanding in the soul’s transcendent state are not a priori, innate or already given in finished form. The rational soul is God’s image and possesses innate higher faculties and aptitudes independent of matter, through which in an instant it masters all knowledge and understanding otherwise difficult to acquire. The soul exercises these higher psychic capacities already in the first months after birth.

Someone will object: “Why should I learn languages, music, history or other sciences alongside my occupation and experience, when my soul masters all this in the subconscious and it belongs to it?” Yes, the objection is correct. Every one of our souls possesses these gifts, but it is earthly humanity that invented and created all these things. Only the soul in deep trance has the ability to reproduce them all without learning.

There is a difference between capacities and merits. Merit belongs only to someone who makes an effort, educates himself and creates of his own will.

The soul’s activity in the subconscious, resting upon the innate moral law, is Christian and morally pure. Yet it lacks the merit of having been applied in practice in this world, through one’s own reason and will, for human good and human goals.

(198) The human spirit can continually be perfected. This is a great gift from God. After death everyone begins the path toward higher perfection from the point reached through his efforts and merits in this present life. Whoever has accomplished and gained more will be credited with more and will begin his further journey from this height of perfection. Let no one persuade himself that death is the end of everything!

When people were dying, I put the most advanced sensitive to sleep and brought him into the fourth degree of hypnosis to observe how the soul detaches itself at death.

In every case death occurred without any distressing death symptoms. The soul’s detachment was peaceful; a kind of freedom, liberation and sweet fatigue arose through the gradual dying of all five senses. Touch died first, then sight, with hearing last, as the sleeper reported to me while remaining closely psychically connected with the dying person through oduší. There can be no question of a death struggle, a violent tearing of the soul from the body, torments or pain. The death struggle interrupted by convulsions, fainting and rattling breaths already lies outside consciousness. The soul lacks the strength to set the dying cells of the gray cortex in motion so that consciousness might awaken. This description refers to dying from illness.

(199) I shall give an example in which the subject himself was suddenly swept away by the aforementioned liberty and freedom of the dying person’s soul, so that he told me, “I’ll go with him! Be quiet; it’s beautiful!” When I commanded him, “You are in my power; you cannot!” he utterly refused obedience. This is a trying moment for the hypnologist. Only speed and readiness in magnetizing prevent catastrophe, namely the subject’s death. He answered my words, “You have no power over me!” and was already detaching himself, joined with the dying person’s soul.

Then something happened that surprised and helped me. Suddenly he reported that he would no longer go, that the deceased person’s soul was tormented by the revelation of all the deeds of its life, that he had seen and knew much but was not permitted to tell. I objected to the subject that the man was already dead and he could not remain connected with him. The sleeper replied that he could, because the deceased’s soul remained directly in the oduší still within and around the body, which cannot be observed with the eyes. “You see the body as already dead, but it will still be a long time before the soul leaves it entirely.”

The deceased’s friends asked me to force disclosure of the secret the sleeper had perceived at the man’s death. I tried and succeeded by requiring, at the subject’s request, everyone present to leave, so that I remained alone with the deceased and the subject. The subject instructed me beforehand not to reveal anything he told me, because it displeased the Most High. I promised and learned of a grievous crime. Because the survivors pressed for its disclosure and I wished to verify the truth, I revealed the secret. Yet no one knew anything directly about it. Only later, through investigation, did we learn who had been responsible for a serious and unexplained evil deed. The disclosure benefited the deceased, because the survivors made amends for his crime.

The consequence of revealing the secret was that this subject never disclosed any further secrets to me, even on command.

(200) The soul can be observed as long as it remains connected with oduší, for several hours. Direct communication with it is not possible, however. Only an advanced subject can serve as an intermediary for communication. He can readily perceive scenes from the past life directly from the esplana.

The soul gradually detaches itself from oduší as well, until it is entirely free of it. After that it is no longer possible to communicate with the deceased person’s soul, and it is merely a fairy tale if someone imagines that in a spiritist circle friends may chat with a dead person through a medium.

For us the warning remains that neither good nor evil disappears after death, and may make the soul happy or unhappy.

Let us not imagine that in the passage from this temporal life to life after death, during dying and immediately afterward, the dying person is conscious of nothing. That is a great mistake. The soul is constant Activity and can never enter a state of inactivity or unconsciousness, for this does not occur even in artificial or natural sleep. Only the matter of the gray cortex and the matter of the immeasurable worlds of esplana, the upper subconscious, rest. We must not think the dying person observes us with his eyes as we observe him. From general signs and rules we conclude that death has already arrived and the deceased knows nothing of the world or of us, his loved ones, standing dejectedly at his deathbed.

(201) As already stated, the senses die first. The soul abandons them forever, together with its oduší. During normal waking, when soul, oduší and body are contained within one another, the soul can distinguish its surroundings through oduší only by the senses of its physical body. As soon as the senses die, the entire gray cortex immediately dies, and the soul passes into a state similar to that of a subject we have brought into the fourth degree of hypnosis. The difference is that the soul’s subconscious activity with oduší is already outside the nervous center, outside the neurons of the gray cortex; during artificial or natural sleep the soul with its oduší never leaves the gray cortex. The oduší gradually frees itself from the body and gathers around the deceased’s head. From there he sees and observes us, through our own fault. As can scarcely be otherwise, we call to the deceased, weep for him, are in a state of mental tension and devote ourselves wholly to him. All this has the effect of binding him to us and bringing him into consciousness, for the human soul, as long as it is joined with the exceedingly subtle matter of oduší, is not yet entirely free. A deceased person can be awakened to life on the first day only because the soul, dwelling in oduší and not yet having left matter entirely, again permeates the whole body. Lamentation and calling acted suggestively here.

(202) Why, however, does a deceased person brought back to life know nothing of the other world? He usually says that he heard some roaring, a loud bang and the like. This is natural. When the soul leaves conscious activity, it cannot store anything from the second psychic state in the upper subconscious, in the esplana, because in its SELF, reason and will it has temporarily left the gray cortex and esplana. Everything remains in the soul’s consciousness. When the soul is entirely free of matter, it will become conscious of everything within itself.

Here I must alert every weak hypnologist and warn him against such an experiment, for the subject may die, swept away by pleasant impressions as the observed person is dying. Great knowledge, presence of mind, skill and faith on the hypnologist’s part are absolutely necessary.

In the pure subconscious there is, in a potential state, an unsuspected source of the subconscious SELF’s capacities and powers, which can be used for conscious activity. We reach the subconscious SELF through conscious willing and practice, gradually through the entry subconscious, or through hypnotic sleep. Through ignorance, all degrees of the subconscious can, through mistaken upbringing or self-education, but also through fright, fear, unhealthy suggestion and autosuggestion, degenerate into the pathological lower-order subconscious. Diseased complexes form in which the subconscious SELF becomes independent and personified, then acts outwardly according to them. Mental illness arises.

In human life, success and truth can be attained philosophically and rationally. Subconscious activity can assist this.

(203) It is known that the greatest giants of the spirit, for example Socrates, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, entered a contemplative state, deep concentrated meditation, and remained in it for hours. Socrates admitted that when he reached the deepest truth, it was not he who spoke but his inner voice. What else is this inner voice but the subconscious SELF called into consciousness?

No one can create outstanding works without inner inspiration.

Deep within us lies an admirable and infinite store of knowledge, wisdom, beauty and harmony. We can call upon these qualities to inspire our work, thought and life. Through concentration we can pass from the material world into the immaterial, mental realm.

We must begin with faith and proceed in good spirits, with hope, confidence and optimism that truth, discoveries and solutions can be reached.

To penetrate the depths of the mind, the bodily senses must be compelled to rest and the eyes remain closed. To achieve success through prolonged effort in intense concentration, we hold our subject in mind. Forgetting ourselves, we must immerse ourselves entirely in a state of complete passivity, yet remain wholly alert and conscious.

Advanced concentration, or contemplation, consists in fixing attention upon a single thought, object, composition or person, letting it rest there without entering into further thinking about it. In concentration and deep reverie concerning our problem, invention and other questions, illumination comes to us from the subconscious. We discover new and highly valuable tactics. Everything depends upon the degree of self-forgetfulness, of body and world, attained through complete concentration. From this mental searching also comes the exalted splendor of spiritual calm. It is calm amid activity.

To achieve success, it is necessary to practice daily at exactly the same time for fifteen to twenty minutes. By this path of contemplation we hand our matter over to subconscious activity for resolution.

22. The Passage of Thoughts to the Cerebellum

(204) In its surface the cerebellum resembles the cerebrum, with the difference that its convolutions, ridges and grooves appear smaller and denser.

In a newborn, the cerebellum’s surface is undeveloped and unsettled; each of its capacities must be brought under control, and the motor nerves refined and made independent. The same is true in an adult. If, for example, we wish to master violin playing, typing, football and the like, this practice must somehow be reflected, instilled and impressed in a certain part of a lobe’s convoluted ridge on the surface of the cerebellum. Learning an activity, attaining skill and practice in it therefore take considerable time, until the capacity becomes completely independent. Then we need only think of it and can type or play the violin without having to concentrate strenuously upon it. Some people handle instruments in a positively mechanical manner. We say that they think with one side and work with the other.

The cerebellum is thus an intermediary and complement in the realization and outward expression of our thoughts. No visible manifestation of the body can take place without the participation of the relevant capacity of the cerebellum.

The cerebellum’s activity is further assisted by automatic clusters, the familiar ganglia, available to it so that it does not become overloaded and overworked.

(205) Let us now picture the transmission of a thought to the cerebellum, the activity between the two brains and the passage to the motor nerves.

We wish to raise a hand. The thought manifests itself as a wave motion in the gray cortex, is instantly impressed upon a luminous esplano, and at the same moment passes from our SELF through the inner nerves of the cerebrum, through the medulla oblongata, which vibrates, into the center of the cerebellum, and onward through connecting nerves to the little lobes, where it evokes the capacity to control our hands. From there it passes through returning nerves through the center of the cerebellum and the continuing nerves of the spinal cord and its automatic clusters, as far as the nerves of our hand, which we then raise.

This process occurs at an astonishing speed, with the speed of lightning, so that we scarcely notice the interval between willing and performance, as, for example, in a virtuoso’s piano playing.

Movements that are not habitual occur under the cerebrum’s continual action upon the cerebellum. Only habitual and mechanical movements, after a preceding wish, are carried out by auxiliary ganglia during the cerebellum’s independent activity.

We can send a thought from the cerebrum to the cerebellum without yet carrying it out, holding it back, because we have absolute influence over it. Such a thought does not return to its point of origin but remains unfulfilled in a little lobe of the cerebellum.

(206) Strong thoughts and fully formed goals that we wish one day to realize in practice pass into the cerebellum by that very fact and await a suitable time for expression. If we cannot accomplish these goals, they remain alive in both brains because of various circumstances standing in the way. Since such completed thoughts are neither dealt with nor discharged, the result is expansion of the cerebellum and congestion of its blood vessels, while in the cerebrum the esplana and their nodes radiate and the medulla oblongata continually vibrates, bringing about a state of nervousness.

After a longer time, pain develops at the back and crown of the head, together with various other difficulties. With the continually increased influx of blood needed to sustain these thoughts, which occurs at the expense of the digestive system, the vessels continue to widen and both brains enlarge. They draw closer together, with derangement appearing.

Through enforced rest and a thoughtless state, the brains are gradually restored to normal, and the derangement disappears for a time. When the unfulfilled thoughts flare up again, confusion returns, as will be discussed further later.

23. Brain Activity in Hypnotic Sleep

(207) It is interesting to observe brain activity in hypnotic sleep. Usually before witnesses, I put several sensitives to sleep at once. I commanded a clairvoyant subject to observe the cerebrums of all the sleepers and report every change to me.

He immediately extended his capacity and clearly and precisely reported the degree of sleep each person was in. For example, he said, “The one on the left isn’t asleep; he hears everything, but cannot open his eyes or move.” “How do you know?” I ask. “Because the whole gray substance is active, just as if he weren’t asleep,” he replies. I go to the person indicated and ask, “Do you hear what we have just been saying?” He answers, “Yes, I hear you and know everything; I just cannot open my eyes, move or control my limbs.” I ask the clairvoyant further, “What is the gray cortex doing in the others?” He replies, “That last one also has his gray cortex active, but only slightly. He’s dreaming something and will be able to remember it, because occasional stronger vibrations are occurring in his lower esplana.” Observing the brain’s surface in the others, he reports that they are all completely asleep, nothing moves in their gray cortex, and they know nothing, until suddenly he says, “That one there is going to wake up!” I say, “How can that be? He hasn’t even moved!” I test his sleep and become convinced that he is sleeping deeply. But the clairvoyant insists, “He’ll wake up! His whole gray cortex is unfolding at intervals. There, again!” None of those present sees any sign of awakening. The clairvoyant reports, “He’s waking up now! There—there, he’s awake!” And indeed, at the last word Mr. Z. opened his eyes, looked around at us and said with a certain humor, “What are you all staring at me for?” We explain that we knew two minutes in advance that he would wake up.

(208) At that moment the clairvoyant reports, “The one beside you will wake up too! You are all thinking of awakening, and in him it is acting upon the protosplana of the cerebellum. This makes the medulla oblongata vibrate; the thought passes to the gray cortex, and a gentle wave motion begins and grows stronger.” Within the next four minutes the clairvoyant specified the moment when the person would wake up, which indeed happened.

Of the other sleepers, who were more sensitive, the clairvoyant reported that they were sleeping deeply and would not awaken until I woke them myself. This I then did, under the clairvoyant’s careful observation.

After awakening, I asked the person whom the clairvoyant had reported as dreaming, “What did you dream?” “I don’t know,” he says. I reply, “But you do! Remember! The clairvoyant said you would remember!” Then he says, “Ah, now I know. What a pity you woke me from it. I dreamed that two boys were dividing roasted potatoes; they were arguing, and I was just waiting to see whether they’d fight.” He gives us a detailed account of the dream he experienced.

(209) Through continual observation of waking people by clairvoyant subjects, I became convinced that a waking person has both cerebrum and cerebellum active. The gray cortex undulates and ripples, the medulla oblongata vibrates, the individual ridges on the cerebellum’s surface contract and unfold, and the nerve bundles tremble: activity is everywhere.

By contrast, from the experiment described and many hundreds of others with sleeping people, we find complete inactivity of the nervous center in sleepers, so that the gray cortex, medulla oblongata and cerebellum are at rest, as the clairvoyants report.

As soon as even the slightest activity occurs in any part, however, a capable subject draws our attention to it and announces in advance what will happen. Such observations are very interesting, and I therefore give another example: I was observing a one-year-old girl who was ill. Among other things, I asked the subject to look into the esplana of the cerebrum and see what was taking place there. He said, “I see nothing; it’s all empty. Only one little node shines more brightly, and there’s something else there, but it shines very little.” I therefore command, “Tell me what the brighter node contains. You can sense it!” For a moment there is complete silence; the subject strains and does not breathe, until suddenly he jerks and says, “I know.” I command, “What do you know? Speak!” He replies, “Well, it’s hardly worth mentioning. When her mother slaps her for something, she immediately hits her mother back.” The surprised Mrs. R. confirms that this is true and that she cannot break her daughter of the habit.

From this we see that the mother had not known how to suppress the child’s innate vindictiveness at its beginning. To the subject it appeared as an established little node that shines and, when stimulated, shines still more brightly.

How the clairvoyant senses thoughts will be explained later.

24. Protosplana

(210) As I established through many experiments with subjects, on the surface of the cerebellum, on its upper part at the endings of nerves leading from the medulla oblongata, we have a certain kind of little cloud in a chainlike row almost one centimeter long. These possess the peculiar quality of being sensitive to changes in weather in nonmagnetic people. Particularly in the evening, during natural or artificial sleep, they are active and telepathically receive impacts from wandering siloton particles of thought-fluid, namely concepts and manifestations of the psychic activity of people throughout the world. I have called these little clouds “protosplana.”

In experiments I observed that in many people they are not very sensitive. Such people have few dreams. In young sensitives, however, they are healthily active. These people have many dreams and in the morning describe what a strange dream they had, saying they would never themselves have thought of anything like it.

(211) I established that these protosplana are an associated activity of the subconscious. We cannot consciously use this splendid gift of the soul. Only in sleep, in the subconscious SELF, do impressions and phenomena captured in the protosplana bring the soul into extraordinary activity.

What purpose does this serve, when sleep should restore us? Here it occurs to me that this is one of the now restricted gifts of our first parents, to whom, before the fall, this property of the protosplana was undoubtedly consciously natural.

During sleep, while the cerebellum rests, the protosplana seem to awaken to life. They receive the nourishment necessary for their activity in a manner similar to the esplana of the cerebrum, namely through the evaporation of nutrients in the form of radiant energy.

(212) The protosplana have the same entirely special fluid nature, as little material as possible. In examining them, I conducted many experiments with good subjects under sleep, some of which I shall describe:

Privately before witnesses, I stated in advance what I would undertake. I then put sensitive H. to sleep, and also clairvoyant subject R. as a check. After a longer interval, during which sleep had prepared the protosplana for activity, I began through willpower alone to act upon the sleeping H., attacking him with an intense thought and representation that rain was falling outside and a storm was breaking.

After a while, clairvoyant R. noted vibrations in the protosplana and medulla oblongata, and soon afterward a gentle wave motion in the gray cortex. This artificially brought about and partly awakened the activity of the conscious SELF, but only in certain regions of the gray cortex, where awareness in the soul’s conscious SELF arose with the help of the esplana that had captured the impressions of my assailing thought. The other sleeping regions remained motionless and still. In this way I also disturbed the subconscious in its independent activity. For more detail, see the chapter “Natural Sleep.”

I vividly imagine lightning and thunder during a heavy downpour. At that moment we ourselves visibly observed a slight jerk in sensitive H.’s body. Immediately afterward I wake him suddenly so that the impression remains intact in the consciousness of the gray cortex, with the cooperation of the upper subconscious. The sleeper awakens with the words, “What a downpour!” We interrupt him: “There was lightning and thunder too.” “That’s what frightened me,” H. confirms, astonished that we know about it too.

(213) Another experiment: I was visiting the K. family, all of whom are good sensitives. As I was leaving, I noticed that Miss R. was preparing for bed. On the way home I formed the intention of suggesting a dream at a distance into her protosplana. I lay down in bed and vividly pictured R., with a strong desire that she should see me too. I transmit a vivid image of snow falling and the two of us going sledding on a familiar hill. We sit on the sled together and set off; our speed increases, we are almost flying, but a dangerous bend lies ahead. Now we are in it, snow flies up, and we crash violently into a telegraph pole. There is a cracking sound. Thrown from the sled, I get up and say to the young woman in alarm, “Are you hurt?” I abruptly break off the scene, forcibly withdrawing my thoughts from R.’s presence, and want to sleep. I could not fall asleep; I was disturbed by momentary fragmentary images from the event I had experienced, as a result of the vibration and expansion of the luminous esplana. Through my will I brought the esplana into their normal state so that they would close. The vibration and representation of the event ceased. I fall asleep.

The next day I met R. Remembering my experiment, I begin a conversation: “I had a strange dream last night.” “So did I,” she says, “about you.” “Now I’m curious. Tell me!” The young woman thinks for a moment, laughs and says, “I can, but it was nothing. Listen. I don’t even know how it happened. I was dreaming about something else, and suddenly snow began to fall into it.” She said this almost to herself. Then she continues: “Ah! It was snowing, and suddenly I saw you with a sled, and you wanted us to go riding together.” At this she burst into loud laughter. “Well, what happened next?” I ask. “We found ourselves on some hill, but I can’t remember which. We sat on the sled, you steered, and off we went. Ha-ha-ha,” she laughed. “Why are you laughing?” I ask. “You steered strangely, and we hit something beside the road and immediately tipped over. Thank goodness it was a dream!” she says with relief. “And what happened next?” I urge her to continue. “I woke up from it and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

We find that the telepathic suggestion to the protosplana succeeded apart from minor deviations. She failed to receive only my images of the particular hill and the telegraph pole.

(214) I shall give another example: I put my twelve-year-old son B. to sleep and informed the witnesses in writing that I would wish the sleeper to raise his head and bow it to his chest fifteen times in succession. The experiment succeeded completely. Here I had to act upon the protosplana through observation and strong will, directing the head’s movements. As soon as I stopped acting after the fifteenth movement, he no longer raised his head automatically.

I also successfully conducted many experiments with people sleeping naturally. I sat on a chair beside their bed and acted upon their protosplana merely by transmitting thoughts. I brought them into conversation and also caused them to get out of bed and lie down again. Responses to the thoughts I transmitted succeeded in about forty to fifty percent of cases. The remainder were colored by varied representations.

Here I can also explain why some of our vivid dreams come true. As evidence I give one of many cases:

(215) Mrs. M. of Olešnice near Červený Kostelec had a husband serving in the First World War. Postcards arrived from him at the front, and his family had no hope that he might come home on leave.

One night, toward three in the morning, the fourteen-year-old son A. suddenly sat up in bed and called loudly, “Mother, Mother, get up! Father’s coming home; make him coffee. I can see him clearly—he’s shivering with cold and hungry—he’ll be here in two hours!”

Mrs. M., a light sleeper, awoke at the first “Mother,” and, thinking the boy was dreaming, told him to lie down and sleep.

But the boy’s cry would no longer let her sleep. Thinking of her husband, to her astonishment she heard a knock on the window two hours later. She immediately stirred, thinking the boy might have been right after all. Agitated, she went to open the door, and before her appeared a figure in military uniform, in whom she recognized her husband.

Her first question was, “Where are you coming from at this hour, when no train is running?” Her husband replies, “I’ve walked from Náchod. I’m stiff with cold and hungry. Have you anything hot to eat?”

Mrs. M. tells her husband what their son dreamed, and the father confirms that he was thinking precisely of him as he left the town, and also wondering whether they would have something hot to eat. Náchod is nine kilometers from Olešnice.

These facts demonstrate that during sleep, artificial or natural, the soul is set in motion from the protosplana, where scenes and impressions from other psychic beings are captured outside our will. The activity of the protosplana can also be demonstrated another way.

(216) We shall naturally succeed with several sensitive people, as I myself used to do. Let us arrange beforehand with a magnetic person, a magnetizer, that once I have put the sleeping sensitives into a mood to converse together, he should unobtrusively act from behind upon one sleeper with his magnetism, using his hands in the direction of the cerebellum.

We shall see that as soon as he does so, the person’s mood changes. Usually he suddenly senses some danger. His face contracts and reveals fear.

If the magnetizer stops acting in this manner, the sleeper’s face brightens and his good mood returns, which we can try in succession with the other sensitives. By bringing a stronger magnet near the cerebellum we can also partly evoke a similar phenomenon, though not to the same extent as with a magnetizer.

We can observe a similar phenomenon chiefly in animals before volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, storms and so forth. Animals sense approaching danger, showing increased irritability and wanting to escape to safer places, from innate instinct, as we say.

(217) A strong change in matter stimulates similar protosplana in animals. Animals living in nature have preserved their drives. Human beings, however, have lost most of their instincts and forgotten their ability to read nature. They have exchanged drives for the reason of the spirit. Only sensitive people, though with healthy and strong nerves, still rarely possess these qualities. On the whole, the human being has lost his original instinctive senses and no longer relies so much upon nature as upon culture and civilization. Every glimpse into supramaterial first causes is to him mere vapor and smoke. What was once a general quality and capacity of the human race is today the possession of a few individuals. And just as the human being has lost these psychic powers, he has also lost bodily powers, for many abilities have atrophied and disappeared.

Human beings are irrepressibly degenerating in many directions and worsening their biological condition. The equipment and weapons with which nature armed them, smell, sight and hearing, teeth, nails, hair and muscles, grow increasingly dull and disappear.

Natural changes disturb sensitives with weak nerves, manifesting as trembling, fear of something terrible, fatigue and so forth.

(218) Low atmospheric pressure, indicating a change to damp weather, fog and rain, sultriness, warm southerly wind, sunspots, rapid transitions from harsh weather to warmth, and cooling are all very difficult for sensitive, sick, melancholy or otherwise mentally affected people to bear. They feel oppression, headache, nausea and irritability. Why? Because a sensitive psychophysical center for weather resides in the human organism. This consists partly of the protosplana, but chiefly of sensitive oduší, more or less exposed through a deficiency of magnetism, making the nervous system oversensitive. These protosplana and oduší react to fluctuations in air pressure, movement of terrestrial gases, electrical stimulation passing from the atmosphere during falling pressure, and above all disturbances of the atmosphere’s ionization conditions. This sensitive center records all disturbances a day before a meteorological instrument can detect them. In some individuals this sensitivity is so developed that they feel disturbances several hundred kilometers away, although these have not yet manifested themselves where the sensitives are staying.

(219) On these days it is not good to perform dangerous operations, lest the number of deaths among sensitive patients increase. Mentally ill people need extra care through calming remedies and encouragement by suggestion, because they are more highly irritated, suffer from breathlessness, nausea and convulsions, and their psychic awareness falls to its lowest levels.

In oversensitive people, all creative strength and performance decline very noticeably. We should therefore beware of entrusting our lives to sensitives during changes in the weather when traveling by car, airplane and so forth.

That magnetism makes a person resistant and encloses oduší, I became convinced through the following:

(220) At first, in all my experiments I selected subjects by having the people assembled in the hall clench their fists while I acted upon them by suggestion. I abandoned this method, however, when the clairvoyant subject Křeček informed me in hypnosis that he would himself find sensitives and send them to the stage. He remarked that he could see and distinguish well-developed protosplana and oduší enclosed by magnetism or exposed. From that time onward I conducted experiments with great success on everyone subject K. had identified beforehand and sent to the stage, for these people were very sensitive, whether to telepathy through the transmission of thoughts alone or to the spoken word.

We can also act telepathically upon another person while that person is conscious. It is, of course, more difficult to achieve successful experimental results. In this case the impressions are not received in the protosplana, for these are passive and incapable during consciousness. The transmitted thought stimulates the entire body, the finest nerve networks, through vibrations, waves of siloton particles of thought-fluid. Because the soul is present everywhere in the body, whole in each individual cell, the impression passes to its center in the gray cortex, where awareness of something unforeseen arises, often with an awakened imagination. Daily reports provide enough cases of a father, mother or son sensing danger at the very time it struck someone close to them, perhaps far away. Here, too, we may seek the cause in liberated oduší.

If I can myself impose upon another person a thought that passes from the protosplana or from some cell to the soul’s center, so that the person accepts it as his own, why could a good or evil spirit not act by its nature as a spiritual being, as mentioned in Holy Scripture?

(221) While writing chapter 44 of this book, I experienced several interesting attacks in a vivid dream, directed against the salvation of human souls. In one of them I observed a strange man walking in front of our house in the evening, damaging trees and shrubs in the garden while cursing and abusing me. I see in this a clear effort to engage me in a fight, and as I approach I recognize in the man the devilish, hostile features of an evil spirit. Seeing that he has been recognized, he becomes enraged and throws himself upon me in a contest during which I struggle fiercely. I am almost defeated when a bright male figure stands beside me and hands me a club. With a swing of it I strike my opponent to the ground, stand upon his collapsed body and then depart victorious, thanking God inwardly for my escape. At that moment the room lights up, and a beautiful child floats within it. I am already stretching my hands toward it when a flashing thought of a new temptation compels me to take the rosary lying on the little table and offer it to the child. Its radiance immediately pales; it turns black, and I feel it seize me and carry me up into the air. Then I am flung away, and as I fall back toward the ground I call upon the bright male figure from the first struggle for help.

At that moment I was awakened by members of my family, who had observed my restlessness and agitation throughout the dream and had tried in vain to wake me from it.

By way of explanation, I state that an incorporeal being, a spirit, cannot act directly upon the soul through its influence, but only through oduší, the protosplana or the gray cortex while the soul lives in union with the body.

(222) Since, as I have already mentioned, the soul is wholly present in every individual cell in any part of the body, through siloton waves I can act with my will upon any part of the body and also upon its oduší and protosplana, so that it does what I wish. This performance requires great exertion, but succeeds splendidly in a sensitive. I conducted experiments of this kind in company: I selected a suitable person and informed some of those present that I would put the person to sleep at a distance. The experiment succeeds better if the person is mentally calm and not engaged in conversation. I shall give many successful experiments of this kind in the section “Strength of Will and Its Power.”

25. Magnetism

(223) Bodily vital magnetism is a discharging force that springs from a single primal source, like electricity, terrestrial magnetism, light, heat and so forth.

Let us understand: all natural forces proceed from a single primal force, namely the oscillatory motion of minute material particles, atoms, their vibration. These particles are fragments ejected from electrons, positrons, neutrons, protons and photons, and disintegrated particles, pyrotons. Certain kinds forming the basic composition of magnetic fluid I designate as megatrons, and the particles composing oduší as silotons. They vibrate in space and act at a distance. Electricity, magnetism, light and heat are different forms of this primal force.

I have called the building unit released from the atomic nucleus and forming the substance of magnetic fluid a megatron.

Bodily magnetism, so often denied, is now recognized by science and confirmed by facts.

In my continual experiments I encountered this motive, mediating vital force and was therefore compelled to investigate and observe its properties.

Every creature, human being and animal, and matter itself possesses its magnetism. Some people have more, others less. Accordingly, this force can exert itself to a greater or lesser degree. The center of the production of magnetic energy is the spinal cord.

The bodily strength and endurance of every creature depend upon the quantity of magnetism. Here everything depends upon our nerves, and these are precisely what is saturated with this fluid of megatron particles. Because every individual cell is connected with the nerve network, we can say that the entire body is permeated by it.

Bodily magnetism differs in its essence from terrestrial magnetism, for the latter is essentially only a kind of combiner and temporary sustainer of nonliving matter, keeping it from disintegrating.

In living beings, such an element is a wholly different fluid, oduší, which acts to prevent the body from disintegrating. The soul then animates the body directly through itself. After the soul separates from the body, we can prevent the disintegration of protoplasm for a long time by embalming, thereby also artificially restraining the breakdown of individual cell nuclei and the evaporation of oduší.

The magnetism of living beings, distinct from oduší, is an agent of the organic organism’s motive force. If we have enough, we feel strong; if we lack it, weak. If we overexert ourselves, we flag, for magnetism is exhausted just like, for example, electricity in a flashlight battery. Freshly charged, it shines at full strength, but its brightness diminishes until the electricity in the battery is exhausted. It may not be exhausted completely, but no longer has the capacity to heat the bulb’s filament to incandescence. Similarly, the human body does not exhaust its magnetism entirely. The remaining portion, however, can no longer bring the body into full activity, just as a depleted battery cannot give a strong light. We must wait until we gain new strength, that is, until the nerves are recharged with magnetic fluid.

(224) We acquire magnetism through deep inhalation of air, for it is contained in the air and throughout cosmic space. It arises during the breakdown and exchange of protoplasmic molecules in all cells and through release from the atoms and molecules of food substances in the digestive system. Plant food is rich in this vital force of magnetism. A healthy person has faster blood circulation and therefore faster metabolism, and consequently acquires and retains more magnetism.

A physically ill person suffers from slow circulation, poor metabolism and often a disturbance of the digestive tract, so that he obtains little magnetism, wastes away and, through its deficiency, is less resistant to the onslaught of illness.

A completely healthy individual has a sufficient quantity of magnetism, more or less according to physical vigor. It forms a luminous envelope around the body five to sixty centimeters thick.

Individuals who consume their magnetism for themselves, whom I call nonmagnetic by nature, having been born that way, have little ability to acquire magnetism in the organism. They lack it, and their sensitive oduší is therefore wholly or partly exposed; they do not have enough to enclose the oduší. They are good subjects for experiments.

Just as our Earth is protected against the impact of meteorites by an atmospheric envelope, so the healthy person’s body is protected against infectious diseases and the influences of thought-fluid by an envelope of magnetism.

Those individuals who have an excess of magnetism can supply it to magnetize patients, thus contributing to their faster bodily and mental recovery.

(225) We obtain magnetism through the release of megatron particles from the atoms of protoplasm, and it is also continually drawn and replenished through a chemical process from consumed food, passing with vital substances into the blood. It is then contained in the blood, continually changing, transforming and perfecting itself in its substance, becoming suited to our nerves as the cells are nourished, especially during sleep.

Let us not imagine that during bodily exertion the body loses magnetic fluid evenly. Only the part active at the time suffers, so I can still work with other parts of the body without great difficulty.

If, for example, we work with our hands, after a longer time we feel fatigue throughout the region of their motor nerves. This is a sign that in those tired and painful places magnetic fluid is relatively exhausted. The cells are, of course, also being depleted in their protoplasm. But conscious fatigue lies chiefly in the lack of magnetic fluid, the reserve potential for strengthening and replenishing the body’s exhausted cells.

26. A Deficiency of Magnetic Fluid — Sensitivity

(226) It is very interesting to observe insufficiently magnetic people, those who lack this fluid and continually suffer from the deficiency. Through observation I found that as many as forty percent of people are affected by nervous malnutrition through a lack of magnetism. People of this kind are generally sensitive; their oduší is exposed. Magnetic people, those with such an excess of magnetism that it radiates outward and who can control it through the will, can govern such sensitives, fifteen percent of them completely. These are people born with less psychic dynamism.

Even for the uninitiated, it is not difficult to find these sensitives. As a rule they complain of neurosis and headaches, dislike company and prefer solitude, suffer from fatigue and changing moods, sleep restlessly and talk in their sleep. Occasionally, when excited by something, they seem quite energetic and flare up very quickly, but this lasts only a moment, after which their dejection and weakness are all the more marked. This occurs through a rapid discharge of magnetism.

Here, of course, I am not speaking of people in whose nervous systems organic changes or disturbances can be demonstrated, and in whom we also encounter similar phenomena. I mean people without organic defects and changes, in whom no material basis can be demonstrated.

(227) From these otherwise healthy people suffering such symptoms, we can further select a certain kind who are exceedingly and easily excitable, irritated by the slightest impression. These we call “sensitives” in the full sense of the word. They are the least magnetic; in them magnetism does not radiate outward into space at all, even through willpower, so that it could be detected in complete darkness by other sensitives without sleep, in full consciousness.

Sensitives whose nervous systems are truly oversensitive through a lack of magnetism cannot control themselves. If a true magnetizer gives them part of his surplus magnetism, transferred by magnetic passes, we observe the exact opposite of their usual natures. Their individual cells almost thirst for foreign magnetism, absorb it, and thereby their nervous system rapidly gains strength; the spirit is invigorated and revived. Here it is particularly interesting to observe how such people hardly know what to do with themselves. Most often they sing and dance, want to realize their abandoned ideals, while young men usually become boisterous, feel like fighting and challenge you to it. If the magnetizer reverses the procedure and removes through his will the magnetism previously transferred, they suddenly sink into their original state and cannot understand how they could have fallen back into it so abruptly. I had to remove the transferred magnetic fluid from Mr. B. prematurely after a few hours, and likewise from Mr. K., because they used it against their companions, with whom they fought in their sudden exuberance.

(228) A hypnotist can, of course, achieve the same through suggestion alone, but with this difference: the hypnologist commands the sensitive in words, or even telepathically, “From today you are healthy, strong and enduring!” If the sensitive accepts this repeatedly given suggestion, the hypnologist has implanted a new thought in his esplana against his will. This immediately appears outwardly as exceptionally increased strength and a tenacious nature. If the sensitive wishes to wrestle with his companions, after a while he suddenly weakens and begins to tremble. Although the desire to struggle remains, he cannot physically rally. Let the hypnologist now command him again through suggestion. He will find that the sensitive rallies only partly, then weakens all the more. If the hypnologist wishes to prove that magnetism has nothing to do with this, that in such a case magnetic passes merely help the magnetizer enliven the will, which itself is transmitted telepathically, as was objected to me during scientific investigation, let him renew his suggestion. The sensitive will strain physically, but without result or strength. If the hypnologist then removes the suggestion, he will find the sensitive remains completely physically enfeebled for several hours until he acquires fresh magnetism from his blood.

It is different when a good magnetizer conducts the experiment as follows: he magnetizes the sensitive with about twenty magnetic passes and verbally challenges him to wrestle. When he sees that the sensitive’s strength is running out, he magnetizes him again. The sensitive will continue wrestling at full strength, and this can be repeated. The scientist-hypnologist will not see the weakening of the sensitive’s strength that he expects. After the allotted period of wrestling, the magnetizer magnetizes the sensitive again, and within at most half an hour, however great the loss of strength through wrestling, the sensitive will be entirely healthy and strong once more. Here it is evident that a kind of material energy, a discharging force, exists that can be transferred to people who lack it, as we shall further verify in many experiments later.

(229) Our nerves are good conductors of this fluid to every individual cell, so that our whole organism is saturated with it. If there is a deficiency, all vital activity declines. The nerves by themselves cannot then meet psychic demands and must acquire their own or fluid energy to do so. It is rather like a network of electrical wiring, useless to us without the voltage of an electrical current. We see the electrical wires and the nerve bundles, but not electricity or bodily magnetism; we know them only from their effects, and only from these do we then learn their properties.

27. The Properties of Bodily Magnetism

(230) Bodily magnetism retains its original property of two poles. It is positive on the whole left side of the body and negative on the right. When directed by our willpower, it radiates most strongly from the extremities, the hands and feet, from the fingers and toes.

In a healthy person nourished by natural food rather than meat, it shines from the left hand with a pale yellowish color and from the right with a sky-blue tint. We call the combination of both magnetisms “white fluid.” This magnetism is healing. By contrast, in a person who eats more meat, it radiates yellow-red from the left hand and blue-violet from the right, which only a small number of sensitives observe. This magnetism is harmful.

Human magnetism, which shines and radiates, can be precisely examined and observed through sensitives before witnesses:

For the experiment we go into a dark cellar. Through willpower I cause magnetism to radiate evenly from my body. The sensitives, especially Mr. K., report an increasing luminous glow forming around me, illuminating the cellar so that they can see other people and things precisely, give various details, count buttons, describe the arrangement of clothing, tell the time, and observe every facial expression and bodily movement.

(231) I extend my hands and concentrate the magnetic current so that it strikes the opposite wall. The sensitives report that they can see so well they could almost read. And indeed, Mr. K., fully conscious, reads the written letters L, K and A, while the others distinguish objects placed on the floor.

I should note that a great disposition on the magnetizer’s part is needed for good sensitives to read letters by the light of magnetism. This succeeded only when I felt strong, somehow well charged with magnetism. The other things succeed readily.

I take one of the witnesses present, put my hands behind me and act through my will so that, as I walk, a luminous magnetic line remains behind me, issuing from my body through my clasped or extended hands. As I walk I make various detours and stops, which the accompanying witness remembers carefully. I stop and return to the others by a different route.

I now ask the sensitive to lead the whole company along the luminous line, without taking part myself. The witness who accompanied me goes with the group to confirm that the sensitive is leading them correctly. They set out, return after a while and report where the sensitive led them, with what detours and stops. Everything agrees. Asked how he recognized a stopping place, the sensitive replies that the magnetism was denser there.

We thus learn that magnetism is a material condensation that remains where we have left it through our will.

(232) Let us perform another experiment:

Two hypnologists each take their best subject. Each subject must be advanced enough to enter the fourth degree of hypnosis. The two hypnologists agree that at a certain hour each will put his sensitive to sleep separately in his own home. When this has been done, one hypnologist, who is also a magnetizer, makes with willpower a magnetic pass with his hands around his sleeping sensitive’s head and draws a luminous magnetic line as far as the other hypnologist’s home and the second subject. There, with another sharp movement around the subject’s head, he ends the line. He then returns by another route to his own subject. Both hypnologists now bring their subjects into activity by drawing their attention to the magnetic connection through a fluid line until both notice it. An experienced subject, moreover, already reports the fluid connection on his own.

Both hypnologists now command their subjects to report what reaches their consciousness solely through this luminous line, by a kind of impact. Distance does not matter.

The first hypnologist commands his subject to “telephone” the second subject: “How are you?” The subject slowly pronounces, “How are you?” The second subject receives the thought’s impact and himself says aloud, “How—are—you?” The second hypnologist hears this and gives an answer to the first in the same manner: “Very well! Where will you go tomorrow?” His subject immediately “telephones” the first: “Very—well! Where—will—you—go—tomorrow?” In whatever words the hypnologists express their thoughts, the subjects communicate them to one another in those same words. Thus the two distant hypnologists can converse, and it can proceed as though by telephone. An advanced sensitive can maintain attention for about three-quarters of an hour.

Whatever the subject says, or merely thinks at the hypnologist’s command, is transmitted through the magnetic line to the other subject, who reports nothing except what reaches the protosplana of his cerebellum and from there the gray substance of the cerebrum. If the subject is trained for this, it proceeds very easily.

We thus learn that magnetic fluid is also a good conductor of our thoughts and commands.

(233) Magnetism can be demonstrated in another way. Let us take a piece of fresh meat and magnetize it three or four times daily, but only with the left hand, so that no mutual discharge of magnetism occurs. We shall find that the meat putrefies only underneath and within, while the surface merely withers and dries. This proves that magnetism exists and prevents the decomposition of cells.

Subjects observing this say that through willpower magnetism is released and evaporates from the protoplasm of nerve cells, producing warmth when it combines with oxygen and hydrogen.

In the air, magnetism appears luminous. I suppose that it combines with oxygen and water vapor in the air, thereby becoming visible to the sensitive’s eye. We already know that magnetism radiates and shines, and anyone can verify this. Let us take an intact low-power bulb of three, five or ten watts and go into a completely dark room. We grasp the bulb’s metal screw base in the left hand and, with the fingers and palm of the right, lightly stroke the glass bulb with quick, intermittent touches. After several passes the bulb begins to glow with a whitish-blue light. This magnetic light consists of unknown megatron particles released from the atoms and molecules of cell protoplasm in a manner not yet investigated, which the bulb receives and accumulates, lighting up. Making it light succeeds for about every second or third person, more for some and less for others, according to whether or not we are magnetic. With a sufficient supply of magnetism, practice gradually enables us to light bulbs of twenty-five, fifty, one hundred or more watts. If the bulb’s internal filament is broken, only its surface will shine.

(234) Science would like to have a magnetometer, an instrument for measuring magnetism, so that it could penetrate more deeply into its mysteries: an instrument accessible to everyone that would measure and display the effects of magnetism. The reason no such magnetometer has yet been invented lies chiefly in the properties of magnetism itself. I very much doubt that one will be invented.

There are some instruments by which magnetism can be detected, but they do not fully meet the desires and requirements just mentioned.

Particular mention should be made of the instruments of Crookes, Geisler, Rutter, Baraduk, Jois, Collongues, Lafontaine and Boirac, and the especially noteworthy instrument of Puyfontain, among others.

Yet we already have an infallible magnetometer: our own body. In company I extend my hands and, through willpower, act with a magnetic current upon everyone. Those who are not magnetic or suffer from a deficiency of magnetism feel a kind of pleasant fatigue; others feel nausea and a slight trembling of the whole body. I call to me those who felt the described effects most strongly. I choose one and place my left hand at the back of his head, not on the hair, which is a poor conductor. I place my right hand upon his bare stomach region, where the already familiar solar plexus lies. I begin acting through my will so that my magnetism permeates his body. A short magnetic connection arises, and the current passes through the center of the cerebellum, the medulla oblongata and the spinal cord itself to the solar plexus. Gradually the nervous apparatus in question begins to vibrate; this spreads throughout the body and appears as shaking, even vomiting, headache, fatigue, drowsiness, fear, “gooseflesh” and so forth. These symptoms appear in people with a great deficiency of their own magnetism. This is how we find sensitives. I can myself act through my will to cause mutual discharge of magnetism in the sensitive’s nervous apparatus, which affects him more strongly. This is the best magnetometer and also proof that magnetism exists.

I have said that magnetism is a condensation, physical matter, and can be regulated by our will. We can, however, also detect it, or in a sense measure it, another way.

(235) Let us take a person as little magnetic as possible and weigh him precisely on a scale. Then we weigh the magnetizer as well and record the figures. Next the body of the nonmagnetic person is magnetized; for this purpose the person has already dressed very lightly in cotton or linen clothing, not wool, which is a poor conductor. The magnetizer makes proper magnetic passes for two to three hours, with continual concentration and exertion of will, using correct circular passes and special breaking-off movements at the feet. When exhausted, the magnetizer stops. Both people are then weighed again. We are surprised to find that the magnetizer has lost as much as 120 grams, in some cases even 200 grams. The gain in the magnetized person’s weight is the same. This is important proof of the existence of condensed magnetism.

After establishing this, let us take another nonmagnetic person, and let the magnetized person place his left hand on the other’s nape and his right upon the bare stomach region. A rapid discharge of magnetism transferred from the magnetized person occurs in the second sensitive’s nervous apparatus. The latter begins to tremble and develops gooseflesh; some cannot bear it at all.

It is a very interesting phenomenon that the magnetized person cannot retain transferred foreign magnetism, and that another similarly nonmagnetic person takes it away but likewise cannot retain it for himself. This happens only when magnetism passes through the center of a short nervous connection. I explain it by the weakness of the sensitives’ will. It is inadvisable to perform many such experiments, since we become markedly weakened.

Later, magnetism may begin escaping from us automatically, without our being able to retain it through our will.

Translator’s safety note: Do not put your hands near moving belts or pulleys. The following historical claim that bodily “magnetism” protects against lightning is unsafe to rely on. During thunderstorms, seek a substantial building or enclosed hard-topped vehicle; no outdoor location is safe. See the National Weather Service’s lightning safety guidance.

(236) Bodily magnetism readily discharges against electricity, for both are essentially nothing other than transformed primordial substance springing from the universe’s single primal source. Because both forces have already been transformed in their activity, they cannot tolerate one another; when brought close they discharge and change back into their original form. To verify this, let a magnetizer go into a machine shop where a belt is running rapidly around a pulley. If he brings both hands simultaneously close to one belt with the thought that magnetism should emanate, he will feel a gentle tapping in his fingertips and later a kind of numbness. Sometimes lightning kills one person in a group without anything happening to the others, even if they happen to be holding hands. The person killed was nonmagnetic. Such people are good conductors and bearers of terrestrial electricity; positive electricity accumulates in them. Lightning cannot strike a magnetic person. It depends upon how magnetic we are. Accordingly, lightning burns, injures or kills.

(237) I made an interesting observation establishing the existence of magnetism with children up to ten months old, by putting them to sleep at any time. The witnesses were Svatůněk, Hruška, Střihavka and others.

In this case no one can say that the child fell asleep under the influence of hypnosis, for hypnosis has no power over it. The child does not understand suggestion. It cannot give effect to telepathic transmission within its little body, for in an undeveloped child one cannot even raise a hand or open the eyes by telepathic means. It is therefore evident that saturation with foreign fluid tires the child within four to ten minutes. It yields to pleasant fatigue by falling asleep.

In some children sleep did not arrive within the stated time, and it sometimes took as long as twenty minutes before the child fell asleep. This was due to the child’s rather strong magnetism, which I first had to destroy by discharge so that the child could receive mine.

(238) I shall give another interesting experiment and proof:

I select the two greatest sensitives, nonmagnetic people, by the familiar method of placing my hands upon the nape and solar plexus. I first remove woolen clothing from the chosen sensitives, seat one on a chair and magnetize him over the entire body until he falls asleep.

In this case it is useless to wake him by words, and even if I leave the room, no one succeeds.

The second selected nonmagnetic person, however, wakes him very easily by standing close beside the sleeper with the thought that the applied magnetism should pass to himself.

It was often objected to me that in this case I myself was waking the subject through telepathy. I therefore withdraw from the sleeper and leave the room for an hour. Now let the nonmagnetic person approach the sleeper at any time. At that moment awakening occurs. Being absent, I cannot know at what time I should act telepathically.

As magnetism passes over, we observe the waking person gradually beginning to tremble throughout the body, while at the same time the other person gradually awakens. This is clear proof of the existence and transfer of magnetism. A hypnotist might object that he can do the same without magnetism, in which he simply does not believe. Let him try, but from acquired practice I say: if he puts the person to sleep through hypnosis without any magnetic passes and places another waking, nonmagnetic sensitive close beside him, the first will continue to sleep peacefully. Even if the other stands there all day, he will not wake him. The hypnologist who put him to sleep must do it.

It has been shown that magnetism flows like electricity.

(239) The less magnetic a person is, the more foreign magnetism he absorbs, especially if aware of this and assisting through his will. This is only beneficial to such people. People who need magnetism can therefore draw sufficient nourishment and strength from sufficiently magnetic people toward whom they feel affinity.

Nonmagnetic and magnetic people often draw together unconsciously. Nonmagnetic people are attracted to magnetic ones, in whose company they feel content and strengthened in spirit, without knowing why they are drawn to them. But this may be at the expense of the magnetic person’s health and can bring illness or even death.

I myself give off much magnetism during continual experiments. If I wish to regain it, I use this familiar opportunity in the presence of people I know to be excessively magnetic, whose magnetism escapes automatically. Through a merely intensified thought I wish to receive it into my body, thereby strengthening myself.

28. Magnetic Illness

(240) There are other people whose magnetism escapes automatically into space. This is the basis of their magnetic illness. These people feel weak and oversensitive, sometimes find breathing difficult, have dulled thoughts and heavy legs and hands, and feel pain in the back, especially between the shoulder blades. They are worst in rainy, damp weather, for water is precisely the greatest absorber of bodily magnetism. In bad weather they therefore feel very tired, sleepy, dull and ill. Such people find prolonged baths difficult to bear, especially warm ones. Afterward, besides great weakness and dejection, psychic torment also appears.

If dry, sunny weather suddenly arrives, or in winter the so-called dry cold, they feel as though everything has fallen away from them and are immediately healthy. This makes it evident that moisture draws off magnetism. For this reason a damp dwelling is considerably harmful.

Through subjects I observed many such people, and their diseased state was always caused only by the spontaneous escape of magnetism.

They can, however, be helped in these ways:

(241) Let a good and sympathetic magnetizer magnetize them twice a week. Enclosure by a stronger foreign fluid occurs, along with strengthening of the nerves, as we have verified countless times.

Another remedy is water, which is otherwise harmful to them but can conversely be beneficial. Once daily or every other day, they fill a tub with fresh cold water, immerse themselves up to the chin for eight seconds, then dress quickly and exercise the body without sitting down. The skin and its nerves strengthen, become firmer and close, preventing the automatic escape of magnetism. Try it and you will find that fatigue disappears. I myself have done this daily for forty-two years.

A beginner must not start immediately with immersion. First it is necessary to wash quickly with cold water for ten days.

Immersion in cold water is one of the best remedies against the automatic escape of magnetic fluid.

(242) If we bathe for cleanliness at home, or outdoors in summer, in lukewarm water, let us stay in it no longer than ten minutes. During this time the water completely absorbs the used magnetism retained chiefly in the skin. After bathing we shall feel lighter and fresher because we have rid ourselves of dead magnetism.

If we bathe longer, the water begins to draw off vital magnetism as well, and weakness follows the bath. Women complain of weakness and cold after washing laundry; the water has drawn away their magnetism.

After work our ancestors bathed their feet and hands in fresh cold water to refresh themselves and remove fatigue. Through natural instinct they thus did the best thing possible to rid themselves of used magnetism. During illness they also placed a vessel of water beneath the patient’s bed in the belief that it would draw out the illness. Quite rightly! Many illnesses come from excess dead magnetism.

(243) To demonstrate that magnetism flows from one person to another, I conducted many experiments through a subject in a dark cellar with people suffering from magnetic illness, before witnesses including Messrs. Tůma, Kubeček, Dudek, Křeček and others.

The clairvoyant states that magnetism escapes automatically from Mr. K.’s left hand, from Mr. D.’s breath, from another person’s head and so forth, always most strongly through the extremities and rarely through the whole body.

If I approached one of these people with the thought of taking their escaping fluid into myself, the subject, and other sensitives as well, saw a luminous band form between that person and me. If I moved away, the band stretched and lengthened to six or seven meters, then broke.

When I met these people, I secretly decided to take their magnetism. Within less than five minutes Mr. K. began complaining of a strange fatigue rising from his feet. As the fatigue increased, he moved away from me without knowing why. I then felt stronger.

(244) Another time, during conversation, I began acting upon Mr. D. After a while he began complaining of sudden fatigue, and although he had previously conversed freely, he now put his head in his hands and wanted to sleep. He did not sleep, but was in a peculiar state in which participation in the conversation was difficult for him.

After troubling those present a little in this way, I explained the reason. When I began acting similarly on another occasion, they noticed immediately and asked me to stop, otherwise they would leave.

If I was tired and exhausted after experiments and went into company where there were people suffering from escaping magnetism, after a while they began complaining of fatigue and sleepiness.

Here is interesting evidence that fatigue attracts foreign vital fluid.

It is a law of nature, for through fatigue we draw into ourselves this vital force released from other bodies.

People suffering from magnetic illness avoid company and are solitary. Company is a burden to them; they feel unfree within it and experience psychic torment. We should seek the cause in the fact that some people present take their magnetism, or that foreign magnetism disturbs their exposed oduší.

If people affected by magnetic illness must discuss something important, they are mentally and physically exhausted before the discussion takes place. This is caused by the thought, which disrupts the weakly charged nervous system, from which their insufficient magnetism discharges prematurely.

(245) As old age arrives, little healthy magnetic fluid is produced, and we weaken bodily and mentally. Aging people readily absorb foreign bodily magnetism, and we should therefore avoid allowing infirm old people to hold our children, attend to them or sleep with them. In identifying a child’s illness, my sensitives often observed a fluid band between the child and an infirm elderly nurse. If a child is continually deprived of its magnetism, nervous fits also appear.

Healthy old people do no harm, but I do not recommend sleeping with grandchildren. Nor is it good for a child not yet ten to sleep with an older child. Until ten years of age, children possess a kind of balancing magnetism essentially the same, so they may sleep together if they cannot have beds of their own.

At ten, however, every child undergoes a transformation of magnetism, which changes in its essence, and each child’s magnetism develops independently. If an older child sleeps with one under ten and suffers from some magnetic illness, the older will irritate the younger, in whom we shall then observe restless and nervous sleep, lack of appetite, bad mood and so forth. Let us therefore ensure that children sleep in separate beds.

(246) Adolescents often suffer from a deficiency of bodily magnetism. Among them we find the sensitives already familiar to us, although they appear healthy and strong. These should certainly not sleep with children under ten.

If a magnetizer overstrains himself during experiments, magnetism begins to escape spontaneously from his extremities for several hours or even days. In such a case nonmagnetic people like to remain near him, and he sometimes cannot get rid of them.

Mr. D. came to me from Plzeň. The subject declared that this gentleman urgently needed magnetism. And indeed he did. For four hours he could not tear himself away from me, although he had allowed only a quarter of an hour before leaving again by train. I knew that the reason for his lingering was the spontaneous escape of my magnetism, so I wanted to leave for the neighboring village of Z. But Mr. D. followed me, continually assuring me that he felt particularly comfortable in my presence. I, however, did not feel well, experiencing a kind of fatigue. Only when we reached the O. forest did I persuade him that the long route through the woods had many junctions, so he would not find his way back. He accepted this and went his own way. Had he been a good telepath, he would have sensed my thought beforehand, for a fluid connection had been established.

When I was magnetically open, many people assured me at those times that in my company they felt content in both body and spirit.

(247) People deficient in magnetism feel nervously exhausted and experience a continual need for sleep. During sleep the nerves rest and replenish themselves with magnetism. Magnetic people do not feel such a need for sleep, and many need only four to five hours daily while feeling healthy and strong.

Life rests chiefly upon magnetism. Illness, conversely, is merely a disturbance of magnetic balance. As it ages, the human and animal body loses the ability to produce enough magnetism. The consequence is decline, illness and death.

Through suggestion and magnetism we strengthen and above all awaken the patient’s own magnetic energy into activity, so that the body revives.

29. An Excess of Bodily Magnetism

(248) Just as there are nonmagnetic, sensitive people, there is another kind who are strongly magnetic. They have so much fluid energy that the surplus spontaneously emanates from their entire bodies.

In some people this happens to a great degree, and if the magnetism is of a harmful kind, it acts destructively, especially upon small children, sometimes even causing their death.

Mr. C. came to me from Česká Třebová with his sick wife. In identifying the illness, the subject reported that her husband’s magnetism clung to her, disturbed her and would also harm the future child they were expecting.

The couple were frightened. They had already had two children, both healthy, who later suddenly died through a loss of strength and vitality. They became irritable, until a slight illness joined in and ended their lives.

The subject reports that the next child will also depart in this way, for the father loves children and, through his love, produces more magnetism, which acts destructively upon the child’s organism. He advised that the father should not devote himself so much to the coming child, and should control his fluid so that he could transfer it to other people, older ones needing fluid. He should do this at least every other day, thereby weakening his fluid, after which he can enjoy time with his child.

(249) I observed more such cases of inexplicable death in children and attributed them only to other people’s strong magnetism. The subject’s advice is good, for where it was followed, the child did not die.

We observe something similar in lovers. If they are truly in love, after a time we notice that one or both grow weaker and thinner. We tell them not to love so much, for it shows on them.

Just as electricity is generated through the chemical action of sulfuric acid, in which zinc and carbon decompose, so love causes the disturbance of nerve cells, which vibrate, release magnetism and weaken the body. Magnetism imbued with soul is the cause of feelings of love. Its release is pleasantly stimulating, but harmful to the organism.

A marriage in which both partners are nonmagnetic sensitives is generally tolerable and often happy if balanced temperaments come together. The woman, however, must not meet another man who is magnetic, because he would have a great influence upon her, impress her, and, blindly controlled by him, she would succumb to infidelity.

A better condition for a happy marriage is for the man to be more magnetic than the woman. It does no harm if the reverse is true, but in that case the woman takes the lead in the marriage. An introverted temperament should seek an extroverted one, and vice versa.

Between spouses there arises a relationship and an uninterrupted course of activity with an inner purposefulness.

(250) A relationship is the relation of two people to one another in living together, mutual inward penetration and so forth, so that their spiritual values may grow. Balanced, soul-imbued magnetism and oduší make this possible. Love arises, the foremost act of the will. By breathing it out they communicate their inner life, the thought that materializes outside the esplana in their magnetism. A harmony of souls arises. This fruit of the spirit, love, produces joy, peace and happiness. The true meaning of love is not sex, but enjoyment of psychic unity and the mysterious joining of two psychic lives. It is love of beauty, living beauty as it appears in the human body, with a higher perception of beauty of soul. Everything depends upon the harmony of souls that complement one another and create new values. It is enjoyment of aesthetic beauty in closeness, of the attraction of souls and their unity. The soul senses the beauty of another soul. This is beauty expressed in a body imbued with soul; it is an element of the beautiful.

The conscious interpenetration of two souls protects against overstrain and crisis.

Clinging only to a beautiful exterior may lead to disappointment after a time, for the initial erotic exaltation idealizes everything and is often very one-sided. Harmonious life together also requires agreement in a moral outlook upon life, and continual psychic growth and perfection.

(251) Among quarrelsome spouses, magnetism often causes discord to such an extent that they find one another repulsive. It usually takes a year for them to emerge from this fever. I examined many such people, and among magnetic newlyweds we always found discharging, incompatible magnetisms. When such newlyweds approach one another, subjects observed the mutual discharge of both kinds of magnetism, manifested as rapid, intermingling flows and diminution of both, until in some cases the husband’s fluid, in others the wife’s, prevailed over the other. The subject then immediately reported with certainty that the husband was yielding to the wife, or conversely.

In such families there is no peace at home until the husband’s or wife’s magnetism discharges and submits. It depends upon who wins. Then either the husband or the wife rules the household. Different magnetisms also arise from different foods. When after marriage the newlyweds change to food from one kitchen, their diverse magnetisms transform into a new magnetism of the same nature, bringing their temperaments closer and uniting them. Sometimes a kind of mutual balancing of the two magnetisms occurs.

(252) The mistake, however, is that we sometimes succumb unknowingly to foreign magnetism. Our soul is so strong that it easily subjects the body’s matter to itself. See “Soul and Body.” Therefore, reader of these lines, if perhaps all is not well in your household in this respect, gather your psychic SELF and permeate your discharging magnetism with it, holding it in check so that your spirit, not matter, becomes master. We know that matter must be directed by someone. If it is not, spirit and matter destroy one another. Marriage must not be founded for the pleasant experience of feelings, but upon the metaphysical primacy of love. It should be a Christian marriage, a service and fulfillment of a task in God’s plan and a path toward God.

Daily life together is a task demanding sober effort, simple self-denial and continual self-control. Whoever does not wish to follow this path will never achieve a fruitful marriage.

A woman’s mentality differs greatly from a man’s. A woman is more emotional, more concrete and more outwardly directed. She is more vital and far less dependent upon brain activity.

(253) In the soul, reason decides and the will leads. If a woman does not continually and consistently exercise reason and will, and does not become aware of the spirit’s powers, what she is capable of and what is possible for her, she generally develops inconstancy, inconsistency, unreliability, moodiness, disharmony, fickleness and shallowness. I treated many mentally and physically ill girls and married women, some daily for as long as a whole year, until they recovered. At my request they made various firm resolutions for the future and promised definitely to keep and fulfill them. Yet in no case did this happen, because the higher intelligence demanded of their spirit did not awaken and come into play, so that all the promises failed despite their solemn oaths.

A woman soon loses her relationship to earlier matters. She does not follow rational knowledge, makes free decisions imperfectly, and therefore one cannot build upon her word. She lacks the higher spiritual capacity, intelligence and will through which she can determine herself. There is then no logic and resolve, firmness, constancy and certainty, for these do not form upon firm foundations in her esplana. Few therefore passed the test even halfway. Results come only where a woman becomes conscious of the spirit’s higher side and continually exercises herself in it, in reason and will.

(254) Every woman should cultivate the powers of the spirit, reason and will. Through this she attains wakefulness of spirit and the ability to reflect upon herself and her activity. She thereby acquires consciousness of strength and of the spiritual value of personality for purposeful, independent and self-subsistent activity in decision-making.

We may expect similar psychic deficiencies in men as well, in those who succumb to animality and various sensitivities of the will. In them the rational psychic principle is on a sidetrack.

30. Dead Bodily Magnetism

(255) Bodily magnetism is continually formed. Used and unnecessary magnetism, saturated with disease-producing substances, passes out of the body. It is drawn toward the extremities, especially the soles of the feet, and particularly while walking comes close to the ground. Thus a fluid line remains behind every person.

Such dead, discharged energy scarcely shines anymore. When asked to follow it, sensitives say that it does not shine and soon lose the direction. We can help by heightening the subject’s sense of smell and asking him to lower himself as close to the ground as possible. He then follows the same direction as the person we are tracking.

The harmful substances saturating used magnetism have, for the sensitive, a peculiar and highly distinctive odor.

(256) Let us take, for example, handkerchiefs from several people and mix them together. Let us command a sleeping sensitive to remember each person by the smell of the used magnetism issuing from each one’s body. Then we give him the handkerchiefs so that he may distinguish by smell which belongs to whom, for the owner’s magnetism clings to each. It will be interesting to see how he smells every handkerchief and, if unable to identify it immediately, again smells each person separately until he completes the task.

A trained dog tracks a thief solely by the peculiar smell of the magnetic line. If it has rained, both dog and sensitive lose the line, the trail, for, as I have already pointed out, water is the best absorber of magnetic emanations.

Let us try going somewhere before a brief rain, and let someone track us afterward with a trained dog or sensitive. They will search in vain. If it does not rain, they will find us easily, even on the third day. We can also perform the experiment this way: I take two watering cans of water and, after walking for a minute, begin pouring water behind me precisely onto the trail. If we send a trained dog along it, the dog loses it at the very place where the water was poured.

(257) Those interested in occultism observe and study these hitherto hidden manifestations with interest and attempt to penetrate and master the forces described. Yet there are still few practitioners. This whole science is still in its infancy. There are plenty of mere reasoners, however. That is why, to me, ninety percent of our metapsychic and metaphysical literature is nonsense and patchwork offering no way out. Once such a theorizing sage has read a few works, he forms a judgment and publishes a new one. So it goes on endlessly. Adherents of this science do not begrudge the journey and come from far away to discuss these phenomena together.

Some people, in turn, are controlled by a mysterious force, which we should not imagine necessarily comes from beyond the grave, and would like to get to the bottom of it. Such conversations often lead to new discoveries. At the same time, the principle is found by which these forces can be mastered and worked with. To clarify this, I shall give at least one case:

(258) At the end of August 1922 a certain lady visited me, accompanied by the stationmaster from S., so that through free conversation and observation we might investigate a particular phenomenon.

This lady enters a certain magnetic state in which she can subject matter and the people present to her will, directed from the lower-order subconscious.

Through a subject I first detected strong magnetic discharges in her. After this examination the lady entered a state of peculiar automatic movements, chiefly of the hands, in which the blood vessels were under extraordinary tension. She magnetized the entire room, then the people present, standing with her back toward me. Finally she approached me and behaved in an especially different manner, until it troubled me. I therefore interrupted the phenomenon with a decisive word, and it was over. When the lady returned to clear consciousness, she greatly regretted that I had done so. We agreed to meet again after a week and then parted.

After a while subject K. complained of feeling unwell and left, thinking he would feel better after sleeping.

In the evening I went calmly to bed as usual. This time, unusually, I slept restlessly, and so did my whole family. I felt exhausted.

(259) At about eight the next morning, one of my subjects, Miss K., stopped by. During our conversation she suddenly said, “Something feels wrong here today!” and left. I paid little attention until toward noon, when other subjects came. Without my having thought of anything, Mr. H. suddenly said, “What have you got here today? It irritates me; I feel somehow oppressed!” The second subject interrupted, “You’re right. I feel exactly the same!” They left as though I had shown them the door, although I tried to keep them. I then began to think about the matter a little.

In the afternoon the subject whom the lady had magnetized arrived and reported that he had a fever and had not slept all night. He added that he noticed his condition worsening in our room; he did not feel comfortable at my home as he always had before. I took his temperature and found it was 39°C.

Because he felt unwell in my home, we went together to the workshop, where I put him to sleep to give him healing suggestions. When he was supposed to respond to me in sleep, he did not react to my words but continually struggled with someone and defended himself loudly, saying, “Let me go!” and the like. I had to exert all my strength to calm and awaken him.

Meanwhile another subject, Mr. Z., came to me. I put him to sleep and asked him to observe the sick subject. After a while he reported that a luminous line led from subject K. to a lady in a distant town, ending at her, and that much of this radiance clung to subject K. Things became clear to me.

(260) At that moment a group of several people from Prague arrived on a certain matter. I would have needed the trained subject Mr. K. for it, but could not use him while he had a fever. I therefore apologized to the company.

Suddenly it occurred to me to use my magnetism to remove from subject K. the foreign fluid clinging to him, surely the cause of his fever. I commanded him to sit and demagnetized him before the company. His face indeed brightened, and at last he said that he felt healthy and certainly could no longer have a fever. He felt extraordinary relief. I took his temperature again, and indeed the thermometer confirmed the subject’s words: it was 36.5°C, although an hour earlier it had been 39°C. Those present, particularly the teacher Mr. V., marveled at the effect of my magnetism upon the fever.

The second night in my household was as restless as the first. On the third day about seventeen of my subjects visited, and all sensed something peculiar at my home. Only those who were not sensitives noticed nothing. Subject K., whose fever I had removed, would not enter our home at any price, so I had to put him to sleep for experiments elsewhere.

Would the third night be restless again? My wife, herself a good sensitive, already feared so. I decided to use my magnetism to drive out of the room that foreign dynamic force whose connection ended at the lady we knew. She might perhaps be sending thoughts to us consciously or unconsciously.

I immediately opened the door and set to work. When I believed I had removed all the foreign magnetism, we went contentedly to bed. But we were disappointed. The third night was no better.

(261) In the morning I called subject K., whose fever had been removed, put him to sleep in the corridor before the open door of our home, and asked him to inspect it. He reported seeing two larger condensations of a kind of gas near the floor: one cloud remained by the wardrobe, the other by the first bed. It was blue-violet, and he recognized in it foreign human fluid that at intervals approached me and discharged against my magnetism when this thickened around my body. He said I must be noticing a kind of lassitude. With the door open, I again began driving the foreign fluid out with my magnetism. The subject reported with laughter that the foreign fluid was condensed and floating in the air, that my magnetism had no power over it, that rain would destroy it and a strong draft carry it away. If the lady herself came, it would settle upon her without her knowledge and partly be absorbed into her; or, if it were deposited upon some object, I could draw it off that object.

“What should I do, then?” I ask the sleeper. “Surely there must be something good against a harmful thing; evil cannot triumph! You must know a way for me to remove this foreign fluid!”

The subject is silent for a moment. “Now I know!” he suddenly says. “You have subjects; they are nonmagnetic and their bodies thirst for magnetism. If you put one to sleep and place him in the room, the foreign magnetism will settle upon him. When he begins to shake, lead him outside and demagnetize him!”

This seemed good advice. I wanted to verify the truth. In complete silence I brought another sensitive and called three witnesses. No one knew what was at issue. I put the subject to sleep and commanded him to enter my home. When he entered, I asked whether he saw anything unusual. “I see a kind of blue-violet nebula, here…” he indicates. “Then stand in it!” I command. Before I could count to ten, he began trembling gently, then more and more, until he collapsed backward. My brother V. and I caught him and carried him outside. There I demagnetized him with about fifteen passes.

When he could stand and speak again, at my command he returned to the room and immediately reported that “over there” was still a nebula, but much smaller. At my request he stood in it again and everything repeated itself. When we returned to the room, he saw nothing more.

(262) Then a strange thought occurred to me. I commanded the subject to look toward the lady to whom the magnetism belonged. Through the fluid line still remaining and leading from my house to her, he found the woman in the town of S. He was horrified on seeing her and said, “She suddenly became ill and is suffering.” “What happened to her?” I ask. “You—you hurt her; you were tearing her body there at your place, and it hurt her.” “What body?” I ask. “That condensed nebula was her body; she was psychically connected with it.” “But I don’t want to hurt her! How can I help?” I ask the subject again, and he answers, “Well, it will pass in a few days.”

We were all curious whether this was true and how we might find out. We thought that if the lady had consciously left magnetism here, she would not admit it.

By chance, the witness Tůma had a friend in the town where the lady lived. He asked him to find out whether she was ill. The answer came: “She is, but it isn’t serious.”

From the time we removed her magnetism from our home in the manner described, our sleep was peaceful, and all the subjects contentedly reported that things were as before at my home, though they could not explain it. When I told them the cause, they were astonished and reluctant to believe. I know in advance that many readers will also disbelieve. Only a few initiates will understand.

Meanwhile the day approached when, according to our agreement, our acquaintances were to return for experiments. They did not come.

(263) Troubled and concerned for the lady’s health, I put clairvoyant K. to sleep and sent him to her to tell me how she was. He reported that she was already well but would not yet come. I sent him to her several more times. On September 16, when I asked the subject about her, he replied, “I see the lady at a table; she has had coffee, there is an empty cup beside her, and she is reading something.” I asked him to look into her brain’s esplana to see whether she wanted to visit us. After a quiet moment he answered, “She does—I see—they have sent you a card saying they will arrive on Monday morning.” I object, “I haven’t received any card.” The subject turns his head as though searching for it and suddenly says, “I see it here at the post office; it’s a postcard, and the postman will bring it to you in two hours.”

I woke the subject. Now we were again curious whether the postman would bring the card. We called the witnesses Mr. Tůma and Mr. Urban as well and told them everything, including what we expected. And indeed, two hours later the postman brought a postcard from S. announcing that my acquaintances would take the liberty of visiting me on Monday, September 18, by the first morning train.

We were all surprised by this splendid performance, related to telepathy and displaying clairvoyance.

On Monday I invited Messrs. Tůma and R., who also liked to pursue similar studies, to serve as witnesses. At about nine in the morning, after a knock, the familiar stationmaster Mr. S. entered the room accompanied by an older gentleman, a certain inspector from Kolín. I immediately asked about the lady. They answered, “She’ll come in a moment.”

In the meantime, during the conversation, I asked why they had not come a week later as agreed. Because I received no clear answer, I said directly that I knew the lady had fallen ill on the third day after her first visit and had been confined to bed for six days. Both gentlemen confirmed this before the witnesses named above.

They were even more surprised by my statement that I had known beforehand about their visit and the card announcing that they would come for further experiments on Monday.

Then two ladies arrived, one of them the woman we knew.

(264) We conducted the experiments in Mr. R.’s home. Before beginning, I requested that Mrs. N. enter trance in the adjoining room with the door open, because I had found that her personal magnetism harmed my subject.

I then put subject K. to sleep, and the lady moved into the left corner of the adjoining room so that we could not see one another. I asked the sleeping subject what position she was in. He answered, “She’s sitting on a chair in the corner behind this wall, her right leg crossed over her left, her chin supported.” The woman confirmed it. After this performance she entered trance. I now ask the subject what he observes. The answer is that Mrs. N. has brought herself into trance through her will and, through the activity of the lower-order subconscious, automatically discharges her magnetism with great force through various movements of the whole body, chiefly the hands. It spreads around her in waves, and because it is not used for good, it appears harmful, especially because in trance her lower-order subconscious receives foreign thoughts telepathically. According to the character of the person from whom she receives the thought, the magnetism is good or bad. Directed by the received thought, it manifests either beneficial or harmful effects.

The subject then reported that the magnetism had already advanced into our room and was continually increasing. Suddenly he jumped from his chair, stood before me highly agitated and struck me in the face and chest, all the while flailing his arms and legs.

(265) From this I recognized that the subject had come under the influence of Mrs. N.’s magnetism, directed against me by an evil thought from the lower-order subconscious. This thought, however, could have been suggested into the lower-order subconscious against me, or could have slipped in telepathically from an unfavorable environment.

Realizing the adverse situation in which my subject and I found ourselves, I sprang toward the lady and through my willpower imposed upon her the thought, “You are calm, completely powerless!” The effect was immediate.

My subject nevertheless continued raging because of the magnetism in which the bad thought was materialized, energized and discharging. Here any advice would have been precious. To prevent catastrophe, I rallied in resistance, first through spoken suggestion. When this had no effect, I employed my strong magnetism to drive the foreign magnetism away from the subject’s surroundings and envelop him in my own. The effect was that the foreign magnetism, now deprived of access to my subject, lost its influence and the subject grew quiet. Once he was calm, I gave him a healing suggestion and woke him after a brief rest.

I explained to Mrs. N. and her company how this force might be used for humanity’s benefit and good, which can be achieved only through a strong will. If these forces are given free rein, they sometimes do us more harm than good.

31. The Movement and Emanation of Magnetism

(266) I observed and investigated the speed at which magnetism radiates over a distance. I performed the experiment as follows:

I placed subject K. sixty meters in front of me. When in good condition, I can transmit magnetism that far. Through willpower and my hands I produced a magnetic current and sent it toward the subject, whom I had commanded beforehand to report when he felt its effects. Witness F. was asked to count the seconds. He counted fourteen.

To verify the accuracy of the performance, I put sensitive K. to sleep so that he could observe and follow the speed of the magnetic wave. As soon as he saw the flash of magnetism issuing from my body, the sensitive began running with it, and at the wall of the house where the ray arrived, he reported, “We’ve arrived together!” From this I learned that magnetism advances rather slowly, so that one can keep pace with it by running.

Sensitives feel the emanation of a magnetic current very clearly in themselves. Some feel as though a cool breeze were passing through their body. If one acts with the left hand alone, they feel unpleasant warmth; others feel a gentle tingling within the body. Asked what the dynamic force radiating from the fingers during magnetization looks like, they answer that they see fiery rays radiating separately from each finger, joining into one stronger flame that gives off powerful heat and sparkles gently at the sides.

(267) When I had larger groups observed, sensitives described how some people were almost wrapped in magnetism, some more and others less, as though standing in a luminous cloud, so that those around them also stood within a luminous mist. These people are magnetic by nature, and if they knew how to master this force through their will, they would bring deliverance to many patients.

Here I am speaking of the radiation of healthy magnetism. Otherwise, the emanation of magnetism is not the same in everyone; it differs in an old person, a child, a man, a woman and a sick person. In each different illness it appears in a different color. Sometimes clusters of magnetism of various colors are observed, according to the disease through which the cells are decomposing.

32. Vitamins

Translator’s note: This is a historical account of nutrition and medicine. Its vitamin, hormone, infant-feeding and disease-treatment claims are preserved for fidelity and must not be used as a treatment guide.

(268) Just as the human and animal body is endowed with magnetic energy, so every nonliving substance possesses it, though in another form. Some things, of both dead matter and organic matter, plants, are particularly rich in this energy.

The emanation of magnetism also has a different nature in every substance. Through frequent practice a good sensitive becomes so familiar with these radiant emanations that, if shown any object in hypnotic sleep, he will immediately report precisely what magnetism it is, whether of silver, gold, wood, bones, apples and so forth. I performed many such experiments before witnesses.

It must be noted that the magnetism of dead mineral matter is more resistant and does not discharge so readily. Only under great heat is it absorbed by its own matter in some kinds. For this reason sensitives generally found glass objects difficult to distinguish. They complained that these radiated little. Crystals, by contrast, radiated splendidly. Likewise, through heat, boiling and baking, we unknowingly deprive many organic, plant substances of magnetic energy, to our own detriment, for it is necessary for nourishment. In plant fruits this energy is retained chiefly at the surface beneath the skin.

(269) This radiant energy is indirectly transformed and developed in plant organisms through the action of solar energy upon inorganic substances of the soil. It resembles electricity, light, heat and magnetism, for it too springs from a single cosmic source. This plant energy, contained in plant food, changes into vital force in an animal’s body, just as electricity changes into light, heat and so forth.

We must take care not to deprive ourselves of this biological life-giving force, these indispensable sources of development, by destroying it in plant foods through boiling, baking and the like. I established through many experiments with sensitives that such preparation destroys radiant energy. In a dark cellar I placed cooked apples on the floor together with raw ones and asked the sensitive to hand me the objects that radiated. We were surprised that he picked up all the raw apples but not one of the cooked ones. The same happened with cooked and raw potatoes. This proves that by cooking I had deprived these foods of their special radiant force.

(270) To find out whether I had entirely deprived the cooked apples and potatoes of this radiant energy, I put the sensitive to sleep. I placed the cooked apples and potatoes in a glass vessel. Glass does not radiate outward, so the radiance of other objects placed upon glass does not mix with it, allowing the subject to distinguish them clearly. I then asked what he saw. He reported that it radiated only very faintly and was difficult to identify. Nevertheless, he stated that they were apples and potatoes. It is apparent that cooking deprives plant food of a large part of the best force needed by our organism. Vegetables must therefore be cooked by immersing them directly in boiling water. This unknown radiation thus behaves similarly to the known vitamins. Pasteurization removes as much as thirty percent of vitamins from milk. Freezing does not destroy vitamins as much. Vitamins must be protected against cooking; for example vitamin C, important for the maturation of red blood cells and bone marrow.

I also observed that the sensitive picked up from the floor apples, potatoes and almost all vegetables carefully dried at gentle heat, while cooked ones remained unnoticed. Careful drying at mild heat thus preserves this force.

(271) Through a subject I also examined vegetables during cooking. He reported that energy partly escaped into space, but fat from meat cooked with them, settling upon the surface, prevented evaporation. He advised pouring fat over vegetable soups before boiling and not stirring them.

In the manner described above, I performed experiments in a dark cellar with pieces of cooked and raw meat. The sensitive, fully conscious, picked up all of them, leaving none. Asked whether some radiated more or less, he answered that he had noticed no difference, that they were the same. It is therefore apparent that meat possesses an essentially different kind of radiant energy capable by its nature of resisting heat. Let us remember, however, that cooking removes from meat acids that are good for digestion and kill the nuclei of cells whose vital fluid is destroyed by cooking.

I tested flour in the same way. Unobserved, I poured a little heap of the whitest flour onto the floor in a dark cellar, and nearby an equal quantity of whole-grain flour including the bran. I asked the sensitives to look carefully and show where it radiated. They immediately went to the whole-grain flour. Only after a while did the most sensitive subject, R., report that “over there” something also radiated a little. That was the whitest flour.

We learn that this radiant force is retained chiefly beneath the husk and least in the center of seeds, except for the germ. Here lies the cause of bodily weakness from white baked goods.

I also tested freshly milled flour and flour about two years old. The two-year-old flour contained only a very slight amount of radiant energy.

Let us firmly keep to bread made from freshly milled whole-grain flour, containing sufficient radiation.

(272) In some kinds of plants this force can be extracted and transferred into water. A lemon contains one kind of radiant energy directly beneath the outer yellow skin, in the white fibrous pith. If we carefully remove the outer skin from the lemon peel and put the remaining white pith into water, within a few hours the water absorbs this energy. Water saturated with radiant energy is a good remedy for patients with weak nerves.

To verify whether the water really absorbed the radiant energy, let us take the soaked lemon peels and other unsoaked ones and go with sensitives into a dark cellar. There we scatter the peels on the floor. After a while, once their sight has adjusted, the sensitives pick up the unsoaked peels they can see, but not the soaked ones.

To make the results of my experiments reliable and certain, I performed them during hypnotic sleep, when the ability to see is stronger. The clairvoyant always reported which kinds of peels, herbs and so forth I had deprived of radiant energy by soaking. Nevertheless, he said they had not lost their energy entirely and still radiated gently.

(273) I never succeeded in deceiving good subjects by substituting plain water for water saturated with radiating energy. Always, and immediately before witnesses, they correctly recognized which water had absorbed this mysterious force.

I believe these unknown radiations stand in a certain relationship to substances medicine has only recently discovered in foods. It already knows that the organism suffers disturbances, even fatal ones, when these substances are absent from the diet. Several kinds are already distinguished and have been named vitamins. These differ in nature. The best known are the antirachitic, antineuritic, antiscorbutic and growth vitamins, among others. Metapsychic science and natural healing have long known these substances.

To strengthen the nerves it is not good to use only one kind of vitamin. I therefore sought others that would benefit weak nerves, because I myself expend much magnetically and need rapid strengthening.

Let us shell fresh sunflower seeds and immediately drop the kernels into water. The water can be drunk after eight to ten hours; the mysterious force has passed into it and becomes an invigorator for weak nerves. Those who suffer from weakness of the heart should also take the vitamin from sour apple peels and vegetable peelings, celery, kohlrabi and the like. These can be placed together in cold water and provide good strengthening for a weak heart. Do not therefore throw away the peels of sour apples and vegetables.

In sweet fruit, vitamins are retained throughout the inner substance. Someone might think it better to eat raw sour apples, sunflower kernels and the like. But he would be mistaken, for most of that force would be consumed in digestion, depending upon bodily disposition. By drinking the extract alone, we preserve all of it for ourselves.

(274) There are vitamins that stimulate the reproductive glands into activity. These send substances called hormones into the blood, regulating the body’s condition.

If the body lacks thyroid hormone, the face, hands and feet become swollen, the body grows fat and the face looks sleepy. The facial skin is dirty white; on the body it is dry and peeling. Melancholy, mental dullness and limited intelligence are further sad consequences. If diiodotyrosine is supplied to the inadequately functioning gland, part of it changes into thyroxine and the body is helped. Conversely, if diiodotyrosine is supplied to a gland secreting excess hormone, part of the hormone becomes bound and the gland’s activity is reduced.

Brown, bronze-colored skin is a sign accompanying a fatal disease, called Addison’s disease. If the adrenal hormone cortin is supplied to the body, the disease can be cured.

Many automatic activities take place in the body, especially those of the heart and digestion. Neither is subject to our will, and both are governed by nervous systems, the parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves. These act against one another and are antagonistic. The sympathetic, for example, accelerates the heartbeat, while the parasympathetic, the vagus nerve, slows it. The hormone adrenaline acts upon the sympathetic nerve, stimulates the heart, accelerates the pulse and raises blood pressure. The hormone cortin, by contrast, acts upon the vagus nerve, thus slowing heart activity, lowering blood pressure and accelerating the digestive system’s work.

If we wish to increase appetite, we give the patient glucose. The pancreas begins secreting more insulin into the blood, thereby increasing appetite.

(275) People suffering from persistent ulcers or a skin rash have an excess of sugar in the body. The ulcers heal when the patient is prescribed a diet like that of a diabetic. In more severe cases insulin is also injected.

If the pancreas supplies more insulin to the blood, a person is irritable and peevish, his consciousness clouded, and he suffers from restlessness, anxiety, pressure in the head, sweating, rushes of blood, severe fatigue, compulsive laughter or crying and convulsions. The illness may intensify to insanity and murderous or suicidal fits. Sugar and bread can dispel all these symptoms. The patient should be awakened several times a night and given sugar.

(276) Thyroid hormone has the task of governing the entire cycle of substances and is necessary for bodily and mental development. Its deficiency causes laziness, obesity and bodily decline. If there is an excess, the body grows thin, the nerves become excited and Basedow’s disease develops.

Follicular hormone is a hormone from the female reproductive glands, preparing the female body for motherhood.

The hormone of the corpus luteum regulates reproduction in women.

The hormone of the male sex glands determines male bodily and psychic characteristics.

The hormone adrenaline arises in the adrenal medulla and intensifies the cycle of substances. It acts against insulin, the hormone of the pancreas.

The hormone cortin arises in the adrenal cortex. If it is absent, death soon follows. If a person falls ill from its deficiency, the skin turns bronze.

Pineal hormone is formed in the small pineal gland in the brain and prevents premature sexual maturity.

Parathyroid hormone is formed near the thyroid gland. If it is absent, spasms occur.

The hormone insulin is formed in the islet cells of the pancreas and reduces the blood’s sugar content. If it is absent, diabetes breaks out. An excess causes convulsions.

The hormones of the intermediate and posterior lobes of the pituitary gland control all other hormonal systems. Prolan A stimulates follicular activity; prolan B the activity of the corpus luteum.

Stereotypic hormone stimulates thyroid activity.3

Corticotropic hormone governs the work of the adrenal cortex.

Growth hormone slows or accelerates growth. Prolaklin acts against follicular hormone and regulates the production of breast milk.

Adrenalotropic hormone stimulates the formation of adrenaline.

Pancreatotropic hormone stimulates the formation of insulin.

The hormone vasoprescin increases blood pressure. If it is absent, pathologically large amounts of water are excreted.

The hormone that induces labor pains causes the uterine muscles to contract. Besides these, there are several other important hormones of the pituitary lobe.

We stimulate the glands’ internal secretion for hormone production through radiant energy, vitamins.

(277) In scurvy, when patients complain of joint troubles, the gums swell and bleed and the teeth loosen, vitamin C helps. Drinking a decoction of fir needles or lemon juice is sufficient. Tomatoes, oranges, blackcurrants, elderberries, rose hips, raspberries and onions are also rich in vitamin C. Rose-hip pulp must, however, be mixed cold with an equal quantity of sugar for at least an hour. One teaspoon of this preserve daily then suffices. Vitamin C protects the body against infection. It dissolves readily in water. All reheated and preserved foods are poor in vitamins. They are useless to the body and tend instead to harm it. Stewing causes them to lose fifty percent of their content, boiling as much as eighty to ninety percent, while reheating and preserving lose almost all of it. Potatoes are rich in vitamin C, but must not be boiled; they should be steamed in their skins. Metals disrupt vitamins, especially vitamin C. Let us therefore cook food in earthenware or glass pots!

Anyone suffering from stomach ulcers should eat food rich in vitamin C. It promotes their healing and is indispensable for a cure.

Vitamin C is the best remedy for vascular diseases. It heals the vessels’ tissue and stimulates it into activity. We also add lemons to tea for colds.

(278) A lack of vitamin C harms tooth-forming tissue and causes tooth decay. Anyone consuming enough vitamin C, as well as B and D, has healthy teeth. The subject reports that whole-rye bread, in the grain’s husks, contains enough vitamins A, B and C. Anyone who eats white bread and sugar suffers from dental caries. Teeth and bones use calcium. With insufficient vitamin C, this does not enter metabolism properly, while vitamin D is responsible for these metabolic disturbances. It is also responsible for rickets, for it intervenes deeply in the circulation of calcium within the human body. Vitamin D dissolves in fats.

(279) If a child lacks sufficient vitamin C, it is anxious, shy, reserved, tired, sad and dispirited. If it receives enough through suitable food, it is, on the contrary, lively, loud and enduring, shows lively interest in everything and is full of zest for life. Vitamin C is decisive for performance. It is needed for the body to work properly. Complaints of fatigue, weakness, loss of energy, fear and anxiety diminish if we take sufficient vitamin C. In poor families the true suppliers of vitamin C are rose-hip preserve and potatoes cooked in their skins for peeling.

Fresh fruit juices also contain enough vitamin C. Let us give them to patients with fevers, especially pneumonia, for it is indispensable in febrile illnesses. If fruit juices are not at hand, we can provide it as lemon juice. These successes are a triumph of modern biological medicine.

Some people suffer from pathological bleeding. We can help a patient with this disease through raw food. The illness arises from a lack of vitamin C and inorganic salts. Vitamin C is the effective constituent in raw food that helps. Women unable to nurse should eat food rich in vitamin C. Synthetically, artificially produced vitamin C does not have sufficient effects. The richest source of vitamin C is juice from lemons, oranges, currants, young radish leaves, red cabbage, wild strawberries, dandelions and conifer needles.

(280) In infertility and a tendency to miscarry, vitamin E must be taken. Its deficiency causes degeneration of the reproductive glands. In severe cases no sperm is formed at all. This vitamin is most abundant in wheat-germ oil and is present in every green herb, in cress, maize, rice, pork fat and egg yolk. It is indispensable to human beings. Vitamin E cures all heart defects. It dissolves in fats.

Vitamin A is the familiar “growth vitamin.” If it is lacking, growth slows and weight declines. The skin becomes fragile and permeable. Vitamins B and C also support growth. Urinary stones arise from a deficiency of vitamin A. Mothers should have enough during pregnancy, for it slows the thyroid gland, which regulates and is important during pregnancy. It must be given in Basedow’s disease. If children lack vitamin A, they suffer serious health disturbances, infant mortality increases and tuberculosis spreads. Pneumonia, bronchitis and middle-ear inflammation also occur. Pathological drying of the cornea and conjunctivitis break out as well. Vitamin A treats eye inflammations and corneal ulcers, skin inflammations and catarrhs of the upper respiratory tract. Fish oil and especially liver contain ample vitamins A and D. Vitamin A is fat-soluble. Larger doses of vitamin A deprive the organism of calcium, so that bones soften. Its principal sources are egg yolk, butter, beef tallow and horse fat, tomatoes, carrots, lemons, milk, potatoes and vegetable fats.

(281) A deficiency of vitamin B1 causes rheumatism, dizziness, cardiac distress, enlargement and pain of the heart, and nervous diseases. Muscles weaken; the legs, arms and lower back hurt. Women may have difficulties in childbirth and an inability to nurse; there may be lack of appetite, constipation, stomach diseases, hardening of the arteries, neuralgia, sciatica and beriberi, in which muscles waste away and dropsy gradually appears throughout the body, together with insufficient breath, fatigue, swollen joints, muscle pain, weakness, varicose veins in the legs and the formation of waste acids. A deficiency of vitamin B5 causes avitaminosis, pellagra, and skin inflammations. A lack of vitamin B2 brings digestive disturbances, exhaustion, weight loss and muscular paralysis. Whole-grain bread is the best supplier of all kinds of vitamin B.

(282) Pregnant women should take enough food rich in vitamin B. Lemons, tomatoes, onions, carrots, fresh cucumbers, green lettuce, yeast, oranges, milk and butter contain the most vitamins A, B and C. We can take plenty of these vitamins without an excess harming the body. They strengthen the nerves and the entire organism.

Women need much vitamin B during pregnancy. If they do not have enough, varicose veins form and dangerous thromboses threaten. Vitamin B is water-soluble. Sources of vitamin B1 include brewer’s yeast, cereal germs, oranges, egg yolk, lentils, peas, lettuce and cabbage. Vitamin B2 is contained in brewer’s yeast, egg yolk, calf and beef liver, cauliflower, nuts, prunes and soybeans.

With sexual maturation, unpleasant eruptions, pimples or acne, form. Supplying the body with vitamin H by eating yeast, which contains it, prevents the overgrowth of sebaceous glands. We change the diet to predominantly raw food. We exclude meat, eggs, white bread, coffee and alcohol.

(283) A deficiency of vitamin D causes rickets in children. A nursing mother must have food high in calcium and phosphorus. A weaned child, besides food rich in vitamin D, is given foods rich in calcium and phosphorus. If vitamin D were lacking, calcium and phosphorus would act improperly in the body. At the same time the affected child should be exposed frequently to fresh air, gently massaged, washed with cold water and exercised. Its bed must not be soft, and it should not be made to sit up too early.

Broken bones heal well if we supply the body with vitamin D, which also strengthens the bones. We must not, of course, overdo vitamins. Wounds heal well when rubbed with fish oil. Vitamin D dissolves in fat.

Fish oil contains ample vitamin A and especially D. Vitamin D is contained in bananas, egg yolk, sardines, beef brain and heart, pork and calf liver and kidneys, fresh potatoes, lemon, onion, mushrooms, young green peas, fresh grapes, wheat bread, savoy cabbage, yeast, cow’s milk, cucumbers and spinach. Vitamin D also acts against inflammation and treats rheumatism.

Vitamin K, in turn, influences blood clotting. Its deficiency causes increased bleeding. Spinach, nettle and cauliflower contain plenty of vitamin K, while tomatoes and egg yolk contain less. Prepare a salad from them and eat it raw.

Vitamin F occurs in fats. If it is deficient in the body, skin diseases result.

Vitamins are indispensable to our diet. Let us therefore seek food rich in them.

Translator’s safety note: Do not follow the digitalis dosage below or prepare foxglove extracts for self-treatment. Digitalis glycosides can cause poisoning, including dangerously slow or irregular heartbeat and collapse. See MedlinePlus on foxglove poisoning.

(284) Following the subject’s advice, let us prepare supper: spread whole-grain bread with fresh butter, add tomatoes, sprinkle with a little finely chopped onion and one clove of garlic, and pour lemon juice over it. When tomatoes are unavailable, grate carrot, celery root and an apple, add chopped onion and garlic, and pour lemon juice over them, again accompanied by buttered Graham, whole-grain, bread. This diet contains the most vitamins A, B, C and D, and partly the others as well. These are elixirs of life. For older people I recommend adding four to five drops of digitalis, an extract of purple foxglove leaves. They may take it daily; it will strengthen their heart and body.

We give infants vitamins A, B, C and D in the form of squeezed juice, by coffee spoonfuls, cautiously according to age, one to five spoonfuls daily.

Fresh cow’s milk, butter, breast milk, spinach, bananas, fresh potatoes, tomatoes, onions, lemon, grapes, liver, kidneys, heart, savoy cabbage, brewer’s yeast, cauliflower, carrots, which lack vitamin D, cucumbers, coconut, orange, unpolished rice, fish oil, which lacks B and C, white turnip, lettuce, which lacks D, green malt, plums and fresh egg yolk contain abundant vitamins A, B, C and D.

Translator’s safety note: The raw meat and unpasteurized milk advice below carries a foodborne-illness risk. Use properly cooked meat and pasteurized milk; see CDC safer food guidance.

(285) A deficiency of vitamin PP causes pellagra with mild skin inflammation and various ulcers, itching, digestive disturbance, diarrhea, nervous disturbances, fatigue, mental dejection, loss of memory and a change of character. A sufficient amount enriches the blood’s oxygen content, acting healthily upon its formation, and supports digestion in the life of the cells. Sources of vitamin PP are milk, meat, liver and brewer’s yeast.

You who suffer and succumb to illnesses, waste away, age prematurely or suffer from consumption or eye pain, eat food containing certain kinds of vitamins: raw fresh milk, salads, tomatoes, rye grains and fish oil. Avoid artificial fats and replace them with butter and cooking oil.

Scrape raw horse meat, liver, kidneys and bone marrow with a knife, season it with lemon juice or currant preserve, and eat at least one hundred grams each day: this is for you, sufferers from consumption!

Alongside this, the diseased place must be artificially animated with oduší, for this chiefly prevents the disintegration of our body’s matter. We know that the soul remains joined with it in one substance longest. We achieve this through conscious autosuggestion, with conviction and living faith, “I am recovering; the illness is disappearing,” concentrating thought upon the diseased place. See the section “Mental Illnesses.”

(286) Not all kinds of vitamins are yet known. I sought and tested them for myself. Not every kind can be transferred into alcohol or water. This depends upon the nature of each individual kind. Much testing and verification are needed.

The organism produces hormones and enzymes itself, while it receives vitamins chiefly through food. Hormones and vitamins accelerate or restrain the most complex functions through their regulating presence. Vitamins and hormones are organic substances, and it has proved possible to prepare them synthetically as well.

A healthy person needs only a very limited quantity of vitamins to maintain metabolic processes. Even a millionth of a gram already has a certain significance here.

33. The Levitation and Isolation of Persons, Materialization and Displacement

(287) The properties of magnetism and its associated phenomena are inexhaustible. During the deep sleep of a subject or medium, automatic or mechanical, far deeper than the sleep of dreams, magnetism may interrupt terrestrial attraction to the point of the subject’s rising into the air, levitation. The condition is the removal of the subject’s personal magnetism by at least six people who join hands to form a chain closed by the seated subject. Their thought must be united, undisturbed and rather phlegmatic. If a skeptic is among the members of the chain, the experiment fails. All participants must therefore believe with complete childlike simplicity, possessing utterly devoted faith.

The medium gradually falls into sleep, trance, in which his subconscious telepathically perceives the thoughts and wishes of the connected people and often, though not always, accepts them as its own. Because it knows the forces slumbering within itself, it awakens and directs them into activity, releasing the megatron particles of its magnetism, which passes into the people in the circle. Meanwhile the subject passes into rigidity until he slowly rises, at the same time disengaging from the neighboring people holding hands in the circle. If the people suddenly drop their hands, the subject falls to the ground and awakens from catalepsy, rapidly drawing the released magnetism back into himself. Sometimes he also awakens completely from sleep. He can rise again if the people join hands once more.

In an automatic medium, levitation can occur without outside help. Before falling into trance he must vividly and strongly desire it. The subconscious SELF then discharges the body’s magnetism around itself and floats within this magnetic cloud or concentration.

Such powerful discharges of magnetism, which only the subconscious itself can evoke in trance, insulate bodily matter against fire, burning and so forth.

We encounter this fact in the lives of saints as well, though with the difference that they need not even have been sensitives. In them these are bestowed graces, in which God may use the facts described above to prepare people, increasing the number of believers and bringing them to know humanity’s final goal.

(288) It is interesting to observe the formation of a materialization. Many readers may dislike the fact that I believe what seems nonsensical to them. Why should I not believe it? Our soul is created in God’s image and can therefore create directly according to laws as yet unknown to us, without the help of bodily hands. Let us always approach every mystery with sound reason and the strictest criticism. If I wish to speak about this matter, I must, of course, be an objective researcher. Just as experiment dictates laws in physics, so in metapsychics I can establish reality through experiment. To many people these phenomena seem impossible, a miracle. To initiates they are something ordinary, though their causes are hidden from sensory perception. What is hidden is not thereby supernatural, but natural, and can be investigated and known insofar as it does not exceed natural forces.

These phenomena can be evoked through subjects or mediums with a tendency toward materialization, in a circle or by a hypnologist, as I myself tried. The subject falls into deep sleep, much deeper than ordinary hypnotic sleep. In the first stage of the phenomenon, subtle matter, ectoplasm, emerges from any part of the sleeping body, particularly the fingertips. It gradually condenses and continually changes indistinctly. The emanation resembles grayish-white smoke. As it continually increases it thickens, becomes whiter and changes into firmer matter that, through constant movement, forms organic shapes, perfect hands and faces, mobile and bearing every sign of life. Sometimes they seem flat imitations, at other times living, with expressive eyes. This matter, intended for teleplastic development, the formation of organs, is unpleasantly cold to the touch, seemingly alive and at the same time exceedingly sensitive to touch, after which it is usually immediately reabsorbed.

(289) This phenomenon is governed by the subject’s or medium’s creative subconscious. The psychic subconscious SELF need only will, and at that instant the thought materializes. The subconscious SELF purposefully directs the ectoplasmic substance issuing from the body, shaping it according to the impulse of its subconscious reason, which responds to the wishes of the circle’s participants or the hypnologist. It is evident that the subconscious psychic SELF possesses the ability to create directly; this must first be awakened and depends upon the external surroundings, the people in the circle or the hypnologist.

For teleplastic development, the subconscious SELF takes matter from what its own body provides. The ultimate units of bodily matter are the familiar sitons, particles of primordial matter from which, under special conditions, through God’s direction and will and according to His law of gradual development, evolution, worlds and life upon them are formed.

By analogy, this primordial matter is also brought into activity during materialization. We must necessarily conclude that in a subject or medium, too, a specially liberated subconscious SELF can, by the mere “I will,” and solely from what its own body provides, transform and arrange these primal substances under the action of various forces, circumstances and surroundings unknown to us into successive series of new clusters of atoms and chemical elements.

The resulting materialization has absolutely nothing to do with spirits from beyond the grave. I do not believe in anything of that kind at all. The ability to speak and move that the materialization apparently possesses belongs among the still hidden gifts and capacities of the mystery of the subject’s soul in trance. Because the soul is indivisible and therefore whole everywhere in its body, and the materialization is precisely its body, the soul itself can fully control it through awareness of its capacities of reason and will. These capacities awaken only in hypnotic sleep.

(290) The resulting materialization is a phenomenon of doubling and demonstrates with full force that the soul exercises its spiritual substance even outside its body, animating, directing and caring for the materialization through its being. This indisputable and very frequently demonstrated doubling signifies absolute certainty of the existence of the immortal soul.

Not only living people but also nonliving and inorganic substances can dematerialize. This explains the transport of substances and their passage through other substances. An object loses its material substance, passes through other matter and materializes elsewhere. Special psychic laws governing bodily events, as well as the laws of matter, operate here. The subject uses scarcely fifteen percent of his subconscious powers and capacities. The others remain in a potential state, and he cannot exercise them all in this earthly life.

Telekinesis, displacement without contact, is a phenomenon governed by the subconscious SELF’s own activity, with the help of circles at a séance or a hypnologist, in both automatic and mechanical subjects who experience its release. These are manifestations of universal dynamism, with which our five senses bring us into contact only very imperfectly.

In subject H., a certain projection forms during sleep, extending from his body to the object to be displaced. It is a kind of luminous discharge, a band of blue light, as sensitives observe in subjects, especially Mr. H. What the displacement of objects consists in cannot yet be stated with certainty. Sensitives always told me that through this luminous discharge, by which subjects act from below, they interrupt terrestrial attraction and envelop the object in their body’s fluid. The object can then be readily controlled by thought alone at the wish of the hypnologist or the circle of participants. For easier understanding I give a small experiment. Miss Š., herself doubtful of clairvoyance, asked me for it after a theatrical rehearsal.

(291) I put an actor present, subject H., to sleep and connected him magnetically with Miss Š. so that he would remember her. She expressed the wish that the subject describe their home, which neither I nor the sleeping subject had ever visited.

At my request that he “go” in the direction from which the young woman had come, the subject described: “I’m in a room. By the door are watering cans and cupboards, and nearby a bed with someone in it. I’ll look. Hmm,” he says disappointedly, “an old woman. Farther back is another bed, and in it an older gentleman with a long beard. You know, I’ll pull it.”

I objected that he should not do this or wake the sleeper. But the subject smiled and did not answer. I asked the young woman whether the description was correct, and she explained to the company and me that everything was right: her mother slept in the first bed, her father, who had a full beard, in the second. I then told the subject, “Describe everything else you see in the room!” “Opposite is a table with chairs. I hear a clock but can’t see it. Ah, it’s in the next room. I’ll stop it so it doesn’t tick.” He then described other objects and the arrangement of furniture in the rooms, and the young woman always agreed. I ended the experiment by drawing the subject back and waking him.

When Š. returned home from the theater, however, she found her parents’ home lit up and her terrified parents telling people from the house what dreadful things had happened there: “It walked about the room, moved the cans, inspected the cupboards, stood by the beds, woke Father by pulling his beard, and the clock in the room stopped although it was wound and could not have stopped by itself. Then suddenly everything ceased and went quiet.”

The young woman looked at the clock and found that it had stopped at the time of the experiment. She tried in vain to explain to her parents that it had been an experiment. Only later did they accept her explanation, believe it and free themselves of the idea that some evil spirit had helped perform it.

The origin of telekinetic force must be sought in the transformation of the mediumistic organism’s biopsychic forces. A material substance issues from the experimental subject’s parent organism. With the soul’s participation, this energy condenses into a substance often perceptible even to the senses, teleplasm. Visible matter is nothing more than a complex, a cluster of energies with the soul’s cooperation.

The strength and capacity of a subject’s subconscious activity in deep trance are admirable. At the impulse of subconscious reason, a mere “I will” can put an animal into catalepsy, stop its blood circulation and thus endanger its life.

(292) Another example will aid understanding:

During scientific experiments, while subject K. slept, a neighbor’s dog disturbed us with its barking. We were often inwardly angry with it. One day subject K. reacted to this and said, “I’ll kill it!” Messrs. Kubeček and Tůma, who were present, seized upon this statement and wished it to happen. Messrs. Prudič, Cháska and Pich did not believe the subject could do it at a distance. I therefore asked him to make the dog unable to bark. After two minutes the barking indeed ceased, and after about ten minutes the subject said, “It’s dead now and won’t disturb us.”

The next morning Mr. P.’s daughter arrived asking me to put a subject to sleep and discover who had poisoned their dog Cikán, which had still been lively the day before and was found dead that morning. I was surprised and promised to ask the subject about the case when an opportunity arose.

(293) This newly discovered ability of subject K. gave my friends no peace the next day, and that same day we set out with the subject for the neighboring village of Stolín, seeking some worthless animal at isolated cottages for an experiment. On the way we saw a cat in a tree. The subject was put to sleep and commanded to kill the cat at a distance. After five minutes the cat fell from the tree. My friend Kubeček ran to bring it. The subject jerked agitatedly, and then my friend laid the cat at our feet. Suddenly, however, it sprang up and with powerful leaps disappeared into a nearby cottage. I said to the sleeper, “Why did the cat run away?” He answered, “You caused it yourselves. You interrupted my act before completion, so I could not stop its blood circulation to the point of complete inactivity of the heart and arteries. You should have waited.”

Chickens were running in the field. I asked the subject to kill one. The subject released himself and after a while objected that they moved too much and were highly active, thereby disrupting his influence. But at the second cottage behind the fence, he said, there was a kennel with an old dog that would be no loss, since they had two dogs. We therefore went to the cottage and sat down about thirty paces from the kennel. The dog began barking. At my wish the subject began acting upon it. The dog stopped barking and crawled into the kennel. After twelve minutes the sleeper reported, “It’s dead now.” My friends threw stones at the kennel, but the dog did not come out. My friend Pich summoned his courage, climbed the fence and, after inspecting the kennel, carefully pulled the dog out by its chain.

(294) We thus witnessed the course of this experiment with our own eyes. I then tested the other subjects for this capacity. None succeeded in killing a living animal. We learned that souls have different capacities and powers, unseen and hidden from the senses. To penetrate and uncover various mysteries of matter, creation and lawfulness in nature was something I could not achieve even with the best subject. How shallow and foolish are the claims of those who disbelieve in the principle or foundation of the soul, seeking it only materially in connection with blood beneath the surgeon’s knife and, in their one-sidedness, forgetting that we know its activity only by rational recognition of its effects.

These and similar phenomena of doubling, levitation, materialization, teleplasty, telekinesis, telepathy and others, because they exceeded normal psychic life, were designated occultism, later metapsychology, spiritual research, and now, since we can explain many phenomena, are included by science under the name parapsychology. They are still of little value to us.

The phenomena of magnetic discharges and those in the field of clairvoyance, about which I shall write further, are, however, a deliverance and remedy for suffering humanity.

34. Healing with Bodily Magnetism (Electrism)

(295) We know that some people are strongly magnetic by nature, possessing an enhanced ability to release and transfer magnetic fluid. Such a person, wishing to be a merciful Samaritan, can readily give his surplus radiant energy to a neighbor in need.

Not everyone who can boast this gift of nature is suited to it, however. Moral strength acquired through good upbringing is needed; the person must be mentally balanced and blameless. If I possess these conditions, I can calmly and easily form a strong, conscious psychic SELF endowed with power and strength, which will also be my iron guide in what I want and must do.

That bodily magnetism, this vital biomechanical current, can heal is nothing new. Rather, it is something forgotten and little acknowledged today because ignorance and slipshod greed for profit do not, and never can, succeed.

Ancient peoples, Romans, Jews, Greeks, Egyptians and others, knew this force, which can be transferred from young, healthy bodies to the sick for their strengthening, healing and rejuvenation. They did so primitively, for they did not yet know that this force can be directed through the will, channeled into the hands and transferred to sick bodies. Their method of treatment was to place the patient closely between the healthy bodies of two young girls. They believed that through their breath and certain unknown strengthening emanations from their bodies, the girls would heal the infirm organism. Success required the strict condition that both sides remain chaste. We know from history that King David and the Romans Claudius, Hermippus and others were treated in this way.

The Roman emperors Vespasian and Hadrian healed by the touch of a hand through vital force, magnetic fluid, this vital energy. So did French kings from Clovis to Louis XV.

From the preceding explanations, experiments and examples, we know that bodily magnetism automatically escapes and radiates from many healthy people. If I wish, I can receive it. But I must have firm confidence. As soon as distrust and doubt, perhaps even antipathy, arise, the energy is not received. A mutual discharge of the two magnetisms occurs.

From the findings of epistemologically exact science:

(296) The matter of our body is a composition of molecules, and these in turn of atoms of the elements. The smallest particles of elements are atoms. The smallest particles of compounds, molecules, are built from atoms of the elements.

The atom consists of an electron envelope, a shell and a nucleus. The shell’s electrons have a negative elementary charge. The nucleus bears the atom’s matter. It has a positive charge and consists of positively charged material protons and material, electrically neutral neutrons. These kinds of particles undergo changes caused by quantum wave mechanics.

The atom’s negative shell electrons and nuclear nucleons, positrons, neutrons and protons, are not permanent matter. They are compounds of pyrotons, megatrons and silotons, and these in turn of sitons, and are therefore changeable through disintegration and radiation.

The elements of our body are variously combined from differently formed atoms. Those with the highest atomic number give off radiation of varying particle compositions, energetic in nature. So far I have recognized the following radiant fluids: oduší, electrical and magnetic. By these, however, I do not mean physical electricity and magnetism.

Incident light particles transfer all or part of their energy to atoms with which they collide, whose composition of energy quanta particles has changed through illness, or to their nuclear and shell electrons.

I have learned that magnetic fluid is shortwave radiation best adapted to inserting its particles to strengthen vital energy. It further strengthens the vitality of the diseased protoplasmic bodies of cells, whose atomic systems, particularly their nuclei, have prematurely radiated more through the illness of the organs.

(297) In a healthy person, and to a greater extent in a magnetizer, this magnetic radiation consists predominantly of subelementary megatron particles in the form of projectiles, a kind of split-off fragments ejected from the atomic nuclei of molecules in cellular protoplasm.

Because the nucleus’s structure is extraordinarily complex, fragments of positive positrons and protons are ejected besides neutron particles. In a very slight degree, radioactive alpha, beta and gamma rays arising in protons are also emitted, as are chemically unexplored particles of pyroton kinds, such as megatrons, silotons and others. The duration of positron particles varies, for they are the smallest and disappear immediately after arising. By contrast, radiant megatron particles are the most capable among them of giving all their energy to a diseased body.

Solar chemical energy hidden in food and transformed in the human body into vital magnetism radiates from the magnetizer during treatment into the patient’s tissues as radiant megatron particles. It passes very readily into the atomic system of the cells, bringing healing. At the same time it strengthens diseased cells and stimulates them into activity.

Because megatron particles are electrically neutral, they are excellent projectiles and can penetrate the electrical fortification of the electron shell’s envelope far more readily than other particles. They can thus insert themselves among the particles of a diseased nucleus until the lawful requirement of completeness is reached. Every illness is therefore a disturbance of this balance among atomic particles.

With the invention of precise measuring instruments, it will be possible to observe electrical and magnetic losses in the human body to establish better and more accurate diagnoses.

With every psychic stirring a special process occurs in the body, perhaps some unknown vibration in the atoms. Rays of light arise. Agitation, however, extraordinarily increases the vibration in the atoms and gives the resulting light rays greater strength and intensity. Through this increased loss of light particles we harm the atoms of the living body; we harm ourselves.

When providing medicines, besides the chemical compounds in the medicine we also give the patient radiant energy of a particular composition, depending upon the medicine’s chemical composition. We know that a proven medicine prescribed for a particular illness does not act equally in every patient, and many must be given another medicine for the same illness. The cause may be sought in disease of the variable system of the cells’ protoplasmic bodies, which receives only those radiant particles currently needed by the atomic system. The radiant energy of an administered medicine often contributes more to curing the illness than its chemical composition. We are close to a time when physicians will diagnose diseases by identifying disturbances and changes in the composition of one or another radiant energy.

(298) Ancient peoples brilliantly grasped the whole mystery of the unknown force issuing from the body through breath and pores, which can be transferred through faith to sick bodies with good effect.

How far behind them in this matter are physicians, with exceptions, who know nothing of bodily magnetism or even write that it is not the force, the fluid, issuing from the magnetizer’s hands that heals, but faith alone. To them magnetizing is merely a suggestive ceremony. Only a physician with half-knowledge of magnetism, or one whom nature has not endowed with magnetism, can write such a thing. Such a person naturally cannot have faith or awaken any magnetism within himself. He performs magnetizing as a ceremony, relying upon the patient’s faith, and therefore succeeds only in rare cases.

It is interesting how these gentlemen contradict themselves. They know vitamins, newly discovered compounds present in nutritive products, because they can confirm them chemically. Therefore they believe they exist. Yet they will have nothing to do with magnetism. I do not say that all physicians disbelieve in magnetism. Some strive to awaken it within themselves and thereby benefit patients. L. H. from Prague and others came to me so that a subject could establish what kind of magnetism they possessed and in what strength.

Translator’s safety note: The following historical animal-tissue practices must not be reproduced. Do not harm animals or use raw animal tissue as a wound dressing, injection or implant. Modern wound care uses cleaning and sterile dressings, with professional treatment for serious or infected wounds; see NHS wound-care guidance.

In medical treatment of various eye diseases, rheumatism, leg and stomach ulcers, sclerosis, paralysis, epilepsy and the like, tissues preserved at low temperature are now employed with highly beneficial effect.

A slight surgical intervention is enough to insert a small piece of cold-preserved tissue beneath the skin. For implantation, skin and placenta are used, from various plant and animal tissues. Treatment can also be carried out by injecting tissue extracts.

Already twenty-eight years ago, subject K. drew my attention to the healing effects of animal tissue. For erysipelas, an infectious skin disease, he asked that flat slices of horse meat be applied to the affected places and replaced every fifteen to thirty minutes. Recovery occurred on the second or third day. For pulmonary disease he recommended killing a healthy young dog, skinning it and applying the hide, slimy side inward, around the patient’s entire chest for twenty-two hours. In both test cases the patients recovered. For severe cuts he advised applying calf peritoneum. I did not try this method, however, for fear of infection.

In sleep the subject drew our attention to the mechanism of this tissue therapy: as tissues gradually die, healing energetic forces are released, pass into ailing cells of the human body and restore them to health.

What does a young, healthy magnetizer do? He places his healthy hands upon diseased areas so that diseased cells may receive radiant energy from them. Dr. K. of Prague writes to me:

“About twenty hours after giving birth to our son, my wife fell hopelessly ill with puerperal fever. She lay in a Prague maternity hospital. Her fever rose to 42°C, and Professor R. and his assistant gave me not the slightest hope. I ran from one specialist to another, and all assured me that everything was in vain, for inflammation of the blood vessels had developed in both legs, gangrene in one, and pus, inflammatory matter, dead substance, flowed from her breasts instead of milk. When the end was approaching, the professors convened a consultation, called me in and prepared me for my wife’s death. Although I distrusted it then, I still went to magnetizer Z. and smuggled him into the maternity hospital as my wife’s uncle and godfather. After the first magnetization the fever fell from 42°C to 39°C. Her condition improved every hour, and the physicians, who kept an exact record of the illness that is still preserved, told me it was a miracle, especially when her milk returned after two days and my wife could nurse the child for a full six months.”

(299) Bodily magnetism is exceedingly rarefied matter, according to the subject’s estimate about eight times more rarefied than hydrogen. Through the will it can be artificially evoked in the body, awakened in the protoplasm of muscle, bone and nerve cells and directly from both white and red blood cells.

I also named this bodily healing emanation “electrism,” because it has properties approximately like those of electricity. If I produce a magnetic current through my hands, it is a current of megatron particles resembling a stream of electrons. Subjects clearly distinguish how a radiant discharge streams straight from the body while delicate corpuscles dart out at the sides, vibrating with unbelievable rapidity. These are radiant megatron particles ejected from electrons, protons, positrons and neutrons, forming bodily magnetism. For an electric current to arise, pressure, an electromotive force, must act. In the magnetizer this manifests as psychic pressure, “I will!” At that moment a magnetic current develops and the transfer of magnetic energy to the patient can begin. A time will come when the transfer of magnetic energy becomes an unparalleled remedy. Here I must briefly mention the methods of magnetizing.

35. How We Should Magnetize

(300) The patient dresses in a simple linen garment, a shirt, and sits down. The magnetizer first warms his hands briefly in warm water and dries them. He awakens a strong will and extends his hands above the patient’s head, with fingers slightly spread and partly curved. He slowly draws his hands about four to ten centimeters from the patient’s body, across the face to the pit of the stomach, where the nerve plexus lies. After a short pause there, he slowly draws his hands over the abdomen to the knees, where he again pauses briefly, and then down along the legs to the bottom, ending the pass with a sharp jerk while closing the fingers. He then returns in a circular movement to the crown of the head for further magnetic passes. For passes over the back, the hands must be crossed and likewise moved from top to bottom, then raised again in a wide arc.

If a particular place is especially weakened and diseased, the hands are applied so that, standing face to face with the patient, the magnetizer places, for example, the patient’s left hand upon his own right, and reverses this on the other side of the body.

He must remember that the left side from the heart radiates yellowish light. He must therefore treat this side with the hand radiating bluish light, the right hand, and conversely.

If the hands are to be applied to the crown of the head, however, I note that the body as a whole radiates more bluish light above and yellowish below. The left hand must therefore be placed on the crown and the right on the soles of the feet.

Let us never magnetize for long, for twenty to twenty-five passes are quite sufficient. According to the nature of the illness, repeat four times weekly, in the most urgent case up to twice daily, for at most eighteen to twenty-five days. In milder cases six to ten days suffice for a cure.

A trained magnetizer must not be tired after a few therapeutic attempts. Caution is necessary during magnetization: never draw diseased magnetism toward yourself. At the beginning it is good to collect the diseased magnetism with a few passes and shake it off with a sharp movement of the hands. Sensitives often warned me against disease-bearing magnetism. The human will has great strength. I must therefore will, genuinely believe that I shall heal, remain calm and not expend magnetism unnecessarily.

(301) If I am to act successfully, I repeat that there must be complete sympathy and devotion between patient and magnetizer. If this is absent on even one side, or if there is doubt about success, the action will not succeed. Antipathy or insufficient faith repels magnetism. One must simply submit to its effect without prejudice.

Magnetic force, the most important in bodily organization, helps heal. Magnetic passes transfer this radiant energy from magnetizer to patient. Through them diseased magnetism is charged with healthy fluid, for, controlled by the will, it bears thoughts that may remain attached to the patient for varying lengths of time. Along with it, a firm will passes from magnetizer to patient, and this will itself acts powerfully toward recovery. It is known that willpower, one’s own or another’s, has a strong influence upon the activity of the body’s organs.

No magnetizer possesses the fluid’s healing power in a disposition and composition suited to every patient, because several kinds of healing magnetism exist. This disposition depends upon a surplus of the energy of those particles the patient needs most at the time; these are the particles of energy he receives. Only in such a case does success occur.

A physician-magnetizer must be morally pure and mentally balanced so that he can restore and strengthen the patient’s disrupted bodily and psychic harmony. He must conduct himself sensibly, avoid unnecessary talk, yet be accessible to the patient. Through magnetic connection everything passes from magnetizer to patient. As the physician is, so will the patient be. Let us beware of dubious magnetizers, lest they instill their own immoral character in the patient.

(302) How many people can we magnetize at the same time? Only one!

Until that person is cured, magnetizer, take on no one else: you would not succeed, unless relying upon someone recovering through his own faith. In that case, however, we would have to say that faith healed, not magnetism. The magnetizer almost breathes healing matter from his body in the form of nervous fluid. Only the surplus portion of his excess can be given to a weak, sick person. If that person is truly weak, the diseased cells absorb within three hours all the energy supplied to them. It is therefore absolutely impossible for anyone successfully to help several patients simultaneously, which I shall clarify through this experiment:

I put sensitives to sleep and commanded them to observe me magnetizing five patients and tell me everything that happened to the magnetism.

I magnetize the first. Subject K. reports that my emanation of energy is weak and advises me to concentrate more upon the thought, believe and will strongly, so that a stronger current arises.

With the second person, it was reported that she did not receive my magnetism; it was being pushed back toward me because of her doubt. How could anything issue from me, she thought, when she could see nothing? “Is that true? Do you have doubts?” I ask the patient. “Yes,” she answers.

I magnetize the third, fourth and fifth. Among other things, the subject reports that the fourth person is drawing my applied magnetism from the first, because the fourth is strongly nonmagnetic and therefore greatly needs magnetism. I had the phenomenon observed until the first person was entirely deprived of the applied magnetism not yet absorbed into her body. Among the others a kind of magnetic balancing occurred according to the requirements of their physical bodies.

It is evident that each person would have to be magnetized separately and at a different time, and even then the transferred magnetism might still be absorbed at a distance by those in greater need.

I can treat several people in succession only when using the stroking method. Here particles of electricity are aroused and predominate without exhausting the magnetizer.

After magnetization the patient must remain alone for at least three hours and must not go out into rain, lest the water absorb the magnetism, as another experience shows:

(303) I had a mentally ill young woman here, Miss M. After each magnetization Mr. E. visited her and would converse with her freely and with particular affection. Despite all my efforts, she showed no signs of improvement. I therefore put subject K. to sleep. The cause was immediately discovered. After a while the subject threw out his arms with joy, saying, “Now I know! I see a young gentleman who always comes to the young woman after your magnetization and draws the applied magnetism from her, because he himself is nonmagnetic. He needs it because he is worn out by dissipation, though he doesn’t know it. He often says that he feels very good with her and enjoys talking to her. But the young woman is tired.”

Because I had similar experience from earlier experiments, I explained the whole matter to her. She believed me and herself prohibited visits before three hours had passed after magnetization. She then became completely healthy within twenty-one days.

Let us therefore meet no one after magnetization, for we cannot know whether they will deprive us of magnetism.

It often happens that a patient falls asleep during magnetization. Let him sleep until he awakens of himself. Let us not worry about him, but firmly believe that he will awaken healthy on his own. We should interrupt sleep, however, if we notice that he is entering catalepsy. Let us remove the transferred magnetism through reverse passes from the feet toward the head, with awakened faith and will. If we left the patient in catalepsy for a longer time, tissue death could easily occur.

(304) The magnetic current radiates and penetrates the organism to a considerable depth, chiefly through its neutron particles. It acts most radically to a depth of six centimeters and excellently strengthens all cells, which revive and rally to life, striving to rid themselves of disease-producing substances.

Organic disturbances can therefore also be treated. If, however, they are rooted too deeply, they cannot be successfully cured.

Because I act through suggestion at the same time, all functional illnesses arising psychically can be treated splendidly. In this way it is possible to treat all nervous disturbances, headaches, nerve pain or neuralgia, spasms, seizures and the beginnings of epilepsy, paralysis, nervous shocks, oversensitivity, fear, anxiety, palpitations, insomnia, dizziness, loss of sensation, speech, hearing or sight, as well as constipation, uterine bleeding, diarrhea and impotence.

Concerning these functional and psychogenic illnesses, I must note that sometimes immediate recovery is possible if the patient awakens faith within himself and I place my hands upon the diseased area with the thought that the magnetic emanation issuing from my palms truly permeates it, while I simultaneously believe in success. Recovery then occurs immediately.

I succeeded in healing patients of this kind rapidly one after another as they came to me, without a need for renewed magnetic-suggestive action. Why was success immediate in these patients? Because they had great faith that I would heal them, their own faith, not magnetism, healed them at once with my help, which acted suggestively. Severe illnesses, however, are not immediately cured by the thermal magnetic current alone through a single laying on of hands or magnetization, nor by the hypnologist’s living faith. In such a case, if we wish to heal through magnetic fluid, magnetism must be applied repeatedly, particularly in physiological illnesses, and received by the patient with faith.

(305) A good magnetizer, bringing his hands near the patient, must already sense in the first passes where the illness lies. His hands stop of themselves at diseased places, which usually react reflexively to magnetism by reddening. This shows that healing thermal magnetic energy is most needed precisely there. Laying on hands can also partly help us determine a diagnosis. A good magnetizer can sense a patient’s illness even at a distance. The present scarcity of good magnetizers must be attributed to ignorance.

Magnetism heals skin eruptions, soothes rheumatic pain and strengthens weak sight. In treating the eyes, magnetic passes must not be made across them; rather, with arms extended, one must act upon them with a direct current, alternately bringing the hands closer to and farther from the eyes.

Magnetization corrects blood circulation and strengthens the gray cerebral cortex. Through his own will and willing, a patient can also transfer this healing magnetic energy from cells still sufficiently supplied to cells exhausted by illness, bringing magnetic balance throughout the body. Rally yourself and follow this advice toward recovery!

Because magnetic energy strengthens, it also treats so-called psychoneuroses, psychic injuries or traumas toward which no suitable attitude was adopted and which were pushed into the upper subconscious, as well as hysteria, various somnambulistic, cataleptic and lethargic attacks, disturbances of self-esteem, involuntary urination, drunkenness, smoking, morphinism or drug dependence, vascular neuroses, asthma, sexual perversions, depressive moods, terrifying representations, derangement and others.

I have described only a few kinds of magnetism. If we stroke or rub another person’s body with a hand, a force with the properties of electricity arises between the two touching parts. If a magnetic person does this, the resulting radiant material emanation has healing effects: it penetrates, stimulates, adjusts, revives and regulates the diseased tissue of our organism and encourages its activity. To use this new method of treatment, the patient must lie naked face down on a couch. Both patient and magnetizer awaken a healing thought within themselves, and with the whole surface of his hand the magnetizer strokes the spinal cord from neck to loins. He makes passes only in one direction, downward from the head. The brain and spinal cord are the center of the nervous system. After about ten minutes he strokes the left side, then the right, about five minutes each. In turn he treats the nerves in the lumbar region, where the spinal cord divides toward the legs, making passes from the center of the sacrum toward the hips. Then he strokes both legs simultaneously with both hands. Where a physiological disturbance of metabolism has occurred, or pressure in a diseased organ has increased, the affected place reddens. Its activity has been stimulated, so that congestion appears as redness of the skin, which we try to disperse through passes of the hands, preferably toward the spinal cord. We treat the front of the body in the same way. Only the solar plexus, the stomach and abdomen, is treated with a circular motion. We treat the bronchi with hand passes from the neck to the chest. In treating the brain, we place the left hand upon the patient’s nape and rub the whole upper head toward the nape with the right, moving toward the left hand. Neuralgic inflammations of nerves, manifested in shooting pain into the arms, headaches, tingling limbs and the like, are treated by making magnetic passes after treating the spinal cord, in the region of the shoulder blades, from the middle of the spine toward the shoulders and then in reverse. By treating the central nervous system, the diseased organs heal themselves.

Through magnetic passes the diseased organism is charged with healthy vital fluid. Along with it, the healing thought passes from magnetizer to patient: “You are recovering! Your bodily and mental condition improves from day to day!” This is directly transmitted and materialized upon the sick person’s body and awakens the subconscious to heal itself.

(306) Magnetic treatment, hypnosis or suggestion, however, cannot treat prolonged, chronic illnesses, congenital defects, cancerous tumors, leprosy, or people lame, deaf or blind from birth, or suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs, bones, intestines and the like. These illnesses can be treated through faith and autosuggestion in deep meditation.

Treatment by magnetism, suggestion, hypnosis and similar means may be performed by physicians capable of being good magnetohypnotists.

Many people visit celebrated so-called miracle healers who place their hands upon hundreds of patients daily. Some gain relief and many even recover, believing that the healer’s magnetism helped them. This view is mistaken. No one can supply his magnetism to hundreds of patients every day. In these cases success comes from the power of electricity aroused through stroking, or precisely the opposite reaction of magnetism, for these so-called “miracle doctors” are exceptionally nonmagnetic people. Because neither the physician or healer nor the diseased place in the patient’s body is magnetic, applying the hands irritates the diseased part and makes it redden, because magnetism passes from the patient’s body into the magnetizer’s body more through the diseased place than through other parts. We find, indeed, that a diseased place reddens under various therapeutic interventions. Under the influence of such a visible phenomenon, the patient’s faith in recovery also awakens. Both forces then operate: revival of the place through the reaction of the patient’s own magnetism, all the more if its radiant particles remain sufficiently composed, as well as the electricity aroused, and the patient’s faith. If such a physician does not help a patient, his intervention cannot itself harm him. The patient does harm himself, however, if he relies upon this treatment in every case and delays consulting a medical specialist, when without losing time much worsening of an advancing illness that cannot be treated by laying on hands could still be prevented.

36. Examples of Healing

(307) For a clearer understanding, I shall give several facts from my own experience, based upon my scientific research:

Miss M., an eighteen-year-old student, daughter of a headmaster from V. near Dvůr Králové nad Labem, suffered from mental illness so severely that she could not pursue her studies. A disease of the digestive system developed as well. Within five days she was to undergo surgery for a stomach ulcer, as Prague professors had decided. By chance the M. family obtained a copy of the journal The Natural Physician, in which I was then discussing my subjects’ clairvoyance in recognizing bodily illnesses.

Before the operation, the family decided to bring their daughter to me for a clairvoyant examination. During it my subject K. found no stomach ulcer and declared the operation entirely unnecessary. He stated that the young woman was seriously mentally ill, for a second, lower-order subconscious SELF had been evoked in her, so that the conscious SELF and lower-order subconscious were equal in strength. Throughout this she was conscious of everything. The subject also stated that the inactivity of the digestive system could be cured if I gave her my bodily magnetism. Of her brain illness he further reported that the esplana were brightly illuminated by impressions not her own, arising from the lower-order subconscious without her conscious activity. The gray substance was continually active, but slowly and with occasional irritation, even during sleep, thereby devastating and crushing her conscious SELF. He said this could be treated successfully and advised placing her in hypnotic sleep twice daily for at least one to two hours, suppressing the lower-order subconscious activity. Through suggestion I should raise up her sunken and dejected conscious SELF again, while suppressing the lower-order subconscious SELF with its terrifying representations by creating new, healthy ones.

The family asked me to try treating the girl in this way. It was worth a scientific experiment, so I gave my word and asked that they bring her back in a week, which they did.

(308) I observed that her food intake was about that of a six-month-old child. Examining her mental state, I found that she could remain standing in one place for as long as five hours. If spoken to, she would come to herself as though from a stupor, not knowing what was happening around her or who had called. When I asked her to tell me what she experienced, she answered that she could not explain it well: for example, she saw herself as a child, or saw herself without recognizing herself, heard foreign voices within herself, and saw famous people already dead and spoke with them.

I objected that this was deception, an illusion, a hallucination. She insisted it certainly was not, that these people had visited her for a long time and she was sure it was no deception, for she could converse with them, touch them and see them clearly. When they took control of her, she spoke with their mouths and quoted their poems although she did not know them at all.

I recognized that there was no point in objecting, but that I needed to convince her. A good hypnologist must achieve this through his will.

I asked the patient to let me know when someone appeared to her. She answered that if she wished, one could come immediately.

“Good, then wish it!” I urge. She replies, “He’s here already!” “Where, and who?” I ask. “The poet Neruda.” “Where do you see him?” I ask. “Can’t you see him? He’s standing right here!” I answer, “I’ll challenge him to a duel and hurt him.” The young woman protests: “Don’t do that; you’ll be unhappy, and he’ll never come to me again. I would be betraying him.” I objected, “So you really believe that spirits have greater power than we earthly people!” I took an iron kitchen coal poker and struck the supposed poet vigorously several times.

(309) The frightened young woman reports that the poet has left, threatening swift revenge. “Do not believe it, miss! Now I shall convince you that he is your deceptive apparition. I shall will the poet to return immediately.” “You are mistaken!” she replied. “Then watch carefully, miss! The poet is here already; you see him!” “Yes, he’s come, he has come,” she answers in surprise. “What expression does he have?” I ask. “He’ll take revenge upon you, and soon,” she answers. I then say, “And I shall command him to laugh and love me.” I give the command and she says, “Indeed, he’s laughing and embracing you! How the spirits obey you!” “Do not believe they are spirits, miss. Consider whether it could be possible for me to do whatever I like with him.” She did not answer. “I’ll convince you that this truly is an illusion. I want a double to form from him.” “I see him.” “I want a second, a third, another… Now you see ten poets.” “That’s strange,” she says, shaking her head. I say, “Now they’re all gone, now they’re here again, now they’re gone.” The young woman stood like a statue. “Well, what do you say about this poet of yours? I’ll do the same with everyone who comes to you and speaks within you, and if you wish, they’ll never return. Speak, then!” “Perhaps it is an illusion after all.” “Yes, miss, it is an illusion. I’ll convince you further with myself. Do you see me?” “Yes, I do.” “Now you no longer see me!” “Where are you? I can’t see you.” “You feel me within yourself,” I say. Now the young woman expressed herself in my entire dialect, uttering sentences I had spoken long before. I ask, “Do you feel me within yourself? Can you speak?” She answers, “Yes, exactly as when someone else controls me.” “Well, now I release you; you see me again in reality. Nothing is wrong with you. On the contrary, you feel light, healthy and cheerful; you are not afraid… What do you say to that?” I ask. “Think about it!” “I almost believe you now; I’m not so afraid anymore. But it seems strange that sometimes I recite poems and speak a foreign language although I know no foreign language at all.”

(310) I now gave her an explanation: “Miss, every act, every thought, the whole life of every individual remains here. Everything is impressed and recorded as though in pictures; not a single sound is lost. Your liberated lower-order subconscious, the soul itself through psychic fluid, unprotected by magnetism, envelops itself in the life of someone who once lived here on Earth, permeates it, takes on that person’s entire character and expresses itself in it as though it were the deceased himself. The lower-order subconscious SELF is swept away and has become the instrument of the acts it has captured. The conscious SELF is missing, which would heighten cognitive reason and prevent the soul from drowning in the deceased person’s deeds.”

I further convinced the young woman of the truth through my subjects by taking them into the times when now-deceased members of her family had lived. I also convinced her that we can know past things about living people.

She now fully believed, but, as is evident, facts were necessary. In the treatment that followed, she was placed twice daily in magnetohypnotic sleep for one to three hours to calm the cerebral center. At first she would speak during it, because the lower-order subconscious SELF was active. Through a subject I had to perform psychoanalysis in the upper subconscious, break up the identified causes by suggestion and replace them with healthy ones, until I succeeded fully. Then peaceful, strengthening sleep arose, greatly benefiting her. Through this her conscious SELF more readily consolidated itself consciously. She often told me that nothing else would remain in her memory so strongly as that beautiful sleep, after which she always attained calm.

Twice-daily magnetization enclosed her exposed oduší and strengthened her weak body and appetite. She gradually recovered. Waking suggestions, twice daily after each magnetization, brought out all unhealthy impressions from the upper subconscious, through which the lower-order subconscious activity with its SELF disappeared entirely. Suddenly the conscious SELF could develop freely; suggestions supported and awakened it to new life and joined it with her own healthy impressions in the esplana.

Within four weeks she had recovered so much in body and spirit that she could resume her studies.

(311) Student J. suffered from weak nerves. He failed his examinations because of a feeling of fear arising from the stomach region that completely depressed him. The solar nerve plexus was so irritated that he vomited for several days before the examinations. During them he lost presence of mind and calm, and a chaos of thoughts arose. This manifests in the cerebral center as follows:

In those with weak nerves, constant study before an examination produces overwork, manifested as strong waves or rippling in the gray cortex; in others the opposite occurs. In the former, study expands the esplana, making them radiate and vibrate strongly. Before or during examinations, when the student can no longer control himself and gain calm for fear of failing, the esplana vibrate and expand abnormally until they join and simply merge together, producing confusion and chaos. It is a peculiar state of stupidity; the student sweats, cannot make any headway with the task for the life of him, and fails. When he comes home he calms down and wonders how it could have happened, for he once again knows everything well. The esplana have become disentangled and returned to normal.

Before his next examinations, this student asked me to help him somehow. Four days beforehand I took him in for daily magnetization. He was a sensitive. Through suitable suggestions I secured complete calm for him. On the last day he reported feeling much more confident and calmer. As he left, I further assured him that I would support him telepathically, that he would feel me and rely upon my complete calm. This is indeed so. If I am fluidically connected with someone, I have absolute influence over him, and if he is a sensitive, I have him almost in my power.

When the student returned from the examinations, he came to me delighted, reporting that everything had gone well. Nothing like the earlier trouble had come upon him. I helped other students in the same way.

(312) Mrs. U. had unbearable back pain. For an entire week I placed my hands upon the painful places, awakening a strong will for a powerful emanation of magnetism. Indeed, after a week the pain disappeared completely and did not return.

In some people the body becomes almost oversaturated with magnetism, and swelling of the skin cells occurs, causing great sensitivity and pain in the skin’s nerve cells. The swelling appears visibly as edema. I tested and found that nothing helps here except a purely nonmagnetic person placing hands upon those places with the thought of taking the magnetism away.

It is necessary, however, for the magnetizer to draw the magnetism away from this person in time and shake it from his hands, while it still remains on the nonmagnetic person’s surface and has not yet been absorbed by the cells, for it is disease-bearing. The magnetizer himself finds it difficult to remove magnetism that has already penetrated deeply into the body. A nonmagnetic person always achieves more through his nature than a magnetizer through his will.

(313) Secretary K. from Poříčí near Trutnov had succumbed to heavy smoking and excessive drinking of spirits. Yet he wished to rid himself of these habits, for he had developed a nervous illness: complete insomnia, loss of appetite and loss of interest in life, leaving him incapable of thought or work. He was wealthy and had already tried various spas without relief. The weakening of his will brought psychic torment. He drove away this distressing, tormenting state by drinking and smoking again. Although he knew he was only worsening his illness, he could no longer control himself.

At last he was advised to try treatment through hypnosis and suggestion, supposedly the best means of ridding himself of nervousness, insomnia and his other difficulties. He therefore came to Červený Kostelec and sent word asking me to come to the inn where he was staying. I refused. Only when the innkeeper himself and his wife came for the third time, sparing neither their journey nor their words, did I agree to go. I took subject K. and we examined the patient. In hypnosis the subject pointed to inactivity of the digestive system, a weak heart and, above all, continual vibration of the medulla oblongata and resulting cerebral neurasthenia from nicotine and alcohol poisons, supposedly confirmed by the vibration of colors.

When I asked whether I could put him to sleep, the subject answered that this was hardly likely, since he was so nervous. His continually vibrating medulla oblongata could not be calmed at all, or only partially, so that sleep would be superficial, because its vibrations were directly connected with the cerebrum’s gray cortex.

I therefore told the patient hypnosis would not work and urged him to take treatment into his own hands rather than wanting someone else to think for him. I advised him how to proceed. The patient continually objected, however, that he could not do it, that his will was weak, and asked me simply to try, promising to submit completely. Seeing that he longed to free himself of his habit, and that the matter was worth a scientific experiment, I placed him directly under my magnetic influence.

(314) Through continual renewal of the magnetic connection, a luminous fluid line formed between us, as sensitives demonstrated to me.

The result was better than expected. Because I do not smoke or drink spirits and live naturally, my person had a counteracting effect upon the patient. In addition, several times daily I transmitted a thought of aversion to smoking and drinking.

On the second day he smoked scarcely two cigarettes. By the fourth magnetization he no longer smoked at all and drank only soda water.

He already felt healthy and left. Three months later I met him again. Before witnesses he joyfully told me that he did not smoke and that, if he nevertheless wanted to smoke an offered cigarette, he had to force himself and felt unwell afterward. He had banned smoking in his office. Although he himself manufactured alcoholic drinks, he now drank the soda water he had once hated, and his acquaintances greatly marveled at the sudden change. Above all he praised his good sleep and appetite. By ten in the evening he had to be in bed, something he had previously been unable to do. He confided that during ten years of illness he had spent 80,000 crowns on smoking and drinking.

When, after half a year, I wished to know whether my influence persisted, he told me he would probably need me again for about two days. From this I recognized that he had done little to cultivate his own will and wanted to rely only upon me. I did not grant the request, because I do not help people of this kind.

Such experiments succeed only with a good magnetizer possessing the qualities described above. Otherwise it is vain to expect a good result.

(315) Accompanied by their friends, Mrs. H. from Plzeň and Mrs. V. from Náchod visited me. I determined that both suffered from schizophrenia, a splitting of consciousness to such a degree that a new SELF had arisen, manifesting as a psychic personality wholly different from and hostile to the first. It is a kind of possession, though by one’s own soul, which has withdrawn into the lower-order subconscious. A male personality usually manifests itself. Mrs. H. and those around her had the impression that another spirit had taken possession of hers. Her rigid eyes and face themselves showed me that she suffered greatly.

Mrs. H. told me frankly that the spirit visited her constantly and tormented her severely. If she wanted to move her bowels or urinate, it was beside her and commanded, “You will not go now! You will go in two to four hours, when I wish!” And indeed, at the stated time she could relieve herself easily.

At meals the spirit changed the food’s taste by sprinkling something into it or replacing it with another, repulsive food.

Day and night it sexually abused her, beat her and then would not let her sleep. Only when she was utterly exhausted did it graciously allow sleep. As soon as it commanded, “Sleep!” she fell asleep.

When she had an appetite, it took it away; after tormenting her with hunger, it restored her appetite far more strongly, so that she ate greedily. Then it mocked her devilishly, saying it would waste her to the bone anyway, and showed her in a mental image how she would look.

Because it seemed to me that Mrs. H. was exaggerating, I was skeptical, though I did not visibly show it. She sensed this telepathically, however, and informed me in the name of the second SELF that she would convince me. At that moment Mrs. H.’s head flew from side to side as though she were being slapped, and I saw her lips swelling markedly.

The “spirit” also tormented Mrs. V. by giving her injections. A bloody spot appeared and the place swelled as after a real injection.

(316) I observed these phenomena and performed an experiment. I took a nail and gave it to Mrs. H., saying, “It is red-hot and burns fiercely, but your hand must hold it even though your flesh burns.” Mrs. H. held it and screamed until red stripes appeared on her hand as though the nail were truly red-hot, although it was completely cold.

Through the weakening of the conscious SELF’s psychic capacity, the lower-order subconscious SELF had come forward in these two sensitives, occupied the leading position and manifested itself in the form of a chauffeur once seen by one woman and an estate manager seen by the other. Through a morbid attraction to them, these men had become more strongly fixed in the women’s esplana. The soul had abstracted, taken, their likeness from the esplana for its purpose in the lower-order subconscious. I tasked a subject with observing their brains. In one woman he reported that two areas, convolutions, on the right half of the brain were not working or undulating at all, but in the same places the esplana shone strongly with captured impressions not her own. The lady was sensitive and almost constantly in the second degree of hypnosis. To prove the truth, the sensitive urged me to perform experiments with her.

On the cerebellum he observed strong radiation from the protosplana, which were almost continually active. Everything was immediately clear to me.

The inactive place in the right part of the brain weakened her conscious SELF, making it insufficient for balance, so that it withdrew into the lower-order subconscious.

Her continually active protosplana and lower SELF received, in the liberated oduší, foreign impressions from the psychic activity of human society. Since humanity inclines more toward evil than good, the manifestations were so varied and immoral.

(317) To better understand the patient’s mental state, I shall give a closer analysis. The human conscious SELF tends more toward wrongdoing, for example enriching oneself dishonestly, murder, fornication, envy, malice and the like. Without this subconscious SELF, which is pure and moral and manifests in consciousness as a warning inner voice, humanity would fall into ruin and perish in sin.

Because this inner voice of conscience, of the subconscious SELF, is weak, it does not have enough strength to be captured telepathically by another person. The protoplasm of sensitive people therefore does not receive it. By contrast, the acts of the conscious SELF are already powerful and mostly sinful manifestations. A sick sensitive therefore receives them in the protosplana and liberated sensitive oduší and expresses himself according to them.

These impressions and perceptions pass into the esplana of the upper subconscious, and psychic activity occurs in the gray cortex. This is explained more fully in the section “Sleep.” Because the received impressions cannot be rationally processed and balanced, consciously or subconsciously, in the inactive part of the patient’s cerebral cortex, they remain there personified and liberated, not held in the soul’s firm reins, and seize and overpower the soul for themselves.

Having complete freedom, these impressions and perceptions, with the participation of the lower-order subconscious SELF, reach the cerebellum, where they set the motor, sensory and sympathetic nerves with their ganglia into activity and take over all the senses. The conscious SELF then stands like an exile beside an insolent intruder with whom it is forced into continual psychic combat.

Such an illness readily intensifies under continual psychic activity, for this knows no fatigue and draws the esplana of the upper subconscious into activity with it.

The impressions the soul receives telepathically are always incomplete and fragmentary. The soul in the lower-order subconscious SELF thus has an opportunity to create new works and phenomena from the received theme. This is also why our dreams are so varied, always new and inexhaustible.

Various unclarified representations suppressed through anxiety and fear, and thereby split off from consciousness, become obscure. Having sunk into the entry subconscious, they become dangerous over time to weak-willed individuals and sensitives.

(318) The soul, also active in subconscious degrees, though reason, will and logic are at a low and obscure level, becomes independent within them. Under this low and restricted activity they grow into dangerous complexes, systems of forces, from which the soul, independent of conscious activity, emerges autonomously as a second personality, thus changing the pure entry subconscious into the lower-order subconscious.

From the lower-order subconscious it then attacks the conscious SELF as a visible being in base, aggressive manifestations. This is a state of morbid, vivid hallucination. Because sex is the strongest impulse in a human being, it carries away and occupies the entire personality of this lower SELF. It is no wonder that the weakened conscious SELF feels sexually abused by it as though in reality. This state is a kind of disintegration of the soul into several personalities; properly speaking, it is the capacity of one and the same soul. Complexes of forces often degenerate so far that the lower SELF manifests even as a demonic being.

Here a good hypnologist and magnetizer can accomplish much. Because the patient’s will is weak and he himself is in some degree of hypnotic sleep, the hypnologist and magnetizer can fully master him through suggestion, magnetism and telepathy alike.

(319) I freed the women described above from their illness by first showing them through suggestion that I had the same power as their opponents, indeed that I was much stronger. I gave them apples to taste whose flavor I changed by my words to garlic. Through will I evoked painful places until bloody spots appeared, and so forth.

Then I firmly announced that I was declaring battle against their opponents and that these would leave them within a short time. The patients thereby gained complete confidence and had to believe.

These new impressions, entering into combat with the old, were my best aid. At the same time they were continually nourished by the patients’ own confidence, for they placed all their hopes in me. They had to see me always victorious.

We know that every sensitive is nonmagnetic and has many dreams. A magnetic person, by contrast, sleeps well and has very few dreams, because the magnetic layer around the entire body encloses and insulates it against wandering waves of siloton particles of thought-fluid, the transmitters and bearers of people’s psychic impressions.

These siloton waves, bearing thoughts, impressions and so forth, strike a magnetic person’s magnetic layer in vain. But in a sensitive, who is sometimes entirely nonmagnetic, these waves of radiant siloton particles have free access to the body, striking the protosplana of the cerebellum and the exposed oduší freely and stimulating them to receive various impressions. This is why sensitives suffer so much from dreams and are restless in sleep.

I followed these findings and supplied my magnetism to these sensitive women. I magnetized first the entire body, then the back of the head over the cerebellum, on the first day every two hours and afterward only two or three times daily, so that the person remained continually enveloped in magnetism. In this way I protected the patients against external impressions.

Since new diseased nodes ceased forming in the women’s esplana, the gray cortex in the inactive place began awakening to life. It then had the ability to process foreign impressions rationally with the conscious SELF’s activity already awakened in that same place.

Through suggestion I simultaneously achieved a partial fading of the luminous nodes in the esplana. Complete fading does not occur, of course, but only so far as is needed to release the gray cortex from the catalepsy into which it had fallen through the intense stimulation and vibration of the esplana.

To make success certain, in my continual struggle with the intruder I must maintain my living faith, expressed through spoken suggestion, allowing not even a single automagnetic manifestation upon the patient’s body. Through continual counteraction the automatic manifestations naturally weaken, for otherwise they live only through continual outward expression and discharge.

In this method of treatment, all the health instructions previously given must be observed.

(320) I add that whoever magnetizes is in direct telepathic connection with the magnetized sensitive, who is under his direct influence. No one else has telepathic power over the magnetized person. Only if my rival is magnetically stronger can he discharge my magnetism from that person and then take control himself.

In the cases of the sick women described, it is better to remain telepathically connected with the patient and continually support her through a healthy thought. This is because the thought is impressed first upon the protosplana and the liberated, exposed oduší, and then upon the esplana of the cerebrum.

Spoken suggestion is perceived directly in the gray cortex through the auditory apparatus. In this case it is the best procedure.

To remove the telepathic connection with the patient, by way of an alternative, and isolate the patient completely from all external impressions, I proceed as follows at the end of magnetization:

(321) I end the final short passes at the back of the head by closing my hands into fists. Standing before the magnetized person, I extend my fingers and arms upward, letting magnetism emanate freely into space for about two minutes, with awakened faith that none is escaping from me anymore. This freely emanated magnetism is still drawn onto the patient, and I am entirely released. Otherwise a magnetic band would remain between us, and my vital energy would be continually drawn away by the nonmagnetic body of the sick sensitive.

I cannot analyze all my experiments in this respect. But I repeat that magnetism has a great future. Spain may serve as an example: at the end of 1931 a certain woman died there who held a royal decree and authorization to practice medicine through magnetic healing. She saved many lives physicians had declared lost. She also cured the former King Alfonso of a serious illness when he was two years old, after twelve physicians had completely abandoned hope and allowed her bodily magnetism to be used. After a fortnight of magnetization the child was cured. What many laugh at today, humanity will one day bless, as it has blessed many things that once seemed illusions.

37. Healing through Hypnotic Sleep

Translator’s safety note: This chapter reproduces dangerous historical claims. Do not attempt prolonged fasting, induced unresponsiveness or withdrawal of care as treatment, and do not interpret absent circulation as restorative sleep. Children are especially vulnerable to dehydration. An unresponsive person who is not breathing normally needs immediate emergency help and CPR, not continued observation. See NHS guidance on dehydration and NHS guidance on resuscitating a child. The author’s account follows unchanged.

(322) I shall give one more experiment of mine of great value and future promise. Today it is already known that prolonged illnesses are best treated through fasting, especially where bad blood is involved. I reflected upon this for a long time and arrived at the view that such a fasting cure would proceed better without our conscious activity, in short without our knowing about it, during a certain period of hypnotic sleep. I conducted the principal experiment on an eleven-year-old boy, B., at the beginning of pneumonia in the left part of the lungs.

Through this experiment I learned that a person can be put to sleep for any length of time, even a very long one.

After the last remnants of food have been digested, blood is no longer formed.

If a healthy person is put to sleep, blood circulation ceases entirely within sixty-three days; in a sick person much sooner. This depends upon the degree of impurity in the blood and the patient’s vital energy.

During this time, as blood circulation grows increasingly weak, urine continues to form from the fluids contained in the body. The valves open of themselves and urine passes automatically. For this reason someone suffering from disease of the urinary organs must not be put to sleep.

As soon as blood ceases circulating and is at rest, impure substances begin to settle upon the walls of the vessels and, during therapeutic sleep, penetrate to the body’s surface, appearing as a moist eruption, often very considerable.

The heart remains active only through the blood contained in its own substance. Its far more rapid movement is not outwardly perceptible; the arteries are inactive, breathing is accelerated and digestion ceases without fear of disturbance. The intestines partly dry out, only on the surface, as clairvoyant subjects observed. The nerves and heart are strengthened. Mentally ill people are like new beings upon awakening. In skin diseases we obtain splendid results, and likewise in nervous illnesses from mental overwork. Every kind of pain disappears through sleep.

Sleep must not be induced in high fevers, advanced inflammations or serious heart defects.

With mild heart defects, during shorter hypnotic sleep not intended for blood cleansing, I found that the heart beat more regularly. After awakening, patients no longer complained so much.

When inducing sleep, it is necessary to proceed as follows:

(323) The patient must have complete confidence in the physician-hypnotist. During the first week sleep is gradually deepened with about twenty magnetic passes, at intervals of one to ten hours.

Once the patient sleeps deeply for ten hours, we proceed the following day to therapeutic sleep. The longer the period of sleep specified, the better.

I make certain the body is not in catalepsy, that is, completely rigid, unyielding and inflexible. The patient must not be left in such a degree of sleep, for tissue death would occur. The body must be pliant and supple; this must always be kept in mind.

The first and second degrees of sleep depth are also forbidden in this case, because consciousness has not completely disappeared and subconscious activity would be evoked after awakening. The patient must enter the third or even fourth degree of sleep, in which consciousness has already ceased and recollection after awakening is impossible. We verify all this during the first week.

On the day of the transition to therapeutic sleep, the patient must eat nothing. He must remove his outer clothing, unfasten everything and sit in his underwear in a comfortable reclining chair, with support for the back of the head as well. Both soles of the feet must rest upon the ground, and he places his hands on his thighs. The physician should calmly encourage the patient by emphasizing the health benefits of sleep and slowly lead him into therapeutic sleep through willpower, without magnetization, through his own calm and psychic certainty.

No suggestions are needed; the physician-hypnologist’s will and faith concerning how long the sleep should last are sufficient.

Awakening is as easy as inducing sleep. It depends upon how strong my faith is.

We now cover the lower part of the patient’s body with a blanket and let him sit quietly for fourteen hours. Fresh air must be provided so that the lungs do not suffer.

After fourteen hours of sleep, let us lay the patient on his back in bed, turned slightly to the right, and cover him lightly.

As long as the blood circulates, he will urinate where he lies. We therefore place a cloth beneath him and replace it with a dry one as needed. Beyond this let us not concern ourselves with the patient; let us have no fear that anything might happen to him. Nothing will happen.

(324) The patient’s psychic and bodily state are closely connected with the physician-hypnologist’s. I therefore emphasize that a hypnologist suffering from mental illness or any bodily disease must not undertake this method of treatment. The sleeper receives his entire condition, and more strongly.

If the physician-hypnologist contracts an illness while the patient sleeps, the sleeper simultaneously contracts it through magnetic vibrations and oduší. I found that the sleeper takes on even the slightest rash. If the physician-hypnologist feels he is becoming ill, he must awaken the sleeper. If he dies suddenly, the patient dies at the same time.

Physicians who are Samaritans and feel within themselves the capacity to be good magnetohypnotists may undertake this method of treatment.

The physician must induce sleep through will alone and must not rely upon the patient’s autosuggestion. He must fix his gaze upon any part of the body and induce sleep without the patient knowing that he is to be put to sleep.

(325) The physician-hypnotist must be completely healthy, bodily and mentally. He must have no vice, drink no alcohol, refrain from excessive smoking, not endanger his life and so forth. Above all he must know how to control himself. His age should be between twenty-seven and forty-five, while the cell’s substance is not yet degenerating.

The physician must not entertain the thought that he might fail to awaken the patient. He must firmly believe in his abilities and continually picture the patient after awakening, healthy in body and mind.

As the first refreshment, let us give the patient a cup of strongly sweetened tea. Two hours later he receives a decoction of rolled oats and, after a short interval, raw eggs.

The period of sleep does not count toward the patient’s lifespan, and I believe he can remain in a state of hypnotic sleep for several years.

38. Electricity

(326) Electricity is a kind of energy proceeding from the universe’s single primal source and formed through the rearrangement of vibrating particles.

This energy can be brought into effect by the decomposition of matter, friction and so forth. In this way we acquire ever-new units. There is no fixed quantity of these units; the law of energy applies, which through a certain effect yields or produces new units continually.

Although electricity continually gives off new units, it does not lose its capacity. After performing a certain task, the emitted units return to their source, so there is no need to fear that we might exhaust this energy. Certain metals, water, air, etheric waves, animal bodies and so forth are good conductors for transmitting this admirable energy.

Our body and every other organic body are capable of awakening this energy from the very first cell. We awaken it through a trained strong will, desire, willing, ardor and excitement, thereby gaining new units.

It follows that the sole agent for obtaining this energy is our soul’s activity. We must therefore bring the soul into the highest possible activity of psychic strength through awakening, a powerful intervention throughout the organism. The more perfectly we can do this, the greater the number of electrical units we awaken and control. At the same time, of course, we bring oduší into activity. Without it the psychic effect would not occur. And simultaneously the fluid of bodily magnetism is also set in motion. It is therefore necessary to distinguish the substance, nature and action of these three agents.

The bodily organism partly produces electrical energy itself through physical and chemical processes. Through the action of the will we acquire this energy in considerably greater quantity, thereby contributing to the organism’s vigor and rejuvenation. This activity brings about a faster exchange of disease-producing substances.

(327) Electrical energy acquired through psychic activity also stimulates the endocrine glands to produce hormones that invigorate our life.

Hormones are secretions formed in certain glands of our body and discharged into the blood. They form in the thyroid, thymus, pineal gland, adrenals, pancreas and sex glands, and also in the liver, stomach, kidneys and intestines.

Hormones have extraordinary importance for us. They stimulate and strengthen the entire psychic and bodily life. If we removed the glands secreting adrenal hormone, death would occur within a few days.

The less the body’s cells are supplied with hormones, the weaker, less resistant, lazier and less capable of work they become. Cells of the gray cerebral cortex, muscle cells and others waste away. The body weakens and prevents the soul from expressing itself perfectly.

When hormones revive the cells, they are invigorated and work more energetically. Through a deficiency of brain hormone, certain cells of the gray cortex atrophy, so that many capacities and values slumbering within us find no expression. Here we see the importance of awakening electricity by strengthening the will through autosuggestion, so that the glands in our organism are stimulated to secrete hormones abundantly. I repeat that life rests upon magnetism and electricity. Illness is merely a disturbance of magnetic and electrical balance. With aging, the body loses the ability to produce enough magnetism and electricity, and weakness, decline, illnesses and death follow.

In this process lies the great secret of acquiring and maintaining strength, freshness and youth into advanced old age.

39. Oduší

(328) Our body is endowed with two essentially different fluids. We have learned about magnetic fluid, an agent for the body, whose substance consists of megatron particles.

We shall now become acquainted with the fluid of oduší, an agent for the soul, whose substance consists of siloton particles, likewise fragments from atomic nuclei.

Some specialists know only magnetic fluid. They encounter phenomena they cannot explain through sluggish magnetic fluid and do not know how to resolve the mystery. It is therefore necessary to distinguish two fluids, each with a different substance.

Magnetic fluid develops in every cell of our body, within the cellular protoplasm, from food substances containing it. As we know, magnetism can be released from the body through the will and controlled by it as well.

Oduší is released from all cells, from the cell nuclei themselves, which radiate discharges of individual particles of energy forming oduší, fully suited to the soul’s capacities.

The structure of atoms is variously combined from different kinds of electrons, just as these are in turn composed of pyrotons. At the same time atoms are changeable in nature. One kind of radiation is produced within the cellular protoplasm and another from the cell nuclei themselves: radiating, or radiant, energy.

These two kinds of radiation depend upon different kinds of particles in the composition of the atoms of cellular protoplasm and upon a different composition of the atoms of cell nuclei. I call the particles forming magnetic fluid megatrons and those forming oduší silotons.

The evident differences between magnetism and oduší are these:

(329) Magnetism varies in color according to the food consumed. Oduší always has one color, white with a slight bluish tint.

Magnetism radiates one to ten centimeters around the body, farther in some people. Oduší always radiates about one centimeter around the body.

In some people magnetism does not radiate outward at all. We call them nonmagnetic. Oduší radiates around everyone’s body.

Water absorbs magnetism. It does not absorb oduší.

Magnetism is bipolar. Oduší is unipolar, without poles.

Magnetism permeates only certain substances. Oduší permeates everything.

Magnetism has the speed of our running. Oduší, I would say, has the speed of thought.

Magnetism can be consciously controlled by the will. Oduší can be controlled only during subconscious activity.

In this most perfect fluid, oduší, lies clairvoyance, which I discuss in the following sections.

40. Matter — Oduší and Radiation

(330) A subject in deep hypnosis gladly frees himself spatially through oduší. He disparages the material body and extols and praises the fluid body. Yet this oduší is a component of primordial matter.

Primordial matter, primal substance or primal nebula, is created with its own functions and the necessary most perfect qualities. This activity and force, implanted in its existence and proportionate to its substance, are admirable. Its nature is radiant, giving off radiation, and changeable for various groupings and combinations of the particles of primordial matter.

The activity and operation of primordial matter are infinitely varied and depend upon God. Among living beings it has attained its most perfect adaptation in the human being, in the spatial manifestations of the soul’s activity through the radiation of oduší.

Even before primordial matter was created, before it was set in motion according to immutable laws, the entire completed pattern for building the universe had been conceived beforehand and existed in God through His will.

According to this pattern, the first unchanging light energy was created as particles of primordial matter with the most perfect qualities. Then the growth of particles, the smallest building units, began, filling and saturating space for the construction and development of the infinite universe. The filled space shone with visible light. I have called these smallest elements, indivisible particles of primordial matter, sitons.

The sitons manifested immense motive energy, attracting and repelling one another until a predetermined lawful grouping and consolidation occurred for various kinds of new forms. These differ from one another only in the number of sitons, from small to inconceivable associations, their density and the distance between particles. Composite formations of highly complicated units thus arose, in which lies the basis for the differing chemical properties of various elements.

Space is infinite in possibility, and the primordial matter of sitons is limited in space.

(331) A good, clearly seeing subject, specially trained for this kind of investigation, can penetrate the mysteries of the nature of associated sitons. Of these changes of form he says that many different kinds of these particles, little building stones, exist, with various new qualities acquired when sitons met and combined, and that they consist of unequal, often inconceivably large numbers. Through combination they did not remain uniform but acquired a positive and negative nature.

For all further arrangements I have called this variously associated primordial matter, these so-called little stones, pyrotons.

Physical chemistry today knows further stones and, according to their properties and natures, calls some protons, positrons, neutrons and electrons, and the simplest among them, energetic in nature, photons and alpha, beta and gamma particles. These are eight identified fundamental elementary particles from the universe’s primordial matter. These kinds of small stones further associated and combined into the final fundamental building blocks, atoms, for constructing the universe. From them is built the entire masterpiece of the living and nonliving world.

For clarity, let us repeat what was said at the beginning of this book. Every atom consists of a nucleus and a certain number of electrons. The nucleus, composed of one or more electrons, has a positive electrical charge, while the electrons distributed and orbiting around the central nucleus are negatively charged. The electrons of all atoms are alike and differ only in number. The nuclei, however, as we have learned, differ in quality. This causes the differing properties of the various elements. The nucleus’s electrical charge is always an integral multiple of the electron’s charge.

Matter is a mixture of mechanical particles moving along paths formed beforehand toward goals established beforehand.

An exact order is thus implanted in matter, and lawfulness and order manifest in everything.

(332) There are now 107 of the various atomic elements, a note referring to the state in 1999, and further new elements will certainly be discovered, the so-called transuranic elements with atomic numbers greater than uranium’s. Beginning with actinium, fourteen further elements of very complex structure could exist. Atoms are not compact but “porous” and consist of elementary particles. The nucleus is likewise not compact and also consists of small particles.

One proton and one electron form an atom of the element hydrogen. Both particles are electrically charged, and the mutual relation of these opposite charges conditions the orbit of the negatively charged electron around the more massive, positively charged proton. At the same time, the force of repulsion precisely defines the distance from the proton.

Atoms of the various chemical elements are multiples of hydrogen. In addition, the nucleus’s structure contains particles of matter, neutrons, positrons, alpha particles, neutrinos and others, in the quantity needed to attain the atomic weight. According to the element’s properties, the uranium nucleus has ninety-two protons, and to reach an atomic weight of 238 it must contain another 146 neutrons. These fundamental particles are then composed of an immense number of further kinds of elementary particles. The elements are formed similarly, variously combined from differently shaped atoms. There are as many different elements as there are different atoms differing in charge and weight. The series begins with hydrogen, atomic number one.

Elements are collections of atoms of differing weights. Differences in weight are affected by differing numbers of protons, neutrons and positrons in the nucleus, but also by the number of electron rings in the shell.

The positive electron, or positron, is part of the atomic nucleus, formed from elementary associated particles of small pyroton stones. Its ejected radiant fragments disappear within an instant. Their duration is very short compared with alpha, neutron and especially proton particles, whose structure is more complex. Over time the ejected particles disintegrate, radiating into pyrotons and these in turn into sitons, to form new syntheses of elementary particles, new compounds and groupings of matter. Matter thus changes into radiation, and the radiated energy transforms into new matter. At the same time every quantum of radiant energy simultaneously contains positive and negative electricity, released in compounds of pyroton particles. Matter is thus characterized by a capacity for transformation.

Similarly, artificially produced heat is merely the energy of flying molecules. The greater this energy, the higher the temperature.

(333) The matter of atoms gives off an exceedingly subtle, almost immaterial constituent of an energetic nature, capable of freeing itself from association with matter and spreading through space as radiation. This consists of independent particles, a kind of projectiles in the form of light quanta of force, energy, which we call photons.

All photons are uncharged and nonelectrical, move always at the same speed, the speed of light, and differ from one another only in their frequencies. Light is essentially electromagnetic wave motion and exerts greater or lesser pressure upon objects according to density.

Incident light particles transfer all or part of their energy to atoms, or to the electrons of the nucleus and shell, with which they collide, replenishing their loss of energy. Thus there are changeable atoms with radiant energy that suddenly increases or diminishes.

The elements uranium, thorium and radium, and others, chiefly heavy elements, continually give off group energy, radiation, from their granular structure as they disintegrate. This arises from decay and we call it radioactive. It contains negative electrons, positrons and alpha particles, as well as others according to the kind of material compound.

Although the human body consists of simpler elements, it too undergoes a similar process to a very small degree, changing into radiation. According to the composition of its particles, I have named the released radiation magnetism, electrism and oduší.

Photons deliver information to our senses. No sense organ can function unless energy is supplied to it in some way, composed of various quanta released from the atomic nuclei of cellular protoplasm in the body and blood.

There is also cosmic radiation arising from stellar giants, so-called ultraradiation, which is not uniform and surpasses all other kinds of radiation in penetrative power. Its composition includes particles of electrons, photons, protons, neutrons and others. Besides these there are particles heavier than an electron and lighter than a proton. This particle has been named the meson, or mesotron. There thus exist both positively and negatively charged heavy electrons, or mesons, and more fundamental building stones of the world will gradually be discovered. Many meson particles disintegrate rapidly, changing into radiation. They therefore belong among the most complex and strangest manifestations of matter.

(334) All substances occurring in nature consist of various atomic elements, and we call them compounds. Gold, hydrogen, sulfur and others are elements. Even air is a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. We call the smallest particles of elements atoms, and the smallest particles of compounds are molecules, composed of atoms of the elements. All matter, liquids, crystals, salts and so forth consist of them. A gas, however, is already a cluster of atoms and molecules flying here and there like projectiles.

The physical properties of a substance are determined by the way these basic units or their compounds, atoms and molecules, are grouped.

Atoms of elements do not generally occur separately. In gases, where the binding of atoms is least firm, they combine into molecules of two or more atoms of the same kind.

Radioactive decay can also be produced artificially by the action of material radiation upon an element’s atomic nuclei, causing them to disintegrate and form the nuclei of a new element. This is either stable or becomes temporarily radioactive and continues decaying through radiation until a stable element arises. Thus, for example, aluminum atoms bombarded with alpha particles, helium atomic nuclei, change into phosphorus atoms, which spontaneously decay further and form nonradioactive atomic nuclei of silicon.

(335) The atomic nucleus is not homogeneous. It is composed of positively charged protons and neutrons, electrically neutral particles. The number of protons and neutrons is characteristic of each kind of atom. A neutron itself can change into a proton and an electron, which is expelled. This is the explanation of beta radiation arising during radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus. These are therefore actually rapidly moving electrons.

Electrons circling the atomic nucleus are arranged at successive distances from it and additionally rotate about their own axes.

An electron can orbit the nucleus along different paths, nearer or farther away, corresponding to lower or higher energy levels. A hydrogen atom has only one electron, a uranium atom ninety-two, a mercury atom eighty and a gold atom seventy-nine.

Through powerful external forces, for example the violent impact upon an atom of an electron from outside it, beta radiation or cathode rays, an electron is released from the inner shell in the form of light, a certain quantum of radiant energy, and another electron from a more distant shell immediately jumps into its place. This produces X-radiation, or X-rays. So-called gamma radiation arising during radioactive atomic decay is explained as energy released when particles forming the atomic nucleus jump from a higher energy level to a lower one.

Although an atom appears to us a very complex formation, it forms a unified substance consisting of a nucleus made of protons and neutrons, electrons and energy, as well as other elementary particles of matter such as the positron, neutrino and negative proton.

Nuclear decay produces new elements, and the remaining elementary particles are released into space as radiation. These particles can, to a certain degree, also exist independently outside the atom. Others disintegrate through radiation into pyrotons and some into sitons as well. Between free elementary particles, the so-called pyrotons, and the atom composed of them, there is a fundamental difference in kind. They have prime matter and substantial form as elements constituting individual being, the atom’s substance. The same applies to other elementary particles insofar as they exist outside the atom.

These independently existing elementary particles can also change substantially: an electron plus a positron are two photons; a neutron is an electron plus a proton plus a neutrino. We therefore also regard them as composed of matter and form.

Radioactivity means the spontaneous decay of radioactive elements.

(336) The best-known radioactive element is radium. A decaying radium atom emits three kinds of radiation. Alpha rays are actually helium nuclei ejected from the atom of the decaying element; beta rays are rapidly moving electrons; and gamma rays are radiation of a lightlike nature. The final remnant of the decaying radium atom is lead.

An atom composed of elementary particles, a molecule composed of atoms and a natural body composed of molecules represent a substantial unity of whole and quantity. Iron, a crystal, is an example. These are in fact large molecules, natural wholes with one individuality and presupposing one continuous quantity.

Atoms absorb and radiate something we call energy: optical radiation, X-rays and gamma radiation, which is also a material being existing in space and time, possessing quality and quantity and composed of pyrotons that are themselves composed of the primal substance of energy and sitons.

Elements in a compound do not exist actually but only virtually, through their altered qualities, and form the basis of the possibility of their new existence. This arises only after the compound’s chemical decomposition into elements, thus again through substantial change.

Through the transformation of matter, atoms, energy arises or is released that binds elementary pyroton particles into a whole.

(337) That substantial bond joining atoms into higher wholes and likewise elementary particles into atoms is called energy. The first bearers of energy are sitons. If freely distributed in space, they attract one another and group together. If joined in groups and the whole is struck, they fly violently apart into free space.

The atom itself is not filled solely with matter but contains relatively large spaces. Its center can be struck and broken, releasing an astonishing force, energy, given off by fragments of pyrotons and particles of sitons. The discovery of radioactive elements gave science an effective projectile, the neutron, capable of penetrating the atomic barrier.

The neutron has no electric charge. It can easily enter every type of atom. It is an ideal projectile for splitting atoms. Through neutrons the nuclei of almost all atoms can be changed, including uranium, the heaviest of all. A neutron entering a uranium nucleus causes it to break violently into two roughly equal parts. Matter has been destroyed and reappeared in the form of a fraction of energy into which the nucleus disintegrated. It was found that among these fragments were further neutrons capable of disrupting another uranium nucleus, and so on in an uninterrupted avalanchelike chain. Thus a self-moving process occurs in which uranium nuclei explode, releasing energy without limit. It will be possible to release the immense energy contained in uranium slowly and use it practically for humanity’s welfare.

In other words, uranium is radioactive and its neutrons are excellent projectiles for bombarding atoms. It is known that uranium atomic nuclei split into two radioactive fragments upon collision with a neutron. Considerable energy is released in this splitting. The neutron projectile causes the first splitting of a uranium nucleus. If further splittings follow, the number of little catastrophes grows geometrically, and the released energies, as if stricken by an epidemic, give rise to one explosion after another. Astonishing heat is released. If light atoms are employed against the released neutrons, these lose speed and collide like one ball against another.

(338) In filling bombs, a newly isolated isotope called actinouranium, or plutonium, is used as the principal component of the atomic charge. To split plutonium, neutrons whose speed has been reduced to a suitable level are employed. Unlike fast ones, slowed neutrons enter the atom’s very nucleus, causing instability so that it splits. As already stated, splitting atoms produces more neutrons than were originally used to initiate the decay. The newly released neutrons consequently attack further atoms, which produce further neutrons and so on, so that fission spreads like an avalanche while releasing an immense quantity of energy.

Biologically, plutonium is as dangerous as radium upon direct exposure. The human body cannot tolerate more than one millionth of a gram of plutonium. The radiating substance settles in the bones and liver, causing serious disturbances there.

Atoms are the fundamental units of matter. They are minute, and millions of millions are needed for us even to register them on the most sensitive balances. How does an atomic explosion differ from an ordinary one? In an ordinary explosion, the energy binding atoms is released. In an atomic explosion, energy enclosed within the atomic nucleus is freed all at once, and millions of particles moving at almost three hundred thousand kilometers per second rush out in every direction. An immense force arises, producing the explosion, capable of shattering other atoms in the surrounding atmosphere. The air becomes white-hot at a temperature approaching the heat of the Sun. The shock can be felt hundreds of kilometers away.

The atom is held together by electrical forces. The transformation of matter into energy explains where the Sun and stars obtain their light and heat.

(339) Physical chemistry already knows 107 basic building stones. There are, of course, more. Atoms of the elements can group in many ways into the most diverse kinds of molecules, and although more than half a million kinds of molecules are known, this number represents only a very small fraction of the combinations actually possible. An example: starch, sugar, lard and oil appear very different to us, yet all consist of three elements, oxygen, hydrogen and carbon. It is evident that the internal structure of these molecules is extraordinarily complex. What variety nature can create with the same building stones!

Molecules consist of atoms. A water molecule, for example, has a simple form consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Often, however, molecules contain an immeasurably large number of basic stones, atoms. A molecule of wood pulp may consist of as many as twenty-two thousand atoms of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon.

Through experimental knowledge of the internal structure of molecular matter, we now know that chemical transformations into new substances are possible, but are bound by entirely precise laws. For example, through high temperature and considerable pressure we combine one nitrogen atom with three hydrogen atoms and obtain a new compound, ammonia. At high temperature we can again decompose this matter into its original parts, nitrogen and hydrogen. Upon this rests the law of conservation of matter, for the decomposition of molecules never loses anything from matter, but gains nothing either.

Through study we have learned that the atomic nucleus is a complex formation that can be broken into pyrotons in various ways if powerfully bombarded by other fast particles, for example neutron rays. To loosen the connection of pyrotons composing the nucleus of nonradioactive atoms, other powerful forces are needed to release their bonds and bring about transformation, for the forces holding them together are immensely great. This is done through radioactive elements whose atomic particles fire themselves at the matter to be transformed, or by using electrical current at the enormous voltage of several hundred thousand to millions of volts. Through such bombardment we can now make almost every atom artificially radioactive. In nature, in rocks containing heavy atoms, there occur groups of radioactive elements such as the uranium-radium and thorium series and others. Radium changes into helium, and uranium, the heaviest element of all, undergoes transformation of itself and, through continual atomic decay over many thousands of years, changes into lead, like radium itself. Elements therefore undergo changes in their internal structure and become other elements.

(340) Radium atoms are composed of a greater number of groups of various kinds of electron particles, and these in turn of pyrotons. Many are radioactive, meaning that their nuclei, as they disintegrate, send certain clusters of pyroton particles into space. These are tiny luminous points, portions of radium atomic nuclei, fragments ejected at immense speed from the interiors of disintegrating atoms. This kind of radioactive radiation, luminous little particles of pyrotons, we call alpha rays or particles. They leave the atom at an inconceivable speed, but are slowed along their path by atoms of air. If an atom of any substance were to pass through every stage of transformation into other elements, or radiate itself away completely, it would release a fantastic quantity of energy. One gram of matter conceals within itself an energy of 120 billion horsepower. These atoms also send other, much smaller and faster particles into space, the so-called beta rays, which are negatively charged. Emission of alpha and beta rays always signifies a transformation of atoms, and such radiation of particles from matter gives rise to entirely different matter.

(341) On this basis we can clearly picture the origin of oduší. The nucleus of an animal cell, and thus a human one, consists of pyroton groups. By its nature it is also, as it were, radioactive. The life of the human cell’s nucleus is short, however, for it begins to disintegrate from its very origin and sends into space compounds of minute particles, pyrotons. From these is composed the exceedingly subtle, highly developed luminous fluid substance of oduší, best suited to the spatial manifestations of the human soul.

Because oduší possesses its own light, the sleeper sees by this light both day and night. For all the reasons given, the subject’s soul in the fourth degree of hypnosis praises its fluid body, oduší, and disparages our coarse body, although they are one and the same body, differing only in the grouping of pyroton particles.

Matter occurs in three different states: gaseous, liquid and solid. If atoms and molecules are farther apart, the substance is soft or yielding. If they are close together, it is harder. If strong attraction prevails among molecular particles, changing the external form is almost impossible. Diamond is hard, soot and charcoal soft, although they consist of the same molecules. It depends upon their closeness and distance. The same applies to water, steam, snow and ice.

Within matter and space are other sources that manifest as wave oscillations. Inside the Sun, under enormous temperature and pressure, atoms undergo transformation. Hydrogen burns into helium, releasing a vast quantity of energy that travels for millions of years as radiation through cosmic space. This radiation of wave oscillations consists of groups of siton particles, photons, which we experience as the energy of light and heat.

The Sun transmits light energy in electromagnetic waves like radio. Their wavelength is shorter than a thousandth of a millimeter and varies according to the colors of light. The shortest waves of visible light are associated with violet radiation. Neighboring them are the so-called ultraviolet waves, which we know brown our skin.

The shorter the wavelength, the stronger the rays. If we shorten the wavelength to millionths of a millimeter, their impact is much stronger. Gamma radiation emitted by radioactive elements belongs to the shortwave group. This is the band involved in the emergence of atomic matter. Besides electromagnetic radiation, matter emits a stream of elementary corpuscles.

(342) We know other kinds of energy of various radiations as well: electricity, electromagnetic waves, polar radiation, cold and warm light, X-rays and others. This energy, possessing simple but different groupings of particles, is called photons in chemistry. These particles exert pressure upon everything they strike, proving that energy is material in nature. Photons fly through space at up to three hundred thousand kilometers per second. The light energy of photon particles sent into space by the filament of a hundred-watt bulb would correspond, after several million years, to scarcely one gram of matter.

No one should be angry with a subject who, observing our body in deep hypnotic sleep, says that it is astonishingly porous and rarefied, that particles of sitons, pyrotons, electrons and atoms are considerably separated, and that he knows a force in nature that could compress and fit these particles into the space of a pinhead.

Electricity and magnetism are kinds of energy that are among the properties of pyroton particles. This energy arises and acts when a cause is given to it naturally or artificially, through natural or chemical decomposition, stimulation or friction of matter. The pyroton particles then regroup and combine in prescribed numbers according to exact laws, producing electrical force of positive and negative nature.

(343) Our senses cannot perceive all kinds of groups of sitons, pyrotons, electrons, photons, atoms and molecules. If our senses were attuned to perceive everything, including the full light of all groups of particles, they would teach us of an entirely different world. We conclude that at most we see the world as if through a fog that holds back all light except those colors to which our senses are attuned.

From all the investigation of matter we have learned that nothing has ever been lost from the universe’s matter, nor anything added to it. No adjusted natural law can explain where this mighty matter comes from. Here a barrier is set that is, and for all time will remain, insurmountable to human reason and imagination. Yet this substance must have come from somewhere. For scientist and believer alike, this could have happened only through an act of creation whose supernatural force eludes every natural-scientific explanation. A true natural scientist can never be an atheist, for the law of conservation of matter contains within itself a natural-scientific proof of God as Creator.

Human senses cannot perceive the various groups of particles of full light. During many experiments with subjects on dark nights, the sleeping subject Křeček often mockingly criticized our inability to see in darkness, when we depend upon artificial light. We, in turn, were surprised that nighttime darkness did not exist for him, for during nocturnal experiments he performed dangerous acrobatic crossings of bridges, footbridges, streams and fences. He ran precisely along paths invisible to us in darkness, rapidly descended stairs and ladders, and so forth. When we objected that it was night and completely dark, so he should be careful, he said that for him darkness did not exist, only constant, uninterrupted light. “I see by my light of oduší, chiefly by the soul’s inner light. Everything material has its own light, which you do not understand, because by day you depend upon sunlight, at night upon the moon and stars, and otherwise upon various little lamps and lights. How wretched and inadequate it all is. It shines only from one side, while the other is dark. With this light you depend upon your eyes, and only once it is reflected in them do you see a little of something.” These frequent mocking words of the subject led us to the following experiment.

(344) On a completely dark night, the subject, Messrs. Kubeček and Tůma, the Reverend Prudič, hereafter abbreviated Rev., and I go to the Občina forest. We chose the eastern side. Because of the darkness, it was impossible to enter the forest without injuring ourselves on trees and branches. The subject was to run quickly through the entire forest and back. Rev. Prudič was therefore sent to a specified place on the forest’s western edge to verify the event. The chosen route through the forest was difficult because of dense trees, ditches and a bog, and measured about eleven hundred meters there and back. Five minutes after the witness departed, having to go around the forest, the subject was put to sleep. A particularly thorough, tight blindfold was placed over his eyes. I ask, “Do you see the forest before you?” The subject: “I do.” “Can you run quickly through it and back without hurting yourself?” The subject: “I can, easily.” “Then look at the other side of the forest; you will see a member of our group.” The subject: “I see him; he’s just reaching the appointed place, finding his bearings, lighting a cigarette and waiting for me.” By flashlight we watch the time until precisely ten at night. Meanwhile the subject is interested in the curiosity of the man at the other end of the forest. The command: “Run straight through the forest to the man waiting for you, turn immediately and run back to us!” At this command the subject vanished into the forest like a shot. The witnesses watched the time. After precisely 117 seconds he returned, not particularly tired. The blindfold was intact. We could scarcely believe it, because the time taken was so short. I ask, “Were you with the gentleman smoking on the far side of the forest?” The subject: “I was, and I shoved him.” “Why?” The subject: “He didn’t believe I would come in the direction where he deliberately stood.” We wait for the witness to return, and I leave the subject asleep. A quarter of an hour later the witness arrives. I ask eagerly, “Did he come running?” The witness: “And how! I deliberately stood beyond a wet, boggy place and wondered whether he would pass through its trees rather than go around. He came straight at me like a hunting dog, shoved me so that I nearly fell, and before I recovered, he was gone in the same direction.”

The subject had therefore not disappointed us, but had splendidly performed an impossible task. We were greatly astonished. I ask, “Tell me, how do you see in that darkness so that you don’t hit trees while running so fast?” The subject: “The whole space, including the forest’s interior, has its own light from free light particles you cannot see. While running, my body, with which I am wholly psychically connected and which also gives light, radiant oduší, expands into space.” “And if you did not have this material light, would you not see?” The subject: “I need not be with the body that has its own light. Will me to leave my body, and I shall still see by my greatest light, which is not made of luminous particles.” We no longer understood this psychic light, so the experiment ended and the subject was awakened.

(345) From the experiment we learned that wherever the smallest particles of matter are present in cosmic space, they shine there with a constant bright light. A subject in deep hypnosis of the fourth degree can perceive this full light of various groups of particles.

I often reflected upon the fact that during experiments the subject repeatedly asked me to free him from his body. He often wished to detach from oduší when he could not reach a goal in certain experiments. At other times he longed for a perfect body.

This longing for all-round perfection and a perfect body must proceed from within the subjects’ very souls.

In His wisdom and love, God created the human being in His image from the dust of the earth and gave him a soul, the source of life, proceeding directly from Him. The human being has life from Life. Through God’s participation in human life, human life is participation in God’s life. The soul is thereby eternal and immortal in its being and takes precedence over the body.

At creation God blessed the human being. The matter from which the body is made is already sanctified. He set the human being apart and elevated him above all the rest of creation. The human being was seduced and wanted to rise higher. He wanted to equal God. He fell, and death came. We must all die one day, but we shall also all rise again with our bodies, which will then be immortal.

Many do not understand this fact and even mock it, objecting, with an appeal to the law of conservation of matter, that what decomposes into elements again forms new life in another person, animals, vegetation and the like. They therefore maintain that a person cannot rise from the dead again with the identical body made immortal.

We have learned that for the soul’s complete substance, union with the body belongs to its appropriate life, for it was created for this.

(346) A soul immersed in the fourth degree of hypnosis, spatially liberated and possessing extensive, outstanding cognition, resists entering the body and objects that it is imperfect, impaired in the organization of its matter and already moving toward death while alive. All this causes it torment and suffering. At the same time, however, it praises oduší, which is more perfectly organized in its composition and sufficiently suited to many qualities for higher and more perfect spatial manifestations of the soul that cannot be attained in the material body.

Let us not imagine that during spatial liberation the soul has left the body and must return at my command. The soul remains present with its whole substance both in the body and in space within the liberated oduší. Only its awareness, this SELF of the rational faculty, is active in the space of oduší.

(347) At other times it also rejects the body and longs for one still more perfect, saying that all matter, its particles and oduší, is perfected through continual transformation for new worlds and life.

The soul’s perception and knowledge of reality in the state of pure, deep subconsciousness differ from those in conscious activity.

This cognition of the soul proceeds from the soul itself. It is pure, direct and uncorrupted knowledge arising from reality. Conscious knowledge must first be acquired through searching and recognizing causes.

Why could the matter of oduší not be intended for the glorification of the immortal, glorified body? Why would God in His wisdom not separate this matter of our body, a component of flesh, bones and blood, for that purpose? Why does this more perfect material part of our body escape from graves into cosmic space as radiating fluid, without obeying the laws of nature’s cycle as does the coarse waste matter of disintegrating protoplasm, a continually changing substance and the common property of animals, plants, trees and human beings?

Let us consider how many times the entire body is replaced during an individual’s life. Bone cells renew their protoplasm in six weeks, muscle cells in two. Everything worn out leaves the body as uric acid. How many times during life is our body thus buried? Only the particles of all the cell nuclei are not subject to this law and escape into space, as sensitives convince us by pointing to the radiation of fresh graves in cemeteries. Thus death merely changes life; it does not destroy it.

(348) Let us pause over these four facts as well: God created the first human being with an immortal body from the dust of the earth. He created the tree of life, whose fruit bestowed immortality of the body. This tree grew from the same soil as other trees, yet through a transformation of matter its fruits developed in such a way that eating them caused bodily immortality. Christ rose from the dead with His body, which became immortal. Christ was transfigured upon the mountain to point, beyond the binding force of the law, toward the future glorification and resurrection of the bodies of the righteous and the unrighteous. If we are to receive our original body back, resurrected and glorified, as immortal, an unchanging particle of eternal quality, not subject to disturbance, must exist. For these phenomena, surely no new, specially perfect material particle was or will be created; the mystery will lie in the organization of the order of matter. We ourselves bear unchanging eternal particles, though these are contained in a changing order of the construction of forms. We may infer that at the beginning of creation the first element of primordial particles received its substance from capacities for a far-reaching plan of various transformations in the construction of matter. The destruction and disintegration of visible matter occur only in the order of chemical composition, in various forms of organized matter and in the properties of different elements, not in its substance. The foundation of the primordial particles remains unchanging in eternal duration.

(349) God’s work always bears the mark of light and perfection. The foundation of His work therefore cannot have dying qualities. The element of the original particles of primordial matter received the necessary reflection of divine qualities and its own activity for various lawful groupings and combinations of the chemical properties of different elements, for differing durations in time. Consider the decay of flesh, granite and gold! The siton of primordial matter received an unchanging, enduring existential being, and it would contradict God’s wisdom for His work to be subject to destruction at its very foundation. Destruction signifies imperfection. Matter cannot destroy itself. Only the Creator can destroy it in its substance. God does not destroy His work but leads it higher, improves its order and perfects its shape and form. The human being, too, has the ability to perfect himself continually. The siton is therefore a single, noncomposite particle of unchanging substance, possessing inexhaustible light that is essential and intrinsic, not derived from released energy. The siton is substance, that which does not change. This siton manifests attraction and repulsion and bears various plans and orders according to which the universe and everything organic, vegetable, animal and material purposefully develop and are sustained. In this unchanging existence the siton is sustained by God. God’s will operates within it. In the immortal body, sitons will be organized in the absolutely highest order. The material universe in its present arrangement is not eternal. A time will certainly come when all kinetic energy changes into thermal energy and disperses into space. Protons and electrons will disintegrate into pyrotons, and these into luminous sitons. The universe will again shine with enormous radiance, as at the creation of the fundamental particles of primordial matter when God said, “Let there be light!” and the first day began. Today’s universe must not be understood as the completion of a process, for God is continually active and creative. In Him nothing exists merely in potentiality; everything is pure actuality. His essence is pure realization. After many hundreds of billions of years in the course of the present universe’s life, a wholly different new universe may arise, formed from entirely different elements and compounds of inorganic matter from the primal substance of sitons. After further billions of years this may yield to a more perfect universe and perhaps to the most perfect one, which will endure permanently; only form changes and is perfected, for the substance of sitons remains. This universe is only at the beginning of development, for organic life has arisen on one of the smallest planets.

41. Clairvoyance

(350) New oduší is formed through continual discharges and, under constant psychic activity, animates a new body. The excess emanates from the body, is released and disperses into space. Even before primordial matter was created, the entire space of the universes was, and remains, filled and permeated by a continually active fluid substance that I have called “protonace.”

All the deeds of our life are captured, recorded and impressed in protonace. The past lives of our ancestors, of all people dead and living, are recorded there. In hypnotic sleep sensitives can read all this from protonace. In this lies their clairvoyance, vision across spatial and temporal distances.

Here we must distinguish clairvoyant phenomena received by a sensitive through telepathic transmission to the protosplana of the cerebellum from phenomena that the sensitive knows and directly sees in time and space, when and where they happened, through the liberation of his oduší. We have already dealt with the first kind; we shall now consider the second.

First I must mention the prejudices widespread in this matter.

Clairvoyance is today an established fact. It consists of manifestations of animalism, phenomena of the souls of living people. A clairvoyant sees over great distances in space and time, into the past and partly into the future. These phenomena cannot be dismissed with irony, sarcasm or a contemptuous smile. There are facts by which clairvoyance has been proved. For those who do not believe in the soul and regard what we call soul as merely a manifestation of nerves, the demonstrated phenomena of clairvoyance naturally represent a true revolution in their previous views. Something similar happens in other branches of science, for example chemistry, where atoms, solemnly proclaimed indivisible, became divisible through experiments into millions of exceedingly fine particles. Smiles and irony accomplish nothing here, for experiment is the sovereign dictator in science. And it is precisely a series of experiments that proves the existence of clairvoyance.

(351) Hostility and resistance toward metapsychic science are great. Much of this can be explained by the nature of the human psyche, which resists everything new to the utmost. History teaches us that new discoveries were usually fiercely attacked by scientific contemporaries, who found them absurd. The French Academy of Sciences mocked the great astronomer Arago for wishing to demonstrate the invention of the electric telegraph. Benjamin Franklin met a similar fate at the Royal Scientific Society when he presented his invention of the lightning rod. Thomas Gray was to be put in a straitjacket because he proclaimed that a railway could be realized. Painless operations in hypnotic sleep were considered fraud. What happened to the inventor of the gramophone? He was taken for a ventriloquist. And to Luigi Galvani, discoverer of galvanic electricity? They called him the “dancing master of frogs” and mocked him. In 1811 the celebrated Davy declared of the discovery of gas lighting, “Most educated men agree that gas lighting is merely a mischievous toy.” A commission formed in 1802 was to give an opinion on Fulton’s intention to cross the English Channel by steamship. It declared the idea extravagant. Napoleon himself said of Fulton, the first builder of a steamboat, “He’s a madman! He wants to drive a fleet to England with boiling water!”

Perhaps metapsychic science is mocked and persecuted most of all by educated and ignorant people alike. I maintain that metapsychic phenomena in particular can be subjects of scientific investigation like other natural phenomena, and may even mark the beginning of a new era in humanity’s worldview.

Many are prejudiced against psychic science because metapsychic phenomena cannot always be evoked under every condition and in every place.

Psychic processes are so infinitely delicate that the greatest caution is needed to prevent them from being disrupted or entirely suppressed.

(352) Whether such a phenomenon can be evoked and established often depends upon a favorable moment. Above all, bodily and psychic readiness are necessary on the part of both subject and hypnologist. A further condition is complete adjustment to the subject’s psychic state. In the presence of skeptical people, parapsychological phenomena never succeed, even if their skepticism remains concealed in thought. Whenever I wished to convince such skeptics, I had to act upon the sensitive with great faith in success, almost energizing and protecting him against their influence. These phenomena must be faced without prejudice, like a child. A sensitive always yields to suggestions from his surroundings. It makes no difference whether they remain concealed in thoughts or are spoken aloud. They prevent the sensitive from working. I maintain that a strong skeptical thought is more likely to thwart a phenomenon than a favorable thought is to evoke it.

It is certain that an enormous field, containing entire worlds of mysteries, is open here to human research. Yet all this is merely the birth pangs of a new life, a new era of spiritual renewal for all humanity, whose earliest beginnings we are only now experiencing.

In the next section I shall describe a series of my experiments and experiences in clairvoyance.

42. Experiments and Experiences in Clairvoyance

(353) Onstage I put my good subject Mr. Hanuš to sleep. When he entered the fourth degree of hypnosis, I sent two girls out of the hall and asked the subject to observe them and describe in detail what they were doing. Once the girls had left the hall and we could no longer see them, the subject began reporting, “They’re standing opposite one another. Now one is walking up the road as far as a gate and coming down again… They’re together again and have kissed each other on the cheek. Now they’re laughing about it… Now they’re exercising their arms, throwing them about strangely; they don’t know how to do it… Now they’re coming into the hall…” At that moment the door opened and both girls entered. On comparison, everything was found to agree exactly with the subject’s account.

Mr. J. Hepnar, who was present, asked that the same subject tell him whether his front door was locked. It was already late in the evening, he had forgotten his key at home and wanted to know whether he would have to wake the family. I acquainted the subject with the questioner and asked him to go to his house and tell me whether it was locked. The subject began breathing faster, then suddenly stopped. There was a quiet interval; then he exhaled and reported, “I see a low house, a door at the side. The gentleman comes from that house. The door is closed but not locked; he doesn’t need a key.” The next day Mr. Hepnar told me that this was indeed so.

(354) That same evening I performed another experiment. In my pocket I had six postcard photographs of my subjects. Before the audience I took them out so that no one, including myself, could see them. I bent down to the floor and carefully laid them there with the white side upward. None of us could know who appeared in which photograph. The stage was brightly lit by electric bulbs. I asked the subject to look at the stage floor and tell me whether he saw anything upon it. After a moment he reported, “Yes! They’re cards for writing, yes, cards; there are address lines.” “Good, but you have the ability to penetrate the cards and tell me what’s on the other side,” I answered. A moment of complete silence, then the subject said, “They’re photographs.” “They are,” I say. “You have the ability to recognize who is pictured in them!” The audience is tensely quiet, curious whether the subject will guess. He says, “I know; I know him!” “Then name him!” I ask. After a longer interval he said, “It’s Libnar!” I ask again, “Go and hand me the photograph with Libnar in it!” He goes, picks one up and hands it to me, and I show the audience Mr. Libnar’s photograph. Similarly, of the second he reported that it was Miss Kuchařová; the third, my brother. In the fourth he recognized himself, to his great joy, which rarely happens in the fourth degree of sleep. Usually the subject does not recognize himself. In the fifth he recognized Miss Česenková. Only with the last did he report seeing poorly. I let him rest. Some spectators, wishing truly to verify the experiment, themselves placed photographs they carried. In these too the subject always faithfully described the image. I ended the experiment because I found him tired. More than one hundred witnesses were present. Fraud was excluded.

(355) Another time I put the same subject to sleep before forty witnesses. Some of those present hid various objects in different places. When everything was ready, I asked him to permeate the whole room and tell me what was hidden where. Without moving, and with his back toward the witnesses, the subject reported, “There’s a stove in the corner and a little box underneath it… Over there in the corner behind a post is a knife. But there are four posts,” which were table legs. “A ring has been placed beneath you.” He identified everything correctly without a mistake.

(356) Later I again conducted experiments onstage before an audience, with several subjects, though Mr. Libnar was missing. It occurred to me that through the excellent subject Hanuš I might find out where Libnar was. Although the subject had already been asleep for more than two hours, I believed he would find him. I woke the other eight subjects and sat beside the sleeping Hanuš, saying, “My friend, do you know Mr. Libnar, who comes to see me?” “I don’t.” “Then look into my upper subconscious; you’ll see him there!” At that moment I vividly pictured Libnar so that he could see him in the esplana. “Now I see; I know him.” “Then remember him well, and now permeate our whole town and find him. Tell me when you see him!” There is complete silence. At intervals the subject stops breathing. Suddenly he says, “Now I see him!” “Where? Describe what you see!” The subject: “There’s a corridor over there and a door on the right. Three gentlemen are in that room. They have sticks in their hands and are walking around a kind of board. Now I know; they’re playing billiards. But he isn’t there. Opposite is a large room, and there he is. I see him; he’s singing. There are several of them and they’re all singing.” “Tell him I say he should come to me on this stage immediately.” The subject scarcely breathes. After a moment I ask, “Have you told him?” “I have,” he answers. “And what is he doing? Is he coming?” The subject: “He’s just asking a young man beside him what time it is.” “Well, what time did he tell him?” The subject: “Five minutes before half past ten.” Those present look at their watches and see that it is indeed that time. I ask, “Well? Is he coming?” “Not yet.” “Then command him to stop singing at once and come here quickly.” The subject: “I’ve told him. He wants to take his cap, and the gentleman teaching them is angry with him for disturbing them… Now he’s stepped out of the row; he’s coming.” “Really? Do you see him well?” “I do; he’s already by the mangle.” It is apparent that the subject is following him. After a while I ask, “Where is he?” The subject: “Now he’s about to turn right uphill,” the road toward the cemetery. “Is he hurrying?” The subject: “Yes, he’s running and I’m behind him… Now he’s at the top by a gate… He’s coming down the hill toward our hall… Now he’s taking the handle of the entrance door.” Everyone present turned toward the entrance to the hall through which Libnar should come. There was great suspense about whether he would actually arrive. The subject: “Now he’s taking the handle of the hall door itself.” At those words the door opened and Libnar indeed appeared. Subject H. stood up onstage and called, “Hello, Franta!” Everyone was delighted and had to laugh at the sleeper and his comical excitement. Libnar was utterly bewildered: everyone looked at him joyfully and he did not know why. I asked for quiet, called Libnar onto the stage and asked, “Where were you just now?” Libnar: “At the Středas’, at choir rehearsal.” “Why did you come here?” “I don’t know myself. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had to come to you immediately. I saw you onstage, and it gave me no peace, so I had to go.” “Did you ask what time it was?” Libnar: “I did.” “What did he tell you?” Libnar: “Five minutes before half past ten. Then I asked K. to hand me my cap, and B. was angry that I was disturbing them. But I had no peace; I stepped out of the row and ran.” We all saw that everything agreed completely. More than 180 witnesses from the Červený Kostelec parish were present at the experiment.

On another occasion I handed herbs to subject Hanuš; he described their properties in detail and identified which illnesses they treated.

For public experiments in the town of P., I took several of my subjects with me. I demonstrated clairvoyant ability with subject Hanuš, but this time he failed entirely. I therefore put subject K. to sleep, and he rescued the embarrassing public situation. I also asked him to examine the still sleeping subject H. and explain why his always reliable clairvoyant ability had been failing in recent days and had failed completely today. Subject K. replied, “He married a few weeks ago, and all his psychic and vital strength is bound to lower vegetative-instinctive sensory activity. For higher psychic capacities to manifest successfully, a person must not devote himself to these lower desires of the spirit.” After the evening’s experiments we discussed this problem, which emotionally affected subject K. himself, still unmarried. For the next twelve years of our shared experiments he remained unmarried. He then married, but an advancing insidious disease overcame him after six months.

(357) At my friend U.’s home I noticed that his little daughter Boženka was sensitive. I performed several experiments with her until clairvoyance awakened. One Sunday I came to visit, and we proceeded to experiments. Besides her parents and siblings, M. P., V. F., Miss M. and others were present. It was agreed that Miss M. and the sleeper’s brother J. would go into the entrance hall and do something there. At my command the subject observes them through the closed door. I ask, “What do you see? Can you see them?” B. answers, “I see them well. They’re fools! The young woman has knelt in the corridor and is praying. Pepík is laughing at her.” M. and J. returned and confirmed the account was entirely correct. It was then agreed that several people would go outside and do something there. Witnesses F. and L. remained with me as a check. After about four minutes I asked the subject to look for her parents and the others. She was very calm and said with laughter, “They’re all fools! Father and Mother are dancing in the courtyard, and Pepík is playing a broom for them.” She observed them for a while, shook her head at them and said, “They’re coming here now. They’re coming up the stairs.” The door opened and U. asked laughingly, “Well, what were we doing?” We recounted what B. had told us under hypnosis. Everyone laughingly confirmed that it was correct.

(358) One Sunday in 1920, at about three in the afternoon, I again put this girl B. to sleep and sat her on my lap to give her confidence in me. Her father wished me to send her to his brother in Vienna. I note beforehand that Boženka had never been to Vienna. I ask her to find her father’s brother’s house and assure her she can do it. She visibly strains. Suddenly she says, “I’ve got it,” and describes, “It’s a corner building, a large shop.” Wishing to verify it, the girl’s father asks her to read the sign. B. indeed reads it, though she knows not a word of German. I ask, “What are Uncle, Aunt and Grandmother doing?” The subject: “I don’t know; I’m outside.” “Then go inside to them!” The subject: “I can’t; it’s locked.” Because Boženka had rarely been sent subconsciously over a distance, she was not yet aware of her great capacities in the subconscious state. I advised her, “You have the ability to pass through a wall; you can do it easily!” She offered no resistance. I ask, “Where are you?” The subject: “In the corridor.” I say, “You can sense which room people are in. Go there!” The subject begins calling loudly, “Grandmother, my dear Grandmother, are you home alone? Where is Uncle?… You say he’s at the Prater?” After granddaughter B. had enjoyed her grandmother’s company for a while, to our amusement, I ask, “In what way are you with Grandmother? Do you have a body like hers?” After a moment Boženka replies with some surprise, “Oh yes, I don’t have a body like Grandmother’s. Where is my body? I know I’m here, but where is my body?” She said this somewhat fearfully. I suggest to her that she is not afraid and is as calm as I am. I ask, “Where is my body?” Boženka answers, “I see you; you’re not with me bodily, but I know you’re somehow with me.” I then say, “I should like to know where your body is, after all.” Boženka searches and suddenly cries, “Mr. Kafka, Mr. Kafka, I can see my body from Grandmother’s in Vienna all the way to Father’s in Kostelec. In our room, you’re sitting on a chair and holding my body on your lap. How strange: I’m here looking at my body.” Because she began to fear again, I brought her back and awakened her. A letter was then sent to Mr. U.’s brother in Vienna, and an answer arrived confirming that they had indeed been in the Prater that afternoon. Grandmother had stayed home alone. When they returned, she told them that her granddaughter from Kostelec had visited.

At the first newspaper report of the murder of a watchmaker in Braník near Prague by the Kolínský brothers, I decided to discover the details. For this purpose, before about twenty-five witnesses, I put eighteen-year-old Miss Č. to sleep, with whom I had already conducted many experiments. What the newspapers reported only ten days later we learned from her, indeed in greater detail, especially the murderers’ mental struggles.

(359) One evening I was conducting experiments with subject K. in the home of the official Mr. Kubeček, with Mr. Tůma present. We were missing witness Dudek, who also occupied himself with such matters, but did not know where he was. Mr. Tůma proposed that the subject find him. I asked subject K. to find our friend Dudek. “I don’t know any Mr. Dudek!” he answered curtly. He knew him, but his sleep was so deep that his subconscious did not look into the esplana of the upper subconscious. I commanded, “Look into my esplana; you’ll see him there.” At the same time I vividly imagine Dudek. The subject scarcely breathes and says, “I see him; I know him.” I therefore command, “Remember him, step outside your body and find him!” We observed him do so. The subject reports, “I’ve got him!” I say, “Tell me in detail how you see him!” The subject: “He’s walking along a paved street, his hands clasped behind his back, thinking about something. He was at your house, and because it was dark inside, he thought you weren’t home. Now he’s returning along the same street, with trees on one side. Now he’s coming to some tall box.” “What box?” I ask. The subject: “I don’t know what it is… There’s a clock on it and Dudek is looking at it… Now I know, it’s the church tower.” “Command him to come to us.” The subject strains and after a moment objects, “It doesn’t work; he’s resisting me, deliberately thinking about something.” To avoid wasting time, I ended the experiment. The next day I asked Dudek what he had been doing around nine the previous evening. He answered, “I was at your house, but it was dark. Then I walked along Kostelní Street with my hands behind me, stopped by the tower and looked at the time. Suddenly it occurred to me, and I felt, that you were looking for me through a subject. But I thought, ‘Wait a moment, boys! You won’t get the better of me!’ I immediately generated magnetism through my will and energized my surroundings so that the subject would have no influence upon me.” I recognized that the subject was right when he said he could not reach him.

(360) Mrs. U. suffers from a nervous illness. The subject advises her to go to the seaside, saying that the illness will improve there; she needs a change of climate and air. When the couple returned from their seaside stay, they requested a new diagnosis from the subject. He reported that the illness had greatly improved, which they confirmed. When I was about to awaken subject E., they asked me to send him to the seaside at the time when they had been there.

I took the subject into the past and then sent him to the Adriatic Sea. Very soon he found the U. couple among the other guests. Among other things he said, “I see Mr. U. in the water, some distance from shore. The sea is rough. Now a larger wave has knocked him down; he fell and injured himself on a rock in the water. I see a wound on his knee.” During these words the couple grew serious; Director U. uncovered his leg and showed my wife, my brother and me his injured knee.

The subject then further entertained them by repeating a detailed conversation they had had at that time with one another and with other guests. He also described various places at the resort precisely and in detail.

(361) On June 18, 1925, during experiments in Krásno n. B., we were interested in the explorer Amundsen’s expedition to the North Pole.

We asked subject K. about it in the presence of Mr. Adolf Bogner-Ahasver, a writer from Valašské Meziříčí, his wife and the chief administrator. The subject reports, “The Pole cannot be reached by aircraft today; fog and strong winds prevent it. No one from the expedition has reached it yet, and I see no people there.”

The statement seemed doubtful to me, and I excused the subject on the grounds that he was probably exhausted from the preceding experiment and therefore insufficiently liberated.

The following day, June 20, 1925, the first newspaper report arrived that Amundsen had returned with one aircraft without reaching his goal.4

These facts suffice for the present. I shall next set out, from my own knowledge, the causes in which this mystery, clairvoyance, resides.

43. Oduší — Life — Death

Translator’s safety note: The following account presents the author’s historical spiritual and physiological beliefs, not a method for determining death or deciding whether to seek treatment. Do not delay emergency care while waiting for supposed signs of oduší. If someone is unresponsive and not breathing normally, call emergency services and begin CPR. See St John Ambulance’s CPR guidance. The source text follows unchanged.

(362) Before proceeding with the explanation, I consider it necessary to mention the importance of oduší for human life and death.

Oduší is the agent through which the soul animates our body.

The soul is most closely joined with this exceedingly subtle fluid substance and separates from it last. We are accustomed to conclude that a person has died when all physiological processes in the brain have ceased, the heart and lungs have stopped working and the body has grown cold. Yet this is not the body’s actual death. The animating radiant energy of oduší remains in the body for a considerable time, gradually withdrawing from the feet toward the cerebral center while also gathering around the dying person’s body. In a fatal illness this begins several days before death. In sudden death, for example by killing, oduší leaves the body much later. This depends upon the body’s health and the force of the fatal injury. In both natural and violent death, oduší gathers around the body, chiefly at the head, and the soul remains joined with it for a certain time, at most three days. At the time when we have declared death, it quite often happens that the deceased still appears to loved ones, which takes place through oduší. The apparition cannot occur only on the second or even third day after visible death, but only very soon afterward, for oduší immediately begins dying as the soul detaches from it.

As the body continues to decompose in the earth, oduší is released from cell nuclei for several more months and emanates out of the grave. This can continue for up to a year, depending upon the soil in which the corpse lies and how quickly it decomposes. We can readily verify this on a dark night. Let us take good sensitives to a cemetery in complete darkness. After a while they will see small and large columns of fire rising from some graves. If you note those graves and later inquire, you will learn that they contain recent burials. This oduší is already dead matter with which the soul will never reunite.

A good and experienced subject can demonstrate that oduší is released several days before death, beginning at the feet, for he recognizes the dying of cells by their diminishing radiance and color and announces approaching death in advance. As evidence I give these facts:

(363) On Friday, September 3, 1923, I was called to an acquaintance, Mr. B. in Horní Kostelec, so that a subject might give an opinion on his sudden illness. The physicians spoke uncertainly, treated his condition lightly and entirely rejected the possibility that the illness could end in death. Once put to sleep, the subject stated that all the cells in the feet were dying, that he could not permeate them and there was darkness because oduší was detaching. By contrast, he saw strong radiation at the head and chest and an accumulation of oduší on the body’s surface. The seventh vertebra appeared dark and radiated a delicate violet with a reddish tint, whereas it should shine bluish. I pressed the patient’s seventh vertebra counting from the bottom, causing him unbearable pain. The subject observed him a while longer and then reported that an unavoidable catastrophe would begin within twenty-four hours. On this basis I told his wife that he would die within a few days. Some believed me, but most acquaintances believed the physicians. Relatives even came to my home to ask how I knew he would die so soon. I answered briefly that the feet had completely lost the radiant energy of oduší and death of the tissue had occurred. Death indeed came, on September 7 at one in the afternoon. Without this finding, I myself, like the physicians, would never have said that a young man of twenty-eight would die so soon.

(364) Another time I was called to Mrs. L. to establish a diagnosis through a subject. Among other things he declared that all the cells were dying and their radiance had fallen by fifty-five percent. From this I recognized that death was approaching. I therefore asked the subject how long life could continue with the cells’ radiance so reduced. He further observed the rate at which radiance declined and declared, “In two months this life will be over.” L. indeed died two months later.

(365) In 1921 I was summoned to Mr. Č. in the village of Zábrodí to assess his condition. Nothing positive could be said. I declared that I would return within three days. At home I put subject K. to sleep and sent him in the direction from which I had just come. He thus reached the sick Č. He immediately stated that oduší was rapidly withdrawing from both feet and hands. The whole trunk radiated less. Death would come within five or six days. On the third day I went to Č. again. At the threshold they told me the physician had just been there and declared that things were now good and Č. would return to work in a fortnight. I smiled and said he would die in two or three days. They laughed at me, and I left. Toward evening the next day, the patient’s mother came with her married daughter and told me through tears, “You guessed it; he’s already died. We’ve come to tell you.”

(366) On March 31, 1924, I went to identify the illness of the local hotelier M. The experiment took place at nine in the evening. The sleeping subject K., seated about a meter from the patient, permeated his organism and then reported, pointing upon the patient from the heart down to halfway along the thighs, that he saw a dark-gray shadow. It was spoiled water saturated with disease-producing substances. The kidneys no longer shone, nor did the gallbladder. The heart was very weak, the arteries were flagging; within twenty-eight hours the patient would be moving toward death, and the end would then come within fifteen hours. I wanted to stop the subject from saying these things so distressing to the family present. I objected that suitable medicines could be used to overcome death. But the subject answered, “It will be as I said! It will do no good.” The patient replied, “Then I’ve lost!” M. indeed began dying after twenty-eight hours and died in the fifteenth hour thereafter.

We made many such declarations, and no one can say that we were ever mistaken.

From these examples it can be inferred that our soul animates the body through oduší. It is also apparent that the energy of oduší is visible to subjects. If a subject does not find it in some part of the body, he reports with certainty that the place is darker and can predict death from this. We learn that the two radiant energies, magnetism and oduší, each form their own substance in the body and are independent agents within it.

(367) Oduší is a capital of energy received by the nucleus of every individual cell at its origin. Oduší springs from the nucleus. How much energy an individual, human or animal, obtains from the nucleus depends upon the quantity the nucleus received from the Creator at the beginning: a human lifespan of at most one hundred to two hundred years, a horse forty-five, a fox ten, a hippopotamus forty-five, an elephant one hundred and ten, an eagle eighty, a tortoise one hundred and forty, a blackbird eighteen, and so forth. This explains the lifespan of each individual.

The nucleus accumulates its capital of energy, chiefly in the nucleolus during growth, when it takes in more food than it excretes. When the cell reaches indivisibility, the nucleolus ceases receiving the building substances needed for life; it has reached its vital height and condenses at its center. Vital energy has stabilized, and lawfulness has determined its prescribed capital of life for the human lifespan.

While the cell nucleus was growing, its matter did not diminish through the release of oduší, for it received a supply of vital substances. Once the cell has reached indivisibility, the center of the nucleus, though not the cell body, begins undergoing a reverse process. Through chemical transformation the nucleus disintegrates into particles, and their radiant energy changes into the energy of oduší.

In many people suffering illness through the release of oduší, several days before death one can observe animals, especially dogs, showing unrest around the patient, howling.

(368) One evening I put a sensitive to sleep and commanded him to form a fluid line close beside a kennel containing a dog. As soon as this happened, the dog began howling, although no one was in the courtyard. A second sensitive, whom I had assigned to observe the phenomenon, reported seeing a delicate bluish band permeating everything in a straight line from the subject’s body.

Because oduší is released somewhat before approaching death, in many people the subconscious SELF awakens beside the weakened conscious SELF.

Sometimes a patient can appear to loved ones even before death. In 1925 the famous Polish writer Władysław Reymont died. Stanisław Przybyszewski declared, “On that unhappy night he appeared to me to announce his death himself. Several hours before Warsaw learned of his passing, I already had word that he was no longer in the world.”

(369) A great question mark hangs over oduší. In 1907, at Mrs. M.’s request, her uncle’s grave in the Červený Kostelec cemetery was opened six years after his death. Uncle B. had been guardian to an underage granddaughter and through perjury had appropriated most of her property. Mrs. M. felt the injustice her uncle had caused deeply and developed an irresistible urge to have the grave opened.

The premature opening took place in the presence of the local physician Dr. Kratochvíl, the gravedigger Procházka and Mrs. M. When the coffin lid was opened and the clothing removed, the whole body was found completely decomposed, except that the right hand, apart from the little and ring fingers, which were also entirely decayed, remained wholly preserved. Everything that had sworn the oath remained intact, firm, fleshy, rubberlike to the touch and gray-green in color. I was informed in detail of this strange discovery, and Mr. Procházka remains to this day the last witness to the event.

God often punishes perjury visibly and as a warning. At dying, the whole life is revealed to every soul. The forbidden, perjurious raising of the hand and calling upon God as witness paralyze the soul as a terrible offense and evil. Through radiating oduší, the soul remains related to the sinful hand longest. The decomposition of its cells is delayed. Meanwhile the soul was tormented by terrible remorse for the evil deed, which was also its purgatory. It lost liberty and freedom because it partly and only temporarily gave form to a particular part of its body.

44. Death and the State of the Soul in Oduší

(370) It is generally believed that at the moment of death, which we infer from visible signs of the cessation of activity in the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs, together with the body’s stiffening and cooling, and later the dying and decomposition of all tissues and cells, the soul has already detached itself and its presence has ceased. Yet this is not so, as we learned in the preceding sections. Death is never a sudden event in every part of the body, but a gradually unfolding process during which the soul remains present through its substance and lives for a time joined to the body in its component, oduší, composed of discharges of radiant energy from every cell nucleus.

We know that a cell undergoes development and dying. Nowhere do we find violence. In the same way death does not occur through an instantaneous detachment of the soul, like a bird flying from its nest. The soul continues living in the body through oduší, because organic disturbance has occurred only in the visible body. For complete death, the soul must also separate from oduší through gradual detachment over at most three days.

In sudden death through damage to an individual organ, by a stroke, a ruptured blood vessel, a gunshot through the heart or brain, or another violent means, when the whole organism is in full vitality, the soul remains directly joined with oduší longest. As I have stated, this lasts up to three days. In someone who dies of illness or the decline of old age, oduší begins releasing from the body through premature illness and dying of cells while the person is still alive. The soul’s separation from the matter of oduší therefore occurs somewhat earlier, after ten hours or later, according to the nature of the illness.

After all the senses die, the soul enters a peculiar state of nonparticipation, passivity and paralysis of the will, a kind of half-death; it does not exercise free thinking.

From this passivity it is disturbed either by impacts of evil deeds from strongly shining esplana, bringing torment acquired through the deceased’s bad life, or by similar impacts of good deeds, bringing an experience of still-earthly happiness.

(371) If the survivors’ weeping, lamentation and calling predominate more strongly, the soul is drawn toward the deceased’s surroundings. It awakens to them as though from a heavy dream, sees and hears us directly without the senses, does not understand its state, our behavior or why we weep, and wants to rise bodily, speak and act. It does not understand why we do not answer when it tells us that it is among us.

From prayers for the deceased the soul also gains awareness of its new state, but from these impacts cannot comprehend the whole extent of death, as I observed in my experiments. It yields to the influence of its surroundings and cannot act freely; compare the state of a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis.

When the surrounding influence ceases, the soul returns to passivity, disturbed only by the impacts of its own radiant esplana. After complete detachment from the exceedingly subtle matter of oduší, it awakens into a new life in the full substance of all its capacities. According to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, after leaving the body’s matter the soul comes before a private judgment of its own.

We stand before a reality whose magnitude we can scarcely think through: the living can save for eternal life the soul of a deceased person not yet prepared for salvation.

When this knowledge is accepted by competent authorities, in cases of sudden death, whether violent or caused by the failure of an organ, it will be possible to call a priest for the salvation of the deceased’s soul even several hours after visible death, to administer extreme unction.

Besides the sacrament of extreme unction, a priest can act by word and thought upon the deceased’s soul in the sensitive oduší being released, telling it that death approaches, earthly life is ending and the time has come to choose salvation or damnation. In this passive, solitary state the soul needs guidance. The priest urges it to look back into its life, its esplana, where it will see evil deeds and sins. He encourages perfect contrition for them and can then also grant absolution. If no priest is nearby, a layperson can speak similarly and urge the deceased’s soul toward perfect contrition. Looking back into its life, the soul will long for salvation and cooperate with us toward it. We must consider that the devil will make an equal, indeed far more powerful intervention and struggle for the solitary soul, trying through temptation, snares, deceit and tricks to occupy it and turn it away from the priest’s influence, thereby leading it to damnation. The soul will stand here in the fire between good and evil, and it will depend upon the priest to bring it to his good goal through the strength of his own faith and deprive the powers of darkness of every possibility of victory.

(372) Let us remember the unfortunate people who perish in natural disasters, mines, at sea, in battles and in railway or aviation accidents, and consider what good could be done if a priest at the scene helped the victims toward salvation of their souls in the manner described. If the priest cannot reach the place itself, the sea or a collapsed mine, for example, he should act by telepathic appeal in living faith and psychic concentration from the nearest possible distance. During such exertion of will, powerful vibrations, oscillations and discharges of waves of siloton particles of thought-fluid pass into space, directed toward the unfortunate people’s location. There they stimulate the sensitive oduší to rouse the souls into awareness, free thought and decision within the scope of the transmitted wish.

We cannot rely upon the help of a priest and friends at death. Let us secure ourselves while still alive by creating a strong, radiant esplano that will continually watch on our behalf and, at death, rouse our soul to proper contrition. Let us form this strong esplano through a daily wish of about half a minute, concentrating the will in the manner of prayer.

(373) Let us rely upon no one. Let us prepare throughout our lives for a happy death and the salvation of the soul.

Nevertheless, I warn the friends of patients not to misuse this discussion of life and actual death by postponing the administration of the sacraments until the dying person’s last hours.

In my experiments with subjects I learned that thirty hours after death, the soul is only very slightly connected with oduší and does not respond to our appeals. Subjects explain that detachment from matter is considerable and our influence upon the soul weak.

After the third day I never found the soul present in oduší, although the radiant energy of oduší continued to be released from the bodies of the deceased. In the actual death of a person who died in full vitality through a disturbance of the organism, although the soul is still joined with the body in oduší, it is never possible, even by the most advanced medical intervention, to revive the dead body later than the hours immediately following visible death. Nor can the soul itself ever return to life and animate the body after actual death, except in the case of apparent death.

(374) Actual death has two stages. We ourselves or a physician establish the first from the general visible signs; the second comes when the soul is entirely released from the body.

My most capable subject, Křeček, observing souls when their presence in oduší ceased, sensed and maintained to me that the soul dwells and is purified in the places of its life’s evil deeds, thus on Earth among us. In my judgment, protonace will undoubtedly be the place and state in which souls undergo the purgatory taught by the Roman Catholic Church. Protonace is discussed in “Sensitives and Protonace.”

Today, amid the world’s chaotic events, the goal for which we are in the world and the purpose for which Earth is arranged are completely forgotten. Death is the door into eternity, which the soul enters with whatever good or evil it possesses from life. If we consider that we do not even know how great the universe is with its immense worlds and how many solar systems exist within it, while conditions for life have been established on no planet except Earth, our life is something infinitely precious and extraordinary. Conscious of this immense worth and rarity of every individual soul, we must all contribute and cooperate in saving it through salvation, for which it is in fact intended.

45. The Psychic Course of Death

(375) Several days before death, oduší gradually releases from the body, withdrawing from the feet and hands toward the shoulders and gathering around the head. If a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis finds this state, he establishes approaching death with certainty. An advanced sensitive determines the time of death precisely. During this release of oduší from the body, patients usually feel relief ten to twenty hours before death and suppose this state to be a sign of recovery.

The senses then begin to weaken, and a feeling of sweet fatigue arises, a kind of freedom and liberty of the soul with pleasant sensations. Touch dies first, then sight, and hearing last. The soul leaves the gray cerebral cortex and passes into a special state of passivity and paralysis of the will, in which free thought does not operate. Gradually all the brain’s esplana become stimulated and light up, even those atrophied and almost extinguished, and those unpleasant to us and suppressed by the will, serious crimes. More and more of its experienced life appears to the soul; it sees good and bad deeds simultaneously and lives in the presence of its entire life. Anxiety awakens in the soul, and torment according to the degree of guilt.

Although we already establish death and the deceased’s soul has left the matter of the cerebral cortex, where it ruled through reason and free will, it now dwells for a certain time with its entire psychic being in the realm of its own esplana of the upper subconscious, where all the deeds of life, good and evil, reside. For the last time it participates in its whole earthly life with full awareness.

(376) Oduší nevertheless continues releasing and separating from all the esplana, which thereby begin to fade and disintegrate, dissolving within several days. Oduší, from which the soul gradually separates, gathers around the head. After leaving the esplana, psychic activity changes briefly into a passive state of slight unawareness, and the soul does not clearly know what is happening to it. This can be compared to a prisoner suddenly led from a dark cell into bright daylight, whose light blinds him. One might object that the soul, already considerably freed from matter, immediately acquires its splendid qualities, but, as we have learned, this is not so.

If we disturb this departure of the soul from the body by calling, lamenting and weeping, its capacity awakens as though from a heavy dream into full awareness of this world. It observes, hears and sees us through its psychic sight.

At the same time, as it detaches from the matter of oduší, the soul awakens in its whole substance, capacity and perfection, in reason and free will. A state full of inner light begins, the most perfect and exalted life, psychic beauty, bliss and happiness, blessed peace and calm springing from the soul itself and experienced within itself in its perfection and illumination. It feels immense joy and bliss through direct knowledge of its own essence, the awareness that it is a reflection of God, His work made in His image. Every soul, whether evil or good in earthly life, tastes and briefly experiences this state of partial heaven at death. Then the particular judgment begins. In a single glance the soul becomes conscious of its entire life. It recognizes good and evil and the justice, reward and punishment flowing from them. Souls attaining welcome salvation are no longer deprived of this blessed state; according to their merit it is increased through knowledge of the most perfect essence of God Himself. They receive participation in higher life, in the divine nature. Souls that pass through purgatory in the other world will see their lives again in protonace, with their bad and evil deeds, and must balance and atone for them through a further purifying life of suffering to attain justification. For the damned, the constant presence of deeds in protonace is the hell of eternity, a hell within themselves, for everything passes into soul-consciousness.

It is written: “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”

(377) Will forgiven sins be visible to everyone at the Last Judgment? Yes, even forgiven sins will be revealed, for Scripture says, in St. Matthew, chapter 10, verse 26: “…nothing is concealed that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not be known…”; St. Luke, chapter 8, verse 17: “…for nothing is secret that will not become manifest, and nothing hidden that will not be known and come to light…”; St. Mark, chapter 4, verse 22: “…for nothing is hidden except to be revealed, nor has anything happened in secret except to come to light…”

It is a warning and a remarkable fact that everything is recorded in protonace, including sins forgiven through absolution. Guilt and punishment are remitted, but every deed remains in protonace, not to shame and torment those judged, but as evidence of God’s mercy. Through penance and purifying justification, sanctifying grace is acquired; we are received as God’s children and called to participate in His life. We attain the vision of God through the light of glory, but only according to the measure of our merits.

46. How a Clairvoyant Works

(378) There is not a single manifestation of the soul, down to the last day of our body’s life, that occurs without the cooperation of the exceedingly subtle matter of oduší. Clairvoyance, too, is impossible without this cooperation.

For physiology it is, and will be, noteworthy that the soul in its SELF can leave the cerebral instrument and act within oduší.

We distinguish automatic and mechanical clairvoyant sensitives. Automatic sensitives see spatially without outside help. Through their own faith they can bring themselves into ecstasy, in which they see by means of a fluid band created by their own disposition. They work under their own command, given before entering ecstasy. Because they lack clear guidance, they are less reliable.

Mechanical clairvoyants cannot do such a thing of their own accord. At the same time they do not consciously know what gift lies hidden within them. They therefore depend upon outside help and guidance.

Let us now imagine that through a subject I am going to search on the Russian battlefield for a soldier who has not yet returned from the world war. I often did this to verify clairvoyance, and I declare that we have not yet been mistaken, that is, we have never said “he has fallen” when this was untrue. I hope this example will help the reader penetrate and understand the mystery more easily.

(379) I put four of the most proven sensitives to sleep in a single room. None must know why, lest consciousness itself prematurely apply a brake to subconscious expression. I make certain that all have entered the fourth degree of hypnotic sleep. I seat them two meters apart. In three I awaken subconscious activity and command them to watch the fourth, subject K., whom I shall send to the Russian battlefield in search of the soldier, carefully and report everything that happens. Because I have repeatedly had clairvoyants observe this phenomenon and have studied it closely, I believe it occurs under these conditions and by this procedure:

I approach the sleeping K. and ask, “Do you hear me?” If he does not respond because of deep hypnosis, I stimulate him with a discharge of my magnetism through my left hand, which I bring near his nape, then after a moment sweep sharply in an arc over his crown to the front of his face. He then answers. At the moment he responds, a fluid band forms from his oduší, an emanation from his brain as he answers, and attaches to the surface of my head, connecting the two brains.

I hold a photograph of the missing soldier, look at it and picture him vividly. At the same time I command subject K. to look into my esplana, where he will see what I am vividly imagining. The subject scarcely breathes and strives to receive into his soul the image impressed from my esplana. As soon as he says, “I see,” I ask, “What do you see? Describe it!” Once I recognize that he has received the likeness correctly, I command, “Remember him well, then, and go find him on the Russian battlefield. He is missing, and it is very important to both you and me to know what has happened to him.”

(380) A peculiar situation now arises in the subject’s subconscious activity. At the speed of thought the subconscious produces a luminous discharge, a straight band or ray of light imbued with soul, to find the nearest destination or station. This is a living being, human or animal, to whose oduší around the body it attaches, simultaneously drawing upon that being’s supply of oduší. From this station it now produces a discharge of innumerable luminous rays fanning into a semicircle on one side, for example to the right. Through these rays it permeates almost every place while searching for the person sought. I would say that, just as the soul can feel around its immediate surroundings through a hand, so the subject’s soul feels through oduší over great distances throughout the world, thus searching an area of fifteen hundred square kilometers. In its subconscious it is aware of everything in that space. This search lasts about three or four seconds. If the subject’s soul has not sensed or found the soldier in the permeated space, it draws its oduší back to its station at the speed of thought and works in the same way from the opposite side. If it does not find him there either, it again draws the oduší back and sends a further luminous discharge from the station beyond the region already permeated, attaching itself there to another station imbued with soul. It abandons the first station while remaining connected in a straight line with the hypnologist. At the second station the same procedure occurs as at the first. If it does not find the person, it continues similarly, always leaving the previous station. When it finally senses the person sought, it draws all the oduší transmitted in rays into one luminous band or line, attaches to the found soldier, simultaneously leaves the final station and remains connected in a straight line with both the hypnologist and the person found. It immediately describes the person’s bodily and psychic state and surroundings. Let us not suppose that thoughts fly back along the line. What the subconscious SELF sees and becomes aware of at the end of the fluid line, it simultaneously sees and knows in the subject at that same instant. The soul is whole both at the line’s end and throughout the line, and simultaneously throughout the subject’s body and in every emitted ray. Here we see that the human soul bears God’s image within itself. Permeating the whole area place by place, it is in a certain sense omnipresent at every place, though only within certain lawful limits.

(381) I have said that the station imbued with soul used by the subject’s soul may be a human or animal, a being possessing oduší, and that the subject’s subconscious draws upon the station’s resources. This can happen for at most eighteen to twenty minutes. The station’s oduší is thereby exhausted to the point that the human or animal feels sudden weakness, which I have verified several times experimentally. If the subject notices fatigue at this station, he leaves it, because its fatigue is simultaneously his own, and moves to another station.

Through oduší formed into a line, the soul permeates every substance in a straight direction. It cannot attach to nonliving matter, and if it is to observe such matter, it does so from a station imbued with soul, through repeated discharges of oduší until it knows it. In an automatic subject this entire process occurs without the hypnologist’s mediation.

The subject can occupy through his presence a space as large as the quantity of released oduší permits. For this reason every capable subject is present in a space of different size. The subject exercises his capacities only within the scope of the requested wish and afterward returns to his original state, passive to us.

As evidence that oduší can be partly sent from the body to various places at will, I give the following:

(382) In the presence of about 320 people in the “Prkenici” hall in Přelouč on June 21, 1925, I commanded subject K., asleep in the fourth degree, to release his oduší into the water in a glass I held before him and remain connected with it until I gave another command. I then carried the glass to the opposite side of the room, so that the subject sat with his back toward it. I asked those present to determine when the water in the glass should be stabbed. At an unforeseen hand signal after five minutes, the water was stabbed. At that same instant the sleeping subject K. cried out in pain. This cry confirmed that he was present in the water through his oduší.

Oduší is perfectly adapted to the soul’s qualities, but the soul can work with it only in subconscious activity.

47. Spirit

(383) The activity of a soul freed from the body, that is, the activity of a spirit and of other spiritual beings, is immaterial. It does not have the same presence or occupy space as material objects and beings do. A spirit is simple and lacks all composition because it has no parts. If present, it does not fill parts of space.

A spirit is present with its whole being throughout the space it has occupied by permeation through its activity, and simultaneously in every part of it. If it wills, it can occupy through its being a larger or smaller space, even the smallest imaginable. Several spirits can be present in the same space because they do not fill space as bodies do. Their presence lasts as long as they occupy a particular place and are active there in a certain way. Their presence in space is imperfect, however, limited to a particular part. This must be understood to mean that they are not simultaneously everywhere at once like the most perfect spirit and giver of all life, God.

God’s presence in space is unlimited. God is omnipresent in His whole substance.

A spirit can occupy any other space at the speed of thought. It does not depend upon space.

How large a space can a spirit encompass at once?

(384) Through its presence it can encompass a body in the universe approximately the size of the globe.

I have found that an advanced subject in hypnotic sleep, although dependent upon liberated oduší, can encompass with his presence as much as one-third of our Earth at once, and with practice an even greater space.

If a spirit wishes to shift its presence from one planet to another, it need not pass through interplanetary space. Only matter is subject to that law.

When its presence on Neptune ends, its presence on Jupiter begins.

A spirit reveals its thoughts to another spirit by merely willing, “I will,” that the other know them. If it wishes, the other spirit knows them to the extent that they have been disclosed and revealed.

Spirit, the soul, is not tired by thinking, because it is immaterial in substance. Above all it knows its own being and the qualities belonging to it.

Just as the human soul in hypnotic sleep can see into past and present time and partly into the future, so a spirit, unrestricted by time or space, sees and knows far more perfectly.

48. The Limits of the Activity of Oduší

(385) The line formed by oduší cannot reach beyond the space filled with air, because it is a component of the human body. It is impossible to send subjects or mediums to other planets. If we do so, we shall be deceived, as I shall explain immediately.

The medium’s subconscious is subordinate to the will of the people in the circle or the hypnologist. Suppose the hypnologist wishes to know what Mars is like. A good subject is compelled through the fluid line to step outside his body toward Mars. Because in this case danger threatens the body, of which oduší is a part, he returns of his own impulse. Yet the hypnologist’s wish is a command to him. Because the subconscious SELF is rich in the creation of thoughts, he begins speaking from imagination, fantasy, about unknown animals, plants, cities, beings or people on Mars, and so forth. Listeners are immensely interested and surprised and believe it. I myself performed such experiments and got to the bottom of the matter. Subject J. described a certain kind of enormous animal on Mars. About two months later I put another sensitive to sleep, sent him to Mars, and he described the same animal. This surprised me, and the thought immediately intruded whether he was taking it from my upper subconscious. About six days later I put a good subject, the familiar Mr. Hanuš, to sleep and also sent him to Mars to describe what he saw. Among other things he described the same as the first two. The witnesses present now firmly believed that the subject could reach Mars and that everything there truly was as he described.

(386) Wishing to know and verify what happens when oduší is detached over such a great distance, I put another good clairvoyant subject, K., to sleep. Once assured that he slept well, I commanded him to observe everything carefully and report in succession what happened when I again sent subject H. to Mars. I therefore asked H. to go to Mars and examine everything there carefully. Immediately afterward subject K. reported, “A luminous line has formed from the sleeper’s head, across your head, toward Mars… Now subject H. has withdrawn. He sensed danger to his coarse body, and his own instinct commands him to return.” At that moment the sleeping H. began telling us about flowers he saw there, saying the day was as long as ours, only a few seconds longer, while the year was almost twice as long. Mars had two moons, and because of the colder weather the animals had thick fur, and so forth. Subject K. interrupted, “Don’t believe him; he hasn’t been there. He’s invented some of it and is seeking some in protonace, what humanity has already discovered for itself. I know; I can see it.” I answered, “How will you convince us that he’s lying?” Subject K. replies, “Very easily. Tell him I’m watching him and that he hasn’t been on Mars at all. Insist that he go out again and don’t let him return!” This seemed dangerous, and I was still considering it. Subject K. sensed this and said, “I know, you’re afraid something might happen. Don’t be afraid! I’ll keep watch. You people in the world don’t see things as we do.” K. is a subject who falls into such a degree of hypnosis that he does not know his conscious SELF formed in the upper subconscious; his soul works purely subconsciously, without entering the threshold of consciousness.

Translator’s safety note: Do not attempt this experiment or follow the response of waiting hours described below. If a person is unresponsive and not breathing normally, seek emergency help and start CPR immediately, following the dispatcher’s instructions. See St John Ambulance’s CPR guidance. This warning is editorial; the historical account is preserved below.

(387) I therefore did as he advised. I told the first subject that the second was watching him and commanded him truly to go to Mars rather than deceive us, because his observer would reveal everything. The experiment continued. Subject K. reported continual discharges of oduší from H. in the form of a luminous band. I gave H. suggestions: “You cannot return!” After a longer interval I noticed weakness in H., looked at my watch and saw that the performance had already lasted twenty-five minutes, which was too long. We learned nothing from either subject except a few words from K.: “Have no fear… he cannot get there, and yet he must.” I observed H.’s pulse and counted scarcely eight beats a minute. Suddenly K. reported, “Quickly, command: Come back!” I did so and wanted to wake H. It was impossible. Subject K. said, “You won’t wake him now.” I ask, “How can that be? You were watching!” K.: “He’s almost discharged of the fluid of oduší. He did draw it back, but he’s exhausted, and you must wait several hours until he acquires more; now he lacks the psychic strength to animate his body properly. Don’t be afraid; wait. I’ll tell you, and then you can wake him.” I object, “Why did you advise it if it does the subject no good?” K. answers, “This procedure does no subject good if he must truly go out and is not permitted to return to preserve himself. Because he was directed toward Mars, he had to send discharges in that direction. But there is no station there to which he could attach, so he drew upon his own supply of oduší. Through continual discharges he exhausts himself, and partly you, yet he still cannot get there. The soul cannot work above the space of air without catastrophe for the body. Had he remained psychically outside his body longer, the soul would have separated completely from the body through the discharge of oduší. You people say, ‘He has died.’ I proposed it to convince you that no subject can reach Mars.” I believed him, for subject H. could not be awakened by any means. I waited peacefully in living faith until K. gave me the signal to wake him. This happened only five hours later, when K. said, “Wake him!” I tried, and indeed I woke H. in perfect health, then K. as well.

I warn everyone against performing similar experiments, for magical death may easily occur.

(388) I draw attention to another danger: the soul, present in the pyrotons of liberated oduší, may sometimes be endangered when it attaches to a station imbued with soul, a human being, in that if the person suffers from mental illness or is completely insane, it partly takes that psychic state upon itself. Stronger impressions are impressed upon the subject’s esplana, shine more brightly and can then easily reach the threshold of consciousness. Before awakening a subject, a sensible hypnologist always drives all foreign impressions from the upper subconscious and thus preserves the subject in full health.

In rare cases, while seeking a suitable station, a subject finds one sufficiently enclosed by its own magnetism. He then has difficulty penetrating to its oduší. Because every discharge diminishes his own supply of oduší, he exhausts himself and then withdraws with difficulty. We observe jerking and restlessness in the subject, although no danger threatens. Here faith in the hypnologist readily helps; the hypnologist makes his own surplus fluid of oduší available and simultaneously draws the subject back with strong suggestion.

(389) At the end of this chapter I wish to emphasize how important it is that we avoid all psychic agitation on our life’s journey. Nerve cells vibrate violently, discharging and releasing bodily magnetism. At the same time the cell nucleus is prematurely disrupted, and not yet fully developed oduší emanates, just as electricity is released through the decomposition of matter. I repeat that nothing can damage our organism so much as strong psychic agitation, which almost decomposes the body so that it rapidly and prematurely weakens and ages.

49. The Practical Significance and Value of Clairvoyance

(390) We can now explain the examples given in the preceding sections: seeing at a distance as far as Vienna, seeing photographs turned face down and so forth. When skepticism in metapsychics diminishes and competent authorities correctly understand these hidden forces, clairvoyance will become a general aid in solving and clarifying many mysteries. First, however, much argument and struggle must come, and this science will have many martyrs. These forces still hidden from us remain an infant in swaddling clothes. We must know the conditions of their manifestations well in order to achieve success.

In the fourth degree of hypnosis, with the help of the matter of oduší, the soul separates from the body, emerges from it in its SELF and thus creates various phenomena of doubling. Displaced from the body, the subject penetrates all solid matter through psychic sight and fluid in all his capacities.

That clairvoyance is a gift of great value will become clear from the following facts.

(391) On Sunday, July 8, 1923, after three in the afternoon, Václav Fenykl, a draftsman for the local builder F., drowned as a result of heart weakness. This happened in the estate pond near Červený Kostelec, about one hectare in area. The drowned man was sought in vain for two days. Fr. Křeček, a shopkeeper with whom Fenykl lodged, came to ask me to try finding him through clairvoyance. I promised on the condition that I would do so only in the evening and with no one present except two witnesses, for the many people continually at the pond would disturb the subject’s performance.

On Tuesday at the agreed time I came to the pond with my subject K., where Mr. Křeček and Mr. Klaus, also a shopkeeper, were already waiting. We went to the place where the drowned man’s clothes had been found. Křeček sat on the bank, and the subject sat in his lap while I put him to sleep. I instructed the witnesses to remain completely passive during the experiment, arousing no curiosity through any thought and making no guesses about where the drowned man might be. I verified that the subject was asleep and asked, “Can a clairvoyant see a drowned person in the water?” He answers, “Yes.” I ask, “But how? The body is not animated, so perhaps by magnetism?” The subject: “No, water absorbs that. By the oduší around the body, which must emanate above the water.” I ask, “How can he be brought out?” The subject: “That’s quite difficult, because by the third day he has the weight of water, lies on the bottom and is slippery; his body’s color merges with the water. Someone would have to go to him in a boat and, as directed by the clairvoyant, descend straight down and grasp his hair or swimming trunks.” I asked all this so that we would know how to proceed. I ask further, “What do you see where my hand is pointing?” The subject: “Water; it’s a large pond. There’s a bank over there and farther back a wooden little house,” the bathing cabins. “People don’t stay in it but go into it. Three people have just arrived there.” It was dark, so we saw no one. We therefore went to verify it, and indeed it was so. We continue. I say, “There is a drowned person in this pond. You can see him by the radiation of oduší.” The subject began breathing faster, then seemed to stop completely, and after about ten seconds reported, “I see!” “What do you see?” I ask. The subject: “There,” he points, “oduší radiates about fifteen centimeters above the water, forms a band through it and faintly envelops a body. The body is slanted, its trunk and arms bent, its mouth turned toward the bottom. Its feet are already off the bottom, and its head and shoulder blades are sixty centimeters below the water’s surface. The skin is swollen with water, and he is already bluish.” I command the subject, “Go directly above him and count the distance from the bank in meters. Give the exact place!” After a moment he says, “From that little house,” the cabins across the water from us, “it is six meters before the water begins, and he is seventeen meters from the bank in the water.” I interrupt his counting: “Count carefully!” The subject corrects himself: “No, nineteen meters. On the other bank two people are sitting with a sleeping sensitive between them.” He saw himself without recognizing himself, as happens with good subjects. “He lies nineteen meters from the bank in a straight line from the little house toward those people.” The place was specified exactly. I therefore said, “Good; we’ll go and pull him out in the morning.” The subject: “No! Wait, I’ll tell you…” He quietly calculated something to himself. “In six hours he’ll rise to the surface by himself in that position. Then you’ll get him.” Because curious onlookers approached, I awakened the subject. Both gentlemen believed and calculated that six hours would end at 3:15 in the morning, when the drowned man should appear. They decided to go to the pond at that time. I promised to come with the subject in case he needed to be put to sleep again.

On Wednesday morning the two gentlemen also took the drowned man’s father and went to the pond. Indeed, at precisely the appointed time a black point appeared on the water at the previously specified place. They entered a boat and rowed toward it, measuring the distance from the bank as they went. It was nineteen meters. Looking through the clear water at the body’s position, they saw that this too had been precisely determined by the subject. I was just arriving as they pulled him from the water. I myself still saw the bent body and arms. The skin was swollen and blue.

(392) In the village of Řešetová Lhota near Červený Kostelec, a hundred-crown note disappeared from a cup in a cupboard in the poor H. family’s home, a respectable sum at the time. There were seven family members and a son-in-law. Since everyone suspected everyone else, the son-in-law decided Kafka would investigate. He came to me. I refused. He begged me to try, saying it concerned only a hundred crowns and no one would take revenge upon me. I therefore said, “If it is one of the family members, we shall find the culprit.” Otherwise I would have to go to the scene, which was not worth an experiment to me. Four days later all eight appeared. I put subject K. to sleep, but he must not know beforehand what was at issue. I myself must avoid the slightest suspicion of anyone and maintain complete absence of thought, attainable through long practice. I command the subject, “Permeate this whole room!” The subject reports, “There are people here.” I answer, “Yes. Among these family members, a hundred crowns disappeared from the cupboard in their home. If one of those present took it, you will find the whole course of the theft in the illuminated esplana.” I must not say, “One of these family members took a hundred crowns; look and see who.” That would suggest to him that it truly was one of them, and the subject would have to name someone, perhaps even an innocent person. The subject must always be left complete freedom. He became still. After a moment he went to the second person, then backed away. He then went to the fifth and remained standing there. If at that moment I had thought even slightly, “It’s her,” I could easily have influenced the subject telepathically to name her as guilty. But he then approached the neighboring person and stood beside him, scarcely breathing. During such a performance, strong illumination occurs in the thief’s esplana, for he wishes to suppress his thought, but the deed becomes all the more vivid and the subject easily recognizes the true culprit.

Suddenly the subject seized the hand of the person beside whom he stood and exclaimed, “He took it, I know! Hold him! It’s him!” while himself gripping him convulsively. The person smiled and reached into his waistcoat pocket. He took out the hundred-crown note and handed it to his wife’s mother, saying, “Here you are. I never believed a clairvoyant could find the real culprit. I intended to insist here at Mr. Kafka’s that I hadn’t taken it. I admit this experiment surprised me.”

(393) In this way, through the release of the subject’s oduší, we can find objects invisible and hidden from us. We call the phenomenon cryptoscopy. The recall of old memories is called cryptomnesia; the subject senses and reveals them to us. A time will come when this splendid gift, what we might call a sixth sense, will be successfully used in the administration of justice, so that we shall compel the culprit to confess, for through this means all circumstances of the deed will be known to us; the subject senses them from both space and the culprit. Years ago I conducted many successful and varied experiments in this field. Although very interesting, I cannot use them publicly here, for I value myself highly and do not wish to be threatened with a firearm at every turn. As I have already declared in the newspapers, I repeat that it is useless to travel to me for such a purpose.

We can also induce a culprit to confess another way. To escape just punishment, a criminal does not act within his soul according to normal logic, but according to a wholly different, inverted logic he has formed in the esplana.

This change usually occurs through psychopathological reversals in his soul. The person questioned is no longer an individual with normal psychology and logic but a psychopathological phenomenon, so that the basis of confession proceeds from psychopathological reversals in the mechanism of cerebral activity.

When someone knowingly acts against the principles of logic, doing something unreasonable, we must assume that psychopathological processes are occurring in the brain at that moment and conditioning the behavior.

The investigator must therefore know how to evoke such disturbed logic in the perpetrator and, during new thinking, disrupt the average psychic mechanisms upon which his logic rests. The fundamental psychic faculties, reason, will and feeling, must be analyzed. The investigator must seek to disturb these mechanisms and, according to the accused person’s nature, approach him seriously, cheerfully, movingly or sternly, in the mood closest to his psyche. His logic then reacts to the evoked abnormal pathological affects in a certain pathological way, bringing about confession, the perpetrator’s will to tell the truth.

(394) I shall, however, describe an experiment undertaken as a test, to which we devoted an entire afternoon. There were seven of us. The question was whether a subject could find well-hidden culprits. We divided into two groups. The first, the subject, myself and Rev. Prudič as witness, remained in place. The other four, three gentlemen and a lady, went somewhere unknown to hide well in the surroundings. Our task was to discover their hiding place.

After about half an hour I put clairvoyant subject K. to sleep and took him back in time more than half an hour, to when we had all still been together. We call this clairvoyance into the past, psychometry. We already know that every deed, thought, person’s likeness and sequence of events is recorded and impressed in the exceedingly subtle fluid substance called protonace. As soon as the subject entered the specified past time and recognized our company, I commanded him to observe the whole group and report every change. He now recounted all our familiar actions, repeating what had been said, until at last he reported the four members’ departure. “They’re walking through the woods; now they’ve come out, are standing and discussing where to hide so we won’t find them… Now two are going left and two forward along the field boundary.” The subject gave their conversation in detail. He then followed the first two, reporting how they sought a suitable place and finally sat on a boundary between two strips of ripening rye.

I instructed the subject to lead us to them. We emerged from the woods and he headed straight through ripening grain; it was July. I stopped him and asked him to follow the field boundaries or describe precisely where we would find them. Now it became apparent how easily a subject can be diverted from the correct goal. As he described the hiding place, saying they were by Krčmařík pond, I told the accompanying witness, Rev. Prudič, aloud. Under the direct influence of my thought, the subject headed toward that pond. When we reached the place I had in mind, they were not there, and the subject looked around, saying, “They aren’t here, yet I see them.” “Where do you see them?” I asked. He pointed left and set off in that direction. My friend P. asked me to let him go: “We’ll see whether he finds them.” We followed the subject. He avoided only tall grain. On the way my friend asked me to inquire what he saw before him. Among other things the subject reported, “There’s an isolated brick building over there; it’s an inn,” and so forth. It was interesting that he never looked toward a thing with his eyes, which were of course closed, but with his right temple. Other sensitives had reported to me that this subject’s fluid line formed from his right temple. He quickened his pace, began running, and we followed until we were sweating. Although his eyes were tightly closed, he struck nothing, jumped over ditches and ran more swiftly and surely than we did. We were tired; friend P. fell behind and I could scarcely keep up. We were running somewhat uphill when the subject suddenly turned between two strips of grain and exclaimed, “I’ve got them!” When we reached him, we saw him gripping both gentlemen convulsively by their coats, anxiously afraid they might escape.

Both told us they had been there an hour. One, Mr. Křeček senior, did not believe the subject could find them in such a good hiding place. The other, Mr. Dudek, believed it possible. They had wagered cigarettes. Once calm was restored, I awakened the subject.

(395) A quarter of an hour later I put him to sleep again so that together we could find the others. To establish the right connection, I took the subject back to when we had all been together. He reports, “They’re walking along a cart track, now to the left. They meet some children; the lady is their mother. The children join them. They’re approaching a wood and walking alongside it. The trees are tall, now there’s low thicket, and now they turn into taller brush beside it. They’re hiding in the deepest part, about fifteen paces from the track.” We got up and walked for just under half an hour until we reached the precisely described place, pushed through the thicket and came directly upon them. Their surprise was naturally great. They had been certain we would never find them. Since the subject entertained us with what they had said in the thicket, we checked it together: everything agreed word for word. We also found Mrs. K.’s children.

In volume XIX of the French navy’s Mémoires Secrètes, we read that in 1780 a man named Baltineau presented himself to the government, claiming he could reliably distinguish ships on the open sea at distances up to fourteen hundred kilometers. Experiments were conducted. The examining committee’s report states, “Of 114 reports concerning the presence of 216 ships, Baltineau was mistaken only four times, and even these errors were caused by unforeseen changes in the weather.”

(396) It is interesting to observe through a subject, from a physiological standpoint, oduší and magnetic fluid in people in love, for their closeness creates a unity forming the basis of supreme love and higher stirrings.

In people truly in love, subject K. saw how the two magnetisms first balanced one another in their composition of radiant particles, then, as the bodies approached, spread apart and formed one common radiant envelope enclosing both bodies. He saw the exposed oduší merge into one body and create a unity in which two souls experienced that higher, unknown and ineffable happiness full of delight. From this unity, the expression of will longing for beauty and the ideal attains for a time that unchanging, infinite, absolute good and blessed being.

(397) In 1922 a young man of about twenty, D. from Červený Kostelec, was taken to the district hospital in Náchod. He studied at the painting academy in Prague and visited my sculpture workshop daily during the holidays. Because his illness was serious, I wanted to know how he was doing in hospital. I put subject Hanuš to sleep to tell me whether his condition was improving or worsening. Already asleep, subject H. asked me to picture the route to the hospital as though I were truly going there myself, saying he would use this to find the patient. This subject was an excellent clairvoyant, but uncertain when searching at a distance. He wished, perhaps through habit, for me to lead him there by a swift thought. He had to remember the route vividly formed in my esplana. At the same time I had to picture the patient’s likeness vividly. The subject reports that he has found the patient in the infectious diseases ward and that he is dying of blood poisoning. “He’s calling for his mother now and suffering greatly. The nurse attending him is telling him to be patient… Now he’s entering his death agony.” After five minutes the subject reports that the young man no longer knows anything consciously. His soul is alert in its SELF and knows everything there, but can no longer control its body; it feels no pain, he says. “In such a state it seems to you people that he knows nothing and does not see you. But that is a mistake.” I ask, “How long will the death agony last?” The subject answers, “About half an hour.” I therefore brought the subject back, intending to send him again in half an hour, and meanwhile left him asleep. After half an hour I sent him back to the patient. To my surprise he reported that the young man was already dead. “But not truly yet, only as people say, because the lungs aren’t working, nor the heart, and he’s almost entirely cold. But that isn’t actual death yet. His soul is still connected with the subtle fluid of oduší, which is rapidly withdrawing from the body to the surface.” I ask, “Can you still speak with him telepathically?” The subject: “I can, but only as long as he remains content with this subtle substance…” [Translator’s note: The supplied Czech reads spokojen, “content,” here. The context may suggest a textual error for spojen, “connected,” but the supplied reading is retained.] “Then ask him why he had to die,” I request. The subject is silent. I recognized that he was acting upon him… He emerges from his stillness. I ask, “Well, what did he say?” The subject: “That he brought it upon himself in Prague through a forbidden way of life, and he lets me know that he knows you are asking him.” This surprised me. I did not observe him further. That same evening I learned that D. had died in hospital. I established that everything agreed in detail to the minute. Thus I knew of his death three hours before his parents.

(398) The reader will surely have noticed that the subject speaks as though not of this world, as though he were some spirit. Someone will doubtless suppose that a soul from beyond the grave is manifesting here. That is a mistake. A subject in the fourth degree of hypnotic sleep is in this state: his soul immediately withdraws from the upper consciousness of this world and from the upper subconscious. At the same time sight leaves him, the eyes roll upward, and the soul also leaves smell, taste, touch, hearing, the sensory nerves and some motor nerves, so that it may orient itself better in the detached oduší. It has no connection with consciousness and has no esplana in oduší either. It therefore behaves like a liberated, free soul.

We learn that the soul is something qualitatively different from matter, spiritual and immaterial in origin, rather than a mere cerebral-nervous emanation.

These experiments always succeeded for us. If we are careless or ignorant of the matter, we ruin everything. Yet let us not imagine that such experiments succeed with every subject. Clairvoyance must be awakened and properly developed within him, and it takes years before it develops so perfectly that he works precisely. Through a good subject every personal secret and every deed, good or evil, can be brought to light, whether from present or past time. The length of time elapsed does not matter. What matters is that the hypnologist can take the subject back to a particular time, year, month, day and hour when the deed was experienced. I proceed as follows:

Suppose I wish to investigate the flourishing of the Babylonian Empire thousands of years ago. The subject cannot be brought into that time all at once, as we might wish. The whole interval must be divided precisely into smaller portions. We must experience each period with the subject separately and in order as we go backward through time, until we reach the particular time set as our goal. The subject can then work and speak freely. He sees cities, buildings, activity and people, and with them the entire development and condition of that time. He knows everything more perfectly in the past than we do in the present. The subject’s subconscious capacity is astonishing. His soul can experience almost in an instant what took place in past centuries, capturing every significant moment that he can reveal to us.

(399) Another example. At this moment, ten in the morning on October 6, 1924, I would like to know what my friend did on January 11, 1924, at two in the afternoon. The subject receives my friend’s likeness from my esplana. I now lead him back from the present moment, ten o’clock, one month at a time precisely according to the calendar, experiencing each month with him and taking account of whether it had thirty or thirty-one days. In the final month I go backward day by day until I reach ten o’clock on January 11. At each day the working subject remains mentally at ten o’clock, the hour at which we began. From ten on January 11 I then move forward until reaching two in the afternoon, as intended. The subject can now continue independently, proceed and read in the fluid of protonace. Everything faithfully unfolds for him almost of itself; he sees what my friend did at that hour, matching reality fully. He also captures the friend’s thoughts condensed fluidically in protonace. Everything experienced is recorded in the book of life, the fluid of protonace, including the particular time and place where the event occurred.

During such a performance the subject is often carried away by the event, and if several people participate in it, he speaks for all in their own voices and dialects. It looks as though, for example, eighteen people were using him as an instrument at once. It is very interesting to observe the speed with which he reproduces an argument, for instance.

If a connection is to be made with a particular event, the subject must be taken to the scene. A good subject goes there on foot, by train or by car, undergoing everything exactly as, for example, the perpetrator himself did, if a crime is involved. For the performance to succeed, no curious onlooker may be present, for he could easily lead the subject astray by his thoughts, causing him to deceive us. A witness familiar with these phenomena may be present, and even he does well to take no interest in the experiment and occupy himself with some indifferent, superficial thought.

(400) The ship’s physician Dr. Šípek, who often brought his patients for examinations by subject K., told me that he had operated on Mrs. C. That evening he sat at the writing desk in his cabin aboard ship. Suddenly he had the impression that someone had entered; he felt a kind of breath of air and the definite presence of a being. He clearly heard it sit in the armchair opposite his desk, though he saw no one. To suppress his agitation and attend to correspondence, he had to control himself strongly and persuade himself that these were merely hallucinations from overwork. The next day he visited his patient, who to his astonishment said, “Are you angry that I disturbed you last evening by entering your cabin and watching you work from the armchair?”

The physician devoted every care to saving Mrs. C.’s life. Her subconscious SELF sensed this effort, particularly during the operation, and gratitude created a relationship with the physician’s person. In a half-dreaming state, when consciousness often serves subconscious activity, this SELF effectively made its presence known in his room, invisibly but audibly, through liberated oduší and a partial release of bodily substance. Clairvoyance operated here through the radiant elements of the patient’s body.

A human being is three-dimensional, possessing length or depth, width and height. During spatial liberation he is already a four-dimensional formation, for the original three-dimensional formation remains and a fourth dimension is added, the extension of fluid oduší. In this state the soul’s activity manifests simultaneously in both the three-dimensional and the four-dimensional formation.

50. Spontaneous Clairvoyance

(401) The clairvoyance I have discussed so far is an artificially evoked phenomenon. I shall now mention clairvoyance that manifests spontaneously. People who can boast this gift are nonmagnetic sensitives, and a good third of them suffer from the spontaneous release of the fluid of oduší, a pathological condition.

The following example will show the reader what spontaneous clairvoyance is.

One early morning in 1911, I went mushrooming with my then subject, Miss Josífková, and her father. She soon had half a bag of mushrooms while we still had none, although we searched diligently. We discussed why she found so many. She said the thought simply came to her and she went where the mushrooms were. After a while she stopped and said, “I’ll tell you: over there,” pointing, “beneath that little spruce, there are fifteen small porcini in a circle under the moss.” We laughed, and her father said, “I’d like to see whether that’s true!” We went to the indicated tree and saw moss but no mushrooms. We carefully parted the moss, and beautiful white porcini arranged in a circle appeared before our eyes. We counted, and there were indeed fifteen.

How should we explain this phenomenon? The young woman is nonmagnetic; vital magnetism does not radiate around her body at all or enclose it, but remains only within the body’s own matter. Oduší, which radiates around everyone’s body without exception, is entirely free in her, not enclosed by a protective mantle of magnetic fluid. In magnetic people who like eating meat, a good sensitive sees both fluids. Oduší gathers close around the body, whitish with a delicate bluish tint. Where its layer ends, the color changes to blue-violet or red; this is already magnetic fluid. People eating natural, fairly simple food and supplementing it with uncooked food have both fluids of one color, making them difficult for the subject to distinguish.

The young woman enjoyed mushrooming and always brought back many. In her passionate search she entered a state in which subconscious activity awakened, spatially releasing oduší and discharging it before her, so that she recognized mushrooms by the radiant energy issuing from them. This was not a pathological spontaneous release of oduší but another cause: desire, the will to find. Because the young woman, now a married woman, is not magnetically enclosed but free in her oduší, I still conduct valuable telepathic experiments with her today.

(402) I shall give other examples. My friend Kubeček was walking along a street. Suddenly it occurred to him that he would find two silver crowns lying side by side in the road. He walked about another hundred paces and indeed found them. While washing one morning, my friend Dudek saw six ten-heller coins beside a pine tree he often passed. He told his family. Everyone laughed at him. He then went to the place and truly found them there. These two phenomena already belong to the pathological condition of spontaneous release of oduší. I shall give further examples of the same kind.

(403) My friend H. complained that for an entire week he had seen a strange woman beside him several times daily, and described her in detail. A week later he traveled as a member of a brass band to Wrocław, then in Prussian Silesia, and there in the hotel recognized in a chambermaid the woman who had been appearing to him. H. had known a week beforehand that he would go to Wrocław. All the concern connected with the journey passed into his esplana, which then through strong radiation stimulated the subconscious psychic SELF. This itself released oduší toward Wrocław, as far as the hotel where the concert was to take place. The woman was strongly magnetic, and her magnetic energy stimulated his oduší so that it received her likeness and entire appearance.

(404) My very good acquaintance H. from Olešnice is a good marksman and passionate hunter. One night he awoke from a dream in which he clearly saw a stray doe grazing in Mr. Š.’s little wood. He awoke toward four in the morning. The dream was so vivid that, firmly believing his vision, he gathered four neighbors and beaters, assuring them all that the doe was there and directing how they should surround the wood so their quarry would not escape. When the organized drive reached the place, they indeed saw the grazing doe. A shot destroyed the fresh, free life of the beautiful creature. How astonished the other participants were when only then H. said he had summoned them solely on the basis of his dream, which his wife corroborated.

(405) In the first days of May 1898, the sailor L. experienced the following incident. A ship fully occupied with passengers was sailing from Liverpool across the Atlantic Ocean. On the fifth day of the voyage, this sailor, then a helmsman, came on duty at two in the morning. On the bridge the departing helmsman wished him a safe voyage. When L. was alone, he observed that the night was dark and could distinguish only with difficulty the dark outlines of two lookouts, one on the lower deck and the other on the mast. The sailor himself continues:

“I began pacing slowly. It occurred to me what a mere shell our ship really was, that only a thick iron plate separated hundreds of passengers from a terrible grave. Suddenly a strange feeling of inexplicable anxiety seized me, frightening me to the innermost depths of my soul. An incomprehensible horror chilled my entire body. I resisted in vain. I felt as though I ought to do something without knowing what. Suddenly I distinctly heard a mysterious voice telling me to stop the voyage. I looked tensely in every direction, but no one besides me was on the bridge. I searched everywhere but found nothing unusual. Seaman Thompson, who suddenly appeared beside me, reported that all was well. I asked what order the captain had just given. I wanted to be certain Thompson had heard nothing. ‘The captain? An order?’ he asked in surprise. ‘The captain is down in his cabin.’ ‘Didn’t you just hear someone tell me to stop the ship?’ ‘No! Upon my word, truly not!’ After he left, I felt I ought to laugh at myself. But then indescribable anxiety seized me again and an urgent voice once more told me to stop the voyage. The mysterious power was stronger than I. I felt drawn toward the telegraph leading to the engine room, yet hesitated for a moment. I thought of the alarm I would cause and the captain’s anger when he woke and learned what I had dared do without permission. Yet the next instant I ordered through the telegraph, ‘Half speed!’ I watched the engines slow. But more and more distinctly the compelling voice forced its way into consciousness: ‘Stop! Stop the ship!’ Without further hesitation I telegraphed below, ‘Stop!’ The engines stopped almost immediately, and I heard the surprised voices of the other sailors on watch. Everyone crowded onto the deck, and the angry captain rushed toward me. Before he reached me, the irresistible force seized me again, and almost out of my senses I telegraphed, ‘Full astern!’ ‘For the living God’s sake, what has happened?’ I heard the agitated captain beside me. Meanwhile our mighty colossus was already moving backward. Before I could answer him, a terrible cry came from the rigging, sending horror through the whole body: ‘An iceberg is heading straight toward us!’ Immediately afterward came a slight impact and a shudder through the ship. The ship had lightly grazed the iceberg. It was an extraordinary giant. Woe to us had we struck it at full steam; the ship would have sunk.”

(406) These facts belong to the spontaneous release of oduší in people with little or no magnetism. In such people oduší is often released for even a slight reason. In one it is passionate hunting, in another concern connected with travel, in a third fear of danger at sea, and so forth. In this helmsman, responsible for his watch and thinking about possible disaster, the subconscious SELF awakened and displaced oduší. An expanded presence of the psychic SELF arose wherever oduší was present. Through oduší the subconscious SELF sees the iceberg approaching, recognizing it from the outline of its radiating magnetism. Approaching danger and anxiety break and force their way into consciousness. Suppression of fear does not help; subconscious and conscious activity become equal, splitting the will. The subconscious SELF predominates, takes possession of the motor nerves and then gives commands itself. In this case, of course, it is not excluded that God intervened and used natural means for deliverance.

God distributes the hidden gifts of which we speak to individuals according to His most holy will.

(407) My friend Dvořáček, a local shopkeeper, told me that as a boy he was responsible for locking the sheds at home every evening.

It happened one winter. The snow was almost knee-deep. He went to lock the sheds again, spinning the keys around a finger. Mischievously he made a snowball and threw it far ahead. To his alarm he found that the keys had flown away with it. He searched anxiously but in vain. Fearing a beating from his father, he went into the still unlocked shed, knelt and prayed fervently to his guardian angel to find the keys. Scarcely had he finished praying when he felt moved to look down, and to his surprise saw the keys lying on the ground before him, although no one had previously been in the shed. Later he lost a key again. In childlike confidence he said to himself, “I’ll pray and I’ll have it again.” He did so, and indeed the key lay at his feet. How are we to explain this? Through a sensitive I established that D. was very magnetic and his magnetism clung in accumulated form to objects in his home. Under the influence of childlike religious faith, his subconscious awakened and, under the same laws as telekinesis, the displacement of objects, performed a physical act at a distance. It is not excluded that the guardian angel used the supplicant’s natural capacities and disposition to transfer the keys.

(408) At the beginning of 1924, Echo Warszawske published an interesting event that occurred in Częstochowa. A gravedigger from the local Catholic cemetery came before the council of the Jewish community, claiming that a soldier had appeared to him several times in a dream and told him he was Jewish by origin and his body belonged in the Jewish cemetery, not the Catholic one. A few days later an elderly Jewish woman from somewhere near Częstochowa came before the same council, declaring that she was searching in vain for her son, missing and mourned for years. She also recounted that recently her son had appeared several times in dreams and told her he had been wrongly buried in the Catholic cemetery in Częstochowa. At the Jewish council’s insistence the matter was investigated, and it was indeed discovered that several years earlier an unknown soldier had died in the military hospital there, carrying only an identity card in the name of Maurycy Kapusta. He was indeed the Jewish man being sought, buried in the Catholic cemetery. For this reason the military authorities ordered exhumation. After an official examination, Kapusta’s remains were reburied, this time in the Jewish cemetery.

Most people believed that the deceased himself, the soldier’s spirit, had appeared to the gravedigger and the Jewish woman. This is, of course, nonsense. We know that many members of the Jewish people are buried in Catholic cemeteries, yet do not ask to be transferred to a Jewish one. The Jewish woman, the soldier’s mother, was sensitive and nonmagnetic. She searched for her son in vain. Through continual concern for him, the esplana in her upper subconscious shone strongly, and their vibration gave her neither peace nor sleep. In her own sleep, her soul’s subconscious activity was compelled by the illuminated esplana to search for her son. Spatial release of oduší and a search for him had to follow. The mother’s soul found bone of her own body’s bone by its radiation and recognized her son in it. From the psychoanalytic method I know the powerful apparatus of symbols and representations with which the subconscious works. Liberated in the matter of its oduší, the mother’s soul, on sensing her son’s skeleton, clothed itself in his former soldier’s likeness, received from the book of life, protonace, or abstracted and taken from her own esplana. Telepathically it enlivened the protosplana of that cemetery’s gravedigger, from which the apparition then passed through the esplana to the threshold of his subconscious.

In the mother, too, the apparition impressed upon the esplana reached consciousness, which happens most often toward morning in light sleep.

(409) At the beginning of January 1924 I came home late at night, worn out. I knew that the next day I would again have to stay awake past midnight. I therefore gladly went to bed to restore myself at least partly through sleep. As I was falling asleep, our fourteen-month-old daughter woke me with loud crying, and my wife could not calm her. I remained patient for a long time, waiting for her to quiet down. But the child was no longer merely crying; she was screaming angrily. I began to grow angry inwardly, and after a while asked my wife to give her a little slap. Yet I waited for quiet in vain. Knowing sleep was lost, I struggled within myself and wanted to punish her myself. This evil psychic tension lasted about an hour. Then I did sleep a little. Around seven in the morning I went to the square for a certain purpose, and within five minutes was returning down the middle of the street in a fairly good mood. No one else was in the street. Then I saw a woman wrapped in a large shawl approaching along the pavement on the right. Just as we were about to pass, she sprang toward me with staring eyes and said, “Don’t be so cruel to the child at night! I suffered a great deal because of you today.” Before I recovered, she had gone. The matter greatly surprised me. I reflected upon it. My nocturnal struggle had been purely inward. No one knew anything except my wife, and she was still in bed, so she could have told no one. I looked after the stranger and began following her to find out at least where she came from. I followed her out of town and walked behind her for half an hour through the snowy countryside. She walked quickly and was far ahead. Knowing I would not catch her, I stopped and merely watched. She was heading toward Úpice.

(410) This phenomenon belongs to the pathological spontaneous escape of oduší. The woman’s soul had extended its capacities into space as far as the oduší was released, evidently across our home. Her soul encountered my psychic discharges, and I drew it toward myself, so that she had to suffer with me or from my evil will until I fell asleep. Her subconscious SELF remembered me and read in my esplana that around seven I would go to the square, which for a certain reason I had to do. The received impressions gave her subconscious no rest; in a subconscious state she had to discharge them upon me, like a sensitive given a semihypnotic suggestion. The woman must have risen at the moment when I fell asleep from fatigue and relieved and released her from the torments I had caused. According to what she read in my esplana, she had to be there at seven. She may also have been partly conscious of going toward someone she had seen somewhere before. Perhaps she even resisted the mysterious force, but driven by an invisible power, she had to go. It is also possible that she was entirely unaware of everything she did, just as sleepwalkers know nothing.

(411) One night before a Saturday in 1943, toward three o’clock, I awoke from a heavy, vivid dream. In it I saw a lamenting woman in a dark room, weeping that there was no longer a place for her in the world unless I helped her. Beside her she showed me a coffin, next to which lay a fetus of about six months. The woman insisted that she was the fetus’s murderer and that only my help would save her. I perceived nothing further in the dream.

During my morning walk, an unknown man addressed me before the house, asking me to receive his wife, who had been deranged for nine months. I refused, but he said she was quiet and gentle, yet would not speak to them at all; she only pointed to my book, which she had read, and asked to come to me. They had traveled a long way, and she maintained that two words from me would suffice for her recovery. I agreed.

The woman was about twenty-eight, pale, with traces of great suffering in her face. For a while she looked at me intently, then, to her husband’s astonishment, began saying that she had killed her unborn child, that she was a murderer and could no longer live among people. I asked whether she already had children. “I have two,” she replied. “Why did you rid yourself of the third?” “I wanted the child, but a friend came and persuaded me that there was a war and great difficulty feeding, clothing and raising a child, so that every woman,” she named about eleven, “preferred to rid herself of the fetus and avoid having children. My friend told me she would take me to the place where she herself had recently been. ‘Come with me today, right now,’ she urged, until I scarcely knew what was happening to me. I acted in a kind of half-dream from which I awoke knowing I would no longer have the child. At that moment I realized the full horror of my deed. Ever since, I have continually called for my child, accused myself and tormented myself in thought, hated myself and other people and refused to speak to them, because I should have resisted rather than obeyed her.”

(412) I reflected that the woman in my night’s dream had asked for two words that would heal her. “You have my book with you. Do you understand it, and have you read it carefully?” “Yes,” the patient answered. “You belong,” I explained, “to the nonmagnetic type; you are a sensitive. Your friend, by contrast, is magnetic, and through her influence and will suggested that you rid yourself of the fetus. Therefore the murderers are your friend and the woman who helped you; you are innocent!” “Yes? Really?” the woman answered joyfully. “Why, it’s true; I wanted the child. I’m no longer a murderer—I’m innocent!”

In the moments that followed, her expression grew increasingly bright and her interest in life around her returned. She asked for her husband, whom she had previously seemed not even to notice beside her, and joyfully repeated to him again and again that she was no longer a murderer but a healthy woman, looking forward to her children at home, their work together on the farm and a new married life. I sent the couple away, repeating the suggestion that the woman was not a murderer and would look forward to her next child.

I give this case as a warning example of how easily wounded the delicate, sensitive human soul is, hating evil and the people who cause it… How her soul, having withdrawn from its conscious SELF into the subconscious, sought by itself a way to communicate telepathically with me in a vivid dream during my natural sleep, when my soul too had withdrawn in its SELF into subconscious activity. How confiding and confessing guilt to another person relieves the soul and can even bring recovery if we choose a suitable suggestion to convince it of innocence. Even as a sensitive, this woman would have resisted her friend’s enticements had religious upbringing cultivated esplana that would have come to her aid in time with a warning.

(413) Mrs. Bratová from R. consulted many physicians about an illness of her breasts, seeking to learn whether it was developing into cancer. The consultations were inconclusive, for each physician deferred judgment until later, to see what developed. Great fear that it might be cancer often prevented her from sleeping. One night she vividly dreamed that she should bring her illness to me for identification through a subject. In the dream she saw and recognized me, although she had never consciously seen or even heard of me. In the morning she recounted her dream and learned that I was no longer receiving anyone. She therefore decided not to come for an examination. Nevertheless the same dream returned, much more vividly, urging her to go after all, saying I would receive her. That same night I too dreamed of a younger woman whose breasts I was examining, both myself and with a subject. I told the dream to my workers in the workshop. Although unusual, I did not believe it. At four in the afternoon a message came to the workshop asking me to go to my home. When I opened the door, I recognized the woman I had seen in the dream. She begged me to examine her breasts. Remembering my dream, I did not refuse, but could establish nothing definite. I therefore sent for subject K., who found dark, unilluminated places in which he recognized the beginnings of cancer. He said she should undergo treatment and would recover. The lady then told me her dreams about me, as related above, and before my friend Horák I told her mine about her. Through prolonged illness almost everyone loses vital magnetism. First it weakens, until the protective magnetic envelope enclosing oduší disappears entirely. Anyone can now explain our mutual dreams.

(414) In September 1924, about a fortnight before the great earthquake in Japan, seven of my nonmagnetic sensitives complained of feeling oppressed and greatly afraid of something. Two explained it by saying that something dreadful would happen to me. I explained the matter by supposing one had received bad foreign impressions and telepathically drawn the other sensitives along, since they had often been put to sleep in my presence. Then the Japanese catastrophe came, and it was as though the burden fell from the subjects. Their sensitive oduší had been stimulated by discharges of terrestrial magnetism arising from chemical processes in volcanic regions. Only advanced subjects with an awakened subconscious sense such natural changes. In people who occupy themselves with psychic phenomena, dormant powers often awaken; they become sensitive, good telepaths and also spatially liberated in oduší. Sometimes the cause of a premonition must be sought in the esplana.

(415) Once I traveled with Mr. K. and my brother to Dvůr Králové. On the way from the station we met my friend Vaňura, a born magnetizer. As he shook our hands he said, “I’m coming to meet you, because I knew you were arriving.” To our astonishment he explained that he had felt compelled to go to the station, where he would meet me. He could have known nothing of our journey, for we had suddenly decided to visit the Elbe dam at Těšnov near Dvůr Králové. This phenomenon can also be explained by telepathic sensing.

(416) Our theatrical society had built a new theater. We were repeating A Night at Karlštejn. The previous night I vividly dreamed there were about one hundred people in the hall.

It occurred to me to examine the curtain mechanism, which drew the curtain apart from the center toward the sides. I saw that some pulley hangers had slipped off the wire rope. I went and opened the curtain, then closed it again, but halfway it stopped. Beside it I saw two tall ladders erected and used to repair the curtain. I awoke after this dream and told my family. During the day I forgot it. The play was to be performed that evening, and I was at the theater about half an hour before it began. Looking around the hall I saw about one hundred people, the same picture I had seen somewhere before, the same people in the same seats. I remembered my dream. I looked at the curtain, ran onstage and tried opening it. It worked. When I closed it, however, it remained half open. Some hangers had come loose. I sent for a locksmith. Before I returned, other helpers present had already erected two ladders. Everything occurred as I had seen it in the dream. The dream saved us from an unpleasant situation that would have arisen when closing the curtain at the end of the first act. This premonition occurred through the release of my oduší. I had been responsible for the theater’s construction and was concerned that everything be in the best order. My thoughts were continually more at the theater than at home. Moreover, this was only my second public performance. Through the constant vibration of the esplana, my spirit found no rest even at night. All the concern about the theater lay within the esplana. The subconscious SELF was almost compelled to release itself through oduší into the theater hall. There it recognized that the curtain mechanism was not in order. At the same time, the subconscious SELF, commanding a mighty apparatus of psychic capacities, could readily sense who would already be in the hall at half past seven and where they would sit. That ladders would have to be erected goes without saying.

(417) Many people asking my advice told me that while awake or asleep they vividly see themselves and are frightened by it. Here the psychic SELF has passed into liberated oduší and can then easily see its own body.

Several similar interesting cases happened to me. Reflecting upon these phenomena in others and myself, which sometimes appear under certain conditions of waking and sleep, I believed that something similar could also be evoked artificially. If I can consciously act telepathically upon a familiar person during sleep, acting through my willpower upon the protosplana and suggesting dreams, I believe it is also possible during my own natural sleep to detach psychically to any distance and use even unknown people for my purposes. I performed the experiment as follows:

(418) I brought into my sculpture workshop inquiries from eight individuals in Slovakia asking whether I could make various things for them. I asked my workers to choose one of these correspondents, whom I would compel at a distance through my will to place a particular order. They chose one. When I went to sleep that evening, in complete calm and good faith I commanded myself: “At four in the morning, the subconscious SELF will release my oduší toward Slovakia, seek the chosen town and find N., who wrote to me. During his sleep it will suggest a vivid image that he must send an order. After awakening he will think continually of me and have no peace or calm until he orders the thing he inquired about.”

I had to support this autosuggestive thought formed in my esplana several times in living faith, strengthening and enlivening it further through the will. I also had to suggest to myself that I would remain detached in my oduší for only ten minutes. Had I omitted this, it would have harmed my health and might have produced the illness of spontaneous escape of oduší. On the fourth day the order arrived, the very one my workers had chosen. At my request they selected another person. I proceeded similarly. The order came on the third day. I did this five times in succession with complete success.

(419) Some time afterward I was about to lose three thousand crowns with a certain firm. It had gone bankrupt with liabilities of thirty million crowns. I was the last creditor, and attempting to recover the money through the courts was entirely senseless. I therefore employed my subconscious activity. During my sleep I detached myself three times over a fortnight for this purpose. I received the money down to the last heller, although everyone assured me all was lost.

I successfully performed many other experiments, but cannot write them all down.

(420) Let no one imagine that everyone will succeed in something similar. A firm will and vivid imagination must first be cultivated, and above all one must believe, believe with rock-solid faith. No thought of possible failure must ever intrude, or nothing will succeed. I note that I observed exhaustion in myself. This method can therefore be used only in the most extreme necessity, and only for good.

Many may think that by this means I obtain abundant, excellent work. No! I do not do this. It was only a scientific experiment. For this involves a violation of a person’s free will, and that is a sin!

Translator’s safety note: The following historical passage includes instructions that would injure animals. Do not carry them out or use them as a basis for accusing another person of causing harm. The source’s claims are reproduced without endorsement.

People who release themselves spatially through oduší can harm animals. These people, however, are unaware of what their ability and skill actually consist in.

If we wish to verify whether there is a fluid connection between an animal and a person we suspect, let us take a pin and prick the animal with it. We then observe painful twitching and great restlessness in the culprit. Or let us pour milk from that animal into a little pot, drop pins into it and set it to boil with the thought that, as it boils, the person doing harm will feel pricking, for a fluid connection exists here.

It seems ridiculous to believe something like this, yet it is so. The same result can also be achieved artificially through a subject, at a hypnologist’s command with a posthypnotic suggestion that after awakening the subject remain connected with the animal through oduší in order to harm it.

Let us not imagine that by this means, detachment of the soul through oduší, everything must succeed. If the person upon whom we act has a strong will and can resist foreign impressions, within a few days he suppresses the newly formed foreign esplana with all their impressions. If he is weak, however, he accepts them as his own.

(421) It goes without saying that these hidden gifts can also be misused for evil, to a neighbor’s harm, which I emphatically reject. I immediately add: anyone who misuses these gifts for evil by employing a sensitive, through direct suggestion or telepathy, for murder, theft, the evocation of mental illness, fornication and the like must fear that these deeds will rebound upon him at a suitable time. Nothing is lost! Such a criminal thought sent by willpower is first impressed upon the perpetrator’s own esplana and materialized. If he wishes it to act according to plan, he must enliven and stimulate it as much as possible through his willpower. His own esplana thereby become extraordinarily luminous. Although they always vibrate, pressure of the will now brings stronger oscillation of the esplana’s siloton particles, with simultaneous straight discharges of waves of thought-fluid bursting into space, transmitting thoughts. Their direction can be controlled by the will; otherwise it wanders. See “Protosplana.” Such a thought, strongly impressed in one’s own esplana and driving another toward a deed, does not die but lives. Precisely when the gray cerebral cortex is exhausted and the will immediately weakens, it poisons and torments the soul and disturbs its peace. The weakened SELF cannot resist, until finally it is carried away by the very criminal thought it originally created, becomes its victim, and the person commits upon himself the same crime he earlier intended for another.

51. Diviners, Prophets and Interpreters

(422) In this chapter I wish to mention interpreters and prophets who use cards, the hand and similar means to establish telepathic contact between souls. I have investigated these people and found them to be the best subjects. Because they are not magnetic, their oduší is exposed; they are sensitive. Their oduší is free, not enclosed by magnetism, and they can therefore readily sense stronger events from other people’s esplana, in fragments and sometimes continuously. During the reading, the straight-line discharges of silotons from the more brightly glowing esplana of the person having their fortune told stimulate the interpreter’s sensitive, ensouled envelope of oduší. One soul acts upon another here; thoughts and feelings manifest themselves and are transmitted by radiation, or emotion. Because oduší penetrates the entire body, perceptions from the esplana reach the gray cerebral cortex. These prophets are generally unaware of what is happening around them while reading a palm. They gradually fall into the first through third degrees of hypnosis, which means that their soul markedly withdraws into the subconscious activity of the gray cerebral cortex. In these degrees of sleep, especially the latter ones, it is already possible to establish sufficient contact with the cerebellum’s protosplana and the esplana of the upper subconscious. If a prophet falls into this state, in which consciousness is greatly weakened, although not completely extinguished, we notice nothing except that they seldom know what is happening around them. In some cases they know nothing at all. They are then already falling into the fourth degree of sleep. Their statements may be regarded as 70–80 percent correct and true. I often observed the automatic subject Miss F., an intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who, when reading palms, approached the threshold of the fourth degree of hypnosis, thereby entering into direct contact with the protosplana and the esplana of the upper subconscious. She never knew anything at all of what happened during her ecstasy. Eighty percent of her statements were true.

(423) In this state the diviner’s cerebral center becomes a kind of mechanical machine governed by the corresponding activity of discharges from radiant esplana: impressions experienced earlier and new impressions that have just formed, but never those still in the process of forming. The prophet is aware of what they are saying, for they are in a special state in which the subconscious equals the conscious. In this state they are unaware that any transmission of thought could exist, yet that is what occurs. The light silotons of the person having their fortune told, who thus carries various perceptions and mental images stored in the radiant nodes of the esplana, stimulate both the oduší and the protosplana of the prophet’s or diviner’s cerebellum, which in this state awaken to greater activity, to the reception of perceptions. From there the perceptions pass to empty upper esplana, and sometimes to lower ones as well. If they pass to the lower ones, the diviner’s statement is unclear, because these esplana lack the strength to set the gray cortex in motion. On receiving impressions, the upper esplana light up and, through their vibrations, stimulate and stir the gray cortex: awareness arises in the prophet. I convince these diviners that this is so by interrupting their telepathic connection with the other person, magnetizing their entire body, but especially the head in the region of the cerebellum. In this way I apply so much magnetism that I saturate their magnetic nature until they are completely closed off from the outside, as though, I would say, by magnetic armor. Foreign discharges of siloton particles of thought-fluid rebound from it, making them incapable of prophesying or divining. Neither a diviner nor a subject can read from soul-consciousness, but only those secrets that live in the esplana.

Diviners’ statements cannot always be correct; a trained prophet-sensitive guesses correctly in no more than 80 percent of cases. These performances have no value for me, because most supposedly clairvoyant diviners practice for profit. Their subconscious is in the first, seldom the second or third, degree of sleep, where their telepathic and clairvoyant ability does not yet exist, so that they pick up some entirely unrelated perception from which they derive nonsensical events.

(424) A good diviner can reveal to us only things of the past or things we intend to undertake. They cannot communicate immediate thoughts that are still forming, only those that have already passed to the upper esplana. Of the future they can tell us only very little from thoughts and plans taking shape, and even that indistinctly, according to the individual’s psychic development. An example:

We know that three quarters of the activity of the gray cortex, or neurons, is reserved for subconscious activity. A great number of thoughts develop in the subconscious, of which we can consciously grasp scarcely 10 percent. Depending on how we exert our consciousness and seek to achieve something, we stimulate the subconscious to greater or lesser activity. It then independently creates brilliant thoughts, combinations and images of events. All this gradually impresses itself upon empty esplana until an actual thought of the desired result forms and matures. Once complete, it begins to vibrate more strongly until at last it stimulates our gray substance and reaches awareness. In such a case we say that we happened upon a new discovery, invention and so forth by chance. It was not chance, but prolonged intellectual activity of our subconscious. Thus, when these thoughts slowly take shape in the esplana, some vibration with weak siloton discharges is already occurring. Only then can a prophet reveal them to us in advance as something of the future, but only indistinctly. When the thought is almost complete and ready to pass from the upper esplana into the gray cortex, the prophet can communicate it to us more precisely. Prophesying the future is largely a mystery, and whether a person wishes to follow a prophecy depends on their own psychic maturity. Such a prophecy may act as a suggestion upon people of weak will, and then it is said to have come true. It often happens that these thoughts, received telepathically by the diviner in their subconscious, change completely into a different mental image, and then they speak nonsense. Only a fanatic or a weakling then becomes a slave to the thoughts the diviner has persuaded them to believe.

52. Sensitives and Protonace

(425) There are many things in the world around us of which we have not the slightest idea, because our senses are inadequate to observe them. How narrow a mind is revealed by anyone who says: “Nothing exists except what I see. What I do not see does not exist at all!”

The whole expanse of the universe is filled and permeated by a remarkable, constantly active substance of the finest nature, protonace. The substance of protonace is something immaterial, invisible and unknown. Protonace is not space, nor is it matter in our sense of the word, yet it is the prerequisite of both. It is a potential state of energy, “cosmic spatial energy,” to which everything may be attributed for the universal reception of all happenings; it is actually nothing, and yet it is contained in all space and in all matter.

This universal cosmic substance, which cannot be calculated or depicted, is nevertheless indispensable to the recognition and recall of bygone events by receptive sensitives, and is also inseparable from divine intentions. It is the actual being of a constant present.

Through its nature, capacity and properties it receives, impresses upon itself and continuously preserves within itself, as though recording, all our psychic manifestations, deeds and thoughts, together with all their accompanying circumstances, as well as every change in nature with its detailed phenomena, the events and progress of humanity in every field, and the forms of everything living and dead, just as everything actually occurred.

Nothing remains lost. Everything, including what matter has undergone in its development and what humanity has accomplished from its origins and primitive state to the present, remains faithfully and indelibly recorded, as vividly as when we observe the present.

In short, then: everything that has happened is recorded. To understand this, however, we must realize that in eternity there is neither past nor future, only present duration. It follows that deeds which, for us living people, took place in the past appear in eternity as present.

The development of the material worlds of plants, animals, humanity and each individual is permanently realized in protonace in spiritual form, clearly and faithfully as it actually was. It is the reality of a former reality.

(426) This supremely fine, most perfect cosmic fluid substance, called protonace, plays an important role in metapsychic science. Only the activity of the subconscious SELF can read in this fluid. Once humanity succeeds in mastering it completely with the aid of sensitives, it will serve to uncover things unknown and things that cannot be uncovered by existing methods. It is not for nothing that Holy Scripture says that nothing will remain hidden that has not been revealed; at the Last Judgment everyone will see their own good and sinful deeds and those of others.

Here precisely lies the cause of clairvoyance into the past, or psychometry: in the fluid of Protonace. Every deed or manifestation of ours continues to remain here uninterruptedly, in the same place, time and space, as faithfully as we actually experienced it. If I wish to evoke it again with a subject’s help, I must take the subject back to the place and time where and when the deed actually occurred. Sensitives in trance can extract from protonace, assume and faithfully reproduce the individuality of people long dead. A deed, especially an evil one in which the human will is active, is directly dynamized and materialized in the very place where it occurred. These are the sites of murders, crimes, robberies, suicides and so forth. If you take a delicate sensitive into a house where some crime has been committed, I assure you that they will not sleep peacefully, although they will be unable to explain it consciously. Another will rave in their sleep, be swept into the event, and see and experience it. I can easily identify such places with the aid of a good sensitive.

(427) Some School Sisters whom I knew well, aware that I studied such phenomena, told me on their honor what they themselves had experienced. They were to spend the night in a certain convent. They were given a room which, except in cases of absolute necessity, had not been used as a bedroom for some time. The sisters went to bed. The younger could not fall asleep, although she had always slept well. The elder was only half asleep; she too could not sleep soundly. The hours passed, but sleep would not come to the younger sister. Suddenly footsteps disturbed her. Her heart began to pound and she felt anxious. Then she saw the superior approaching, but realized that it was not the one who had received them. The unfamiliar superior took a book from the shelf and agitatedly searched for something in it. She took a second book and again turned its pages. After a while she left.

In the morning the mother superior asked the sisters how they had slept. They replied: “Badly this time, though we don’t know why.” The younger sister did not want to say that perhaps the superior herself had disturbed them, for in the night it had seemed to her to be someone else. The superior said: “Surely you didn’t see anything?” “Yes!” said the younger. “I saw a superior of some sort come to us in the evening,” and she related how frightened she had been. “You saw that? I admit that I deliberately put you there to sleep, to find out whether you would see the same thing that other sisters had already reported to me several times.” She told them that the room where they had slept had once been the bedroom of a former superior, who cursed her life every day, had no faith in the religious rule and did not observe it. Naturally, the sisters were horrified and declared that nothing would induce them to sleep there again.

The younger sister had evidently picked up a fragment of the former superior’s life from protonace. Had she slept there more often, she would certainly have picked up more. The sisters were taught that whatever we do here in this world, whether good or evil, will also remain here. In similar cases people say that a place is haunted. For the sisters it was a warning.

Translator’s safety note: The following accounts preserve the author’s historical explanations of severe distress and suicidal thoughts. They are not established diagnoses or treatments and should not be used to blame a sufferer or to postpone professional care. Mental-health symptoms warrant assessment by qualified professionals; immediate danger requires emergency help. See the NHS guidance on professional treatment for psychosis.

(428) A young woman, Mrs. K., complained to me that intense fear prevented her from sleeping at night and that she noticed herself becoming mentally ill. She was otherwise healthy, but very sensitive. I took a subject to her apartment and put him to sleep. I led him back into the past. Suddenly he became agitated at the sight of a young man who had hanged himself there. He saw him preparing for the deed in great mental torment. I established that this was K., who had done it because his business had failed. I told the woman that the thought-form of an evil deed lingered there, and advised her to move out of the apartment. I explained that, as her oduší loosened, her sensitive nature received old impressions from protonace, especially in the evening, when her consciousness yielded to the rule of the subconscious. She followed my advice and has had complete peace of mind ever since.

(429) A certain woman married and moved to a small wooden cottage near the railway in the village of R. After some time she fell into mental anguish and felt driven to take her life. Twice she came to ask me for help, because she had been advised that I could rid her of that thought in hypnotic sleep. I searched for the cause. While she had lived with her parents she had been healthy, so the cause must have lain in her new home. Otherwise she felt perfectly happy with her family and knew of nothing that could account for her difficulties. My questions revealed nothing. I therefore had the sensitive K. examine her mental state. He found that her oduší was becoming spatially loosened and that she had taken on a suicidal act from protonace. Lately her oduší had been loosening because of bodily weakness. I therefore went with the subject to the distant village of R., where she lived. At my request the subject moved backward in time while spatially released. Suddenly he reported seeing parts of a human body, and immediately described what had happened. A young man, about eighteen, is walking beside the railway line, greatly agitated and distressed. He knows a train is coming, looks around to see whether anyone is nearby, quickly undresses because he hears the roar of the train, and lies down on the rails. His body trembles and tosses, blood rushes to his head and he wants to flee, but already the train’s wheels are tearing his body. After the experiments the neighbors confirmed that years earlier a young man, H., had indeed let a train run over him at the place indicated. His clothes and pieces of his torn body had been found. At the time I was very busy. To avoid exhausting myself, I had my friend D. magnetize the woman so that her oduší would not loosen. A few suggestions then removed the illness completely, especially because, knowing where her difficulties came from, she was able to resist the thoughts.

(430) Animals’ perceptive capacity also reaches into the metaphysical realm of the world’s materializations, particularly in monkeys, horses and dogs, and can cross the boundaries of the normal senses. These are instincts.

Horses shy at a place where a murder occurred many years before.

Human beings also have instincts, but everything instinctual is suppressed. They merely slumber in the subconscious, in what we might call subterranean remnants: thus spirit has triumphed.

We have learned that scenes enacted under great mental tension impress themselves more strongly upon the fluid of protonace. Something similar can also be produced artificially and deliberately. Through the power of my will, supported by living faith, I can implant an imaginative thought of mine in a particular place and dynamize it there, that is, in a sense materialize it, so that it remains there as a kind of guardian of a family, a property, its surroundings and so on against hostile people. It is likewise possible to fix a harmful thought in a particular place, for example: no owner will be content in this house; only misfortune will pursue him, and he will be forced to sell it. Or: when a person crosses this footbridge, they will become dizzy and must fall from it, and so forth. Doing anything of this kind is, of course, sinful, and the sender of the evil thought deserves punishment. It is chiefly sensitives who succumb to a thought materialized in the fluid of protonace. It has no effect on healthy, magnetic people.

(431) I conducted experiments by blocking a path in the open countryside with a powerful thought. We then hid in a small wood and watched what would happen. The very first passerby stopped at that exact place and, after a while, turned back. Then two people came along. One could cross, but the other held him back. Both stood still, then avoided the place by making a detour across the meadow. Afterward four walkers passed freely, and we noticed nothing about them. Then a woman came, stopped and looked around, but crossed. It was evident that the materialized thought-form affected only sensitives.

(432) In the First World War my heart condition exempted me from attending the military recruitment examination. A military doctor came to examine me in my apartment. First, however, he examined those who had become ill and had been unable to report for examination at the appointed time. At Mr. Š.’s he asked about me and said that he still had to come to our house. I learned of this half an hour beforehand. I went outside and, at the entrance, dynamized with living faith the thought that under no circumstances would the doctor be able to enter our house. About twenty minutes later the doctor came along, stopped, read the name of my business on the sign, looked in his notebook and walked easily toward the gate. Suddenly he stopped, walked back to the middle of the street, then returned to the entrance and stood there for a while. I watched him through the window and exerted still more influence upon him with my thought. Suddenly he turned, walked away and never came back. I have carried out many similar experiments with selected sensitives.

(433) Mr. Semerák, a farmer, told me about his grandfather and the great power of which older people often speak. As a boy he had himself witnessed some of the phenomena. Every morning his grandfather went into the farmyard and there always said something to himself emphatically. When he returned to the house he used to say that he had enchanted the yard so that no one could steal anything from him. Once everyone was in the fields, and only the maid ran home to do something. She returned and reported that another man had been “caught” while trying to steal the axe on the chopping block. The farmer replied good-naturedly: “We’ll leave him there until we come in for dinner.” When they all returned from the fields at noon, they saw a vagrant standing by the block as though petrified, his hand stretched toward the axe. The farmer approached him and said: “You are free, and don’t do it again!” People often asked how he did it, but he revealed nothing. Someone might think that telepathy was at work here. That is not so. Telepathy operates only at the time when a thought is sent. The matter can be explained as follows:

Every thief is weak in will and under mental tension while stealing. This discharges him magnetically and loosens his oduší. His soul searches to see whether anyone is watching, encounters the farmer’s dynamized thought, which acts from protonace as a suggestion upon the thief’s subconscious, and the subconscious accepts it as its own. The thief then unwittingly succumbs.

(434) If someone suffers a misfortune, people generally say: “That isn’t the end of it; a third thing will come!” There are actual cases of this happening. Why? Because people firmly believe it and expect something bad.

Those who believe and expect something bad themselves cause the creation of a dangerous esplano, which will continually bombard and stimulate their subconscious until it itself brings the person to commit an evil deed or to suffer misfortune, or produces illness and even death.

This obedient consciousness, in which reason and will assert themselves only weakly, will not disappoint the consciousness to which reason and will belong, even though the latter has itself believed in foolishness and superstition and created a dangerous esplano. [Translator’s note: The source calls the first faculty “consciousness,” too, although the preceding context concerns the subconscious.]

Such unhealthy thoughts also become condensed, impressing themselves upon protonace through the expectation of evil. At the same time the silotons of these thoughts, released from the brain, linger throughout the surroundings and stimulate nearby sensitive members of the family toward a dangerous arousal of subconscious activity.

All this causes sensitives to become victims of further accidents brought about by people’s ignorance.

(435) The subconscious has great abilities, power and strength. It must, however, be soundly guided and directed by rational activity.

When the subconscious, coerced by an esplano, is preparing itself, its own body, for illness or misfortune, we often dream of it beforehand. Our coerced subconscious has revealed the misfortune in advance in a vivid dream. Thus it is no fate!

Superstitious people of weak will like to visit card readers, diviners and clairvoyants. These sensitives and telepaths, whose oduší is more or less exposed, can easily recognize and describe approaching misfortune and danger in advance. Why? Because the coerced subconscious of those curious visitors has already worked upon its victim in preparation for misfortune and has prepared the body, through physiological changes, for illness or death.

The sensitive person of the diviner receives, by telepathic means, information about events occurring beyond the reach of their senses, from other people’s consciousness and from the esplana of those present. The activity of the stimulated esplana of the people awaiting a prediction spreads into the surroundings as a certain kind of radiation or wave motion, and through its force creates a field like an electric current.

A radiant kind of energy, left behind by human beings, likewise adheres to objects. These are particles of the pyroton kind, carriers of individuals’ entire lives, so that a sensitive person, through the capacity of their released subconscious, can read the owner’s life history from them.

Predictions really can come true, because they exert a suggestive influence upon the person concerned. A prediction we believe determines our actions, because we unconsciously follow it.

(436) Everyone should read, reflect upon and take in these lines about the inner powers of subconscious activity five to ten times, for an individual’s entire inner and outer life depends chiefly upon the awakened powers and abilities of this subconscious activity.

It is necessary to become acquainted with the laws of conscious and subconscious activity. Only then shall we see our whole life clearly in a different light!

It is a path either toward higher abilities and genius or backward toward failure, illnesses and injury; toward success in work, business, a trade or an office, or toward failure at work; toward health or toward physical and mental illnesses!

To understand subconscious and conscious activity, let us assimilate the meaning of the chapters “The Brain,” “The Subconscious,” and “Autosuggestive, Hypnotic and Magnetic Sleep,” and especially the chapter “Mental Illnesses,” in which I acquaint readers with these psychic phenomena more concretely and extensively.

(437) Many bad and evil thoughts dwell in protonace, but also in released magnetism. People suffering from the disorder of loosened oduší pick up impressions from their surroundings in the subconscious SELF during sleep; their soul becomes a wanderer and brings back bad impressions and immoral things. Many such thoughts force their way into consciousness at the time when we are about to awaken, stimulating the gray cerebral cortex and upsetting our peace of mind. Such an alien thought is often fatal, for example by tempting a person to suicide if they do not have enough good thoughts formed through upbringing in their esplana to defend themselves. It is precisely an alien suicidal thought that most often takes hold. In someone brought up religiously it does not remain for long, for all the principles acquired through a good upbringing come to the rescue and destroy the dangerous intruder in its infancy. The situation is worse for someone brought up in religious indifference. There such a thought already finds fertile ground, because the person is poor in good thoughts that could offer resistance. The bad thought then grows, gains strength and takes control of the psychic SELF. Many people have come to me for advice when tormented by such a thought.

Some made light of the possibility that they might succumb to it; some even laughed about it, and it was precisely these who succumbed and prematurely took their lives. When I inquired into their past, I found that they had been brought up in complete religious indifference; their lives were all novels, bad company, dancing, gambling, cinemas and the like. Thoughts of that kind, of course, do not come to the rescue; the soul is abandoned, surrounded by emptiness, without support, and succumbs. I saved several such people by taking them under my magnetic influence. In some the suicidal thought was so strong that it pressed consciousness down to its lowest level, until they sweated in self-defense. Then it is no wonder that a person commits suicide. It is like a hypnotist giving a subject a semihypnotic suggestion. At the specified time it takes complete control of soul and body, and the person carries out exactly everything the hypnotist has commanded, everything he has implanted in their esplana.

They will not, however, carry out an order that encounters a resistant thought in the upper subconscious. I shall describe an experiment of mine to demonstrate how much depends on a good or bad upbringing.

Translator’s safety note: The experiment below involved coercion and dangerous physical behavior. It is reproduced as historical material, not as an instruction to imitate it or as evidence that religious belief determines a person’s morality or vulnerability to suicide.

(438) I took seven subjects up to thirty years of age to test the strength and power of such an alien thought when implanted by suggestion. I put them all to sleep. I said: “We have a man here who has been sentenced to death. He is to be executed by a knife thrust into the heart.” As I spoke I pointed to an iron stove and said: “Here is the culprit.” Now I approached the first and ordered him in a commanding voice: “Here is a knife” (I handed him a small log), “and you will take a running start and plunge it into his heart!” But he began to resist me, saying that he could not do it, that one must not murder, and finally that he would not do it. I repeated the suggestion: “You must; I want you to!” Although he repeated the suggestion after me, he did not do it and did not even take the knife, the small log, in his hand. I went to the second and gave a similar order. This one did take the “knife,” hesitated a little, then ran at the culprit with the supposed knife. At the moment when he was to plunge it into the heart, his hand stopped in midair. The third burst into tears, saying that I should not ask it of him, that he was not the kind of person who could do it. I went to the fourth and asked the same thing. “All right! Then we’ll kill him; give it here!” He took the “knife”; one could see him working up his courage. His eyes bulged and he rushed at the culprit. Those present had to hold the stove from behind to prevent him from knocking it over. With all his strength he plunged the knife into the heart. “I hit him right in the heart! Look at his blood pouring out!” he exclaimed with satisfaction. “He’s still moving; here’s another one in the throat!” I went to the fifth and gave the same order. He took the murder weapon, examined it, then struck it against the ground, saying that it was a piece of wood and that he would not do it.

I should point out that there was no mutual connection between the subjects; each was in peaceful sleep and therefore could not know what any of the others would do. Only at the beginning had they all heard together what was to happen. The sixth subject took the piece of wood and gripped it firmly, but his hand began to tremble. I asked why he was trembling. He answered: “I remembered how they taught us at school that it was forbidden.” “Do you believe that?” I asked. “I don’t believe it now; that was for children. If he deserves it, let him die!” He hesitated a little longer, then ran forward and committed the murder, although not with as much pleasure as the fourth subject. The last resisted me successfully.

(439) Would you like to know the upbringing and education of these subjects? The first, third, fifth and seventh were people who fully fulfilled the obligations of their religion and were morally upright. The second did come from a devout family, but during the last five years he had been abandoning the good path. At the moment when he was to plunge the knife into the heart, the esplano “Thou shalt not kill!” awoke in him and automatically held back his hand. This subject interested me, so at the end of the experiment I began a struggle with this esplano, which in recent years had ceased to be nourished by prayer. I attacked him with a vivid thought and urged him to commit the murder. The subject resisted for a good thirty-five minutes until at last he succumbed and carried it out. Had he continued along the same path as in his youth and not gone astray, he would have resisted successfully.

To convince those present that it was possible to protect oneself, I again took the first subject, who was devout. I attacked him far more fiercely, firmly believing that he must commit the murder, and held him in my power for over three quarters of an hour. Yet the more emphatically I asked, the more resolutely the subject resisted. The fourth subject was a young man of about twenty-three. I knew his life: nothing but carousing and nocturnal roaming, disreputable establishments; bloody novels were his favorite reading, he considered religion fit for old women, and he was a freethinker without a religious affiliation. It is no wonder that he murdered without feeling and with relish. The sixth was about twenty-eight and likewise dissolute, but while his parents were alive and encouraged him to fulfill his religious duties, he had kept himself in check, although inclined toward unbelief. When he was to commit the murder, his conscience spoke, the “Thou shalt not kill!” transferred into an esplano. At the same time, however, later-formed esplana of an opposing outlook awoke, a psychic struggle ensued, and the later direction of his life triumphed.

Except for the fifth subject, they were all in the second and third degrees of hypnosis, when the soul is connected with the esplana, the upper subconscious, and a dim capacity for recollection after awakening exists. The fifth subject, the familiar K., was clairvoyant; he therefore recognized that I had tried to deceive him with the implement, struck it against the ground and refused to murder. He was in the fourth degree of hypnosis, when one cannot look into the esplana. Even had he been as dissolute as the fourth, he would still not have committed the murder, for the subconscious soul is pure and innocent at its core and strives toward God. On the contrary, he would have instructed me, as I have found in other experiments.

(440) The thought presses upon us: why can the soul, a perfect creation of God which manifests itself so purely in the fourth degree of hypnosis, consciously descend in this earthly life to cruelty, barbarism and, through evil deeds, to sin?

Let us understand: although the soul itself possesses such beautiful qualities and longs for union with God, it nevertheless does evil because its manifestations are bound to the activity of the esplana, in which the rational SELF is formed for use in this world.

The esplana are ennobled and cultivated by upbringing! Bad upbringing creates bad and evil esplana. An impulse of the soul, a sensation, a thought arising from its essence, depends in its expanded expression on the mediation of the esplana, and the manifestation then takes its character from their qualities and values.

From this we recognize the great importance of educating both children and adults. To the objection that the soul, by virtue of its essential perfection and nobility, ought to be able to influence development and education in the normal waking state, I add:

From experiments I have learned that psychic activity in the normal course of events manifests itself through the gray cortex with the cooperation of the esplana, according to the degree of perfection we have attained through upbringing and education. Perfect psychic activity, however, can manifest itself only in the fourth degree of hypnosis, when the soul is freed as far as possible from the matter of the body and dwells in its SELF within the loosened oduší. Although from there the soul no longer has any interest in its earthly existence and its influence on a person’s development and upbringing ceases, a saving link remains here, radiating from the soul’s interior in the natural moral law and reflecting itself in consciousness itself, which we call conscience. This is of divine origin. This conscience distinguishes good from evil within a person, and, if they wish and seek, they have the possibility of attaining psychic righteousness and perfection through reason and will.

(441) Once again I warn everyone not to misuse these hidden powers! Every evil is punished, even if one has set these powers in motion unwittingly. A miller I knew, a magnetic person, married and settled in Moravia. After some time, however, the couple somehow ceased to get along. He therefore asked the local parish priest for a divorce. The priest naturally refused. The miller began to threaten him, but the priest stood firm, defending the indissolubility of marriage. Then he received an unsigned letter threatening that if he did not permit the divorce he would be shot. The priest of course immediately recognized it as a letter from the miller. Although it was established that the handwriting was the miller’s, he was not prosecuted for lack of evidence; besides, he was an influential man. The miller brooded all the more upon his intention. Suddenly word spread that he had been shot by two youths after a disagreement with them about work. We say: “Whoever digs a pit for another falls into it himself.” But how could it happen that he was shot over such a triviality, a misunderstanding about work? The excess magnetic energy released by the miller, a healthy person, became the carrier of the evil murderous thought that lived with great strength in the esplana, from which it passed through dynamization into the released magnetism and into protonace.

During the ensuing quarrel with the youths, the two came under the miller’s magnetic influence, or enclosure. They were sensitives and received his evil thought, which they carried out upon him in return. They thus became instruments of justice, which made use of natural causes. The youths stated that they had not intended to kill the miller; it had happened suddenly and without prior agreement.

(442) In the course of continual experiments I found that not all subjects have the same ability to look into and read from protonace. Hence slight differences occur in their statements about one and the same thing.

Only subjects who fall into the deepest sleep of the fourth degree can read from protonace during their spatial release. If they are well trained in this respect, their statements are 80 to 90 percent true. The remainder is obscured by uncertainty. This slight lack of clarity is also evident in saints when they describe their visions, for example of the Passion of the Lord. I explain the remaining mysterious obscurity by the residual corporeality caused by the matter of oduší, which, although it accommodates all the soul’s qualities and abilities, is not, for all its perfection, yet the most perfect matter, such that it would offer no obstacle to the unclouded perception possessed only by a free spirit without a body.

53. Spiritism

(443) Metapsychic phenomena may be divided into two kinds:

a) expected;

b) unexpected, or evoked.

Most metapsychic phenomena are obtained through trance, or sleep, which mediates the manifestations of mysterious subconscious activity.

Spiritists assert that a medium is an intermediary for the manifestation of a soul, and therefore also of a soul from beyond the grave. They say: because the human soul is immortal, it must dwell somewhere and can also appear, that is, make its presence known in various ways to those whose sensitive nervous system is capable of contact with it.

Yet I myself have learned from daily experiments that not a single manifestation of a soul comes from beyond the grave. Every phenomenon occurred by natural means and was directed by the medium’s subconscious activity. The subconscious is endowed with all the qualities attributed to spirits from beyond the grave. However much we might wish it, a soul that has once left the body will never manifest itself at our request through a medium. By this I do not mean that it is entirely impossible for the soul of a deceased person to make its presence known in some way. I know of such cases, but the deceased always appeared unexpectedly, without an intermediary and without the help of a spiritist circle.

With good mediums, genuine materialization phenomena sometimes occur, with all the signs of life, and these are mistakenly attributed to nonexistent spirits from beyond the grave. In reality, however, this is the sensitive’s double. The creative subconscious SELF, which can also leave the body in this way, is connected to it only by a thread. It takes the ectoplasmic substance, or matter, for the teleplastic development of the double from its own bodily resources.

(444) Spiritists also say that the trance of a medium in a spiritist circle differs from the trance of a subject put to sleep by a hypnotist. This too is untrue. They further maintain that supernatural and unknown influences act upon a spiritist medium, whereas natural influences act upon a hypnotic one, namely the hypnotist himself.

To this I reply: how does a spiritist medium fall into trance? Usually several members of a spiritist circle sit in a ring around a table. Trance can then be observed in one of those present by the fixed expression of the eyes. Or a selected medium is seated in the center of the magnetic chain. Neither the first nor the second procedure is necessary, however; the mere wish suffices, and the medium falls asleep. Or another method may be used: entering a state of calm or enthusiasm. What happens here? Nothing other than that everyone expects the same thing as the hypnotist alone, namely that the medium will fall into trance. And that is what happens. The only difference is that in the circle the medium is more subject to telepathic influence, to the thought of how and who will fall asleep. At the same time everyone wishes to see and hear something new. The hypnotized medium is subject to the hypnotist’s faith and strong will.

In a circle thought is not unified, nor can it be, even if a plan for the procedure has been agreed upon beforehand. Even when a leader is present who directs everything, thought is not unified, because together they have taken away the medium’s vital magnetism; they all exert a mental influence upon the medium, who is thus pulled about in the performance. Hence there are few phenomena that can be regarded as genuine. Eighty percent belong to hallucinations, clairvoyance, overstimulation of the brain, nervous tremors, and especially deceptions whose source is the medium’s entry subconscious.

(445) During a séance mediums generally fall into the first, second or third degree of trance. Only rarely is the true hypnotic state of the fourth degree induced. Their manifestations and communications are therefore deceptive and false. Through the banalities of their utterances, the illustrious names chosen come nowhere near the intelligence of the actual people who once bore them. The vast majority of manifestations of supposed spirits are mystifications, deceptions and nonsense. The “spirit’s” inability to speak independently on a subject is positively striking. Of course, in the mass and flood of words a grain of some moral truth drops out here and there. Usually, however, the overall intelligence does not exceed the level of the circle’s participants. If a skeptical person is present, the sitting fails and no manifestations appear. From all this it is evident that the medium is under the influence of the spiritist circle, not under supernatural and unknown influence. At such a séance everyone is generally curious about who will manifest.

The magnetic chain, or merely the presence of its members, has caused the medium to be partially deprived of vital magnetic energy, which has passed to the people in the circle. This has made the medium weak and languid; the medium has fallen asleep, and their subconscious activity has become a mere instrument of the powers of the people directing the circle. This is because they have suppressed the medium’s conscious SELF, which can then neither form clear concepts and sound judgments nor draw upon the formed esplana, in which the intellectually formed SELF is stored for use in this world. The free will of the conscious SELF has completely disappeared in the transition to subconscious activity, where it cannot develop freely. There remains the subject’s soul, thus stripped and defenseless, with its positively miraculous gifts. It becomes an instrument and reproducer of reflections from protonace, which have bound it, lead it and completely control it, so that the lives of deceased individuals captured in protonace may be evoked, and the events of their lives may manifest again as actual through the medium. One need only give the subconscious SELF a direction, wish for it, and the manifestation of the supposed spirit is there.

(446) The thought “Who will manifest today, I wonder?” presses telepathically upon the medium’s sensitive oduší. Subconscious activity is summoned, almost compelled, to have the soul detach itself spatially through oduší and search in protonace, where it can sense the lives of our ancestors. The mistaken, deluded belief of the circle waiting for manifestations of spirits from beyond the grave coerces the medium. This very mistaken belief or supposition is imposed upon the medium, who must therefore believe what everyone in the circle believes: that they are becoming an intermediary for the manifestations of a spirit from beyond the grave.

For a medium who is not used often, spatial release feels unpleasant; the soul returns, or is even too indolent to release itself, and the creative subconscious comes into play. The medium then speaks from their rich, wondrous imagination and deceives those present, especially if the trance of one of the entry-subconscious states is induced. Or, if the medium is good, they really do receive from protonace the stronger characteristic features of the deceased, abstract and take upon themselves the person’s entire inner individuality, the whole of their former life, which then manifests faithfully in and through the medium. The medium speaks the deceased person’s language, shows an ability to speak various languages, and reproduces their dialect, habits and so forth precisely, so that we must say it gives the impression that a deceased father, uncle, grandmother, a familiar person or stranger, sinner or saint is genuinely manifesting. Yet we are far from the reality. We have only their faithful image, which remains perpetually alive in protonace: a living reproduction.

These supposedly otherworldly apparitions can easily be evoked artificially with the aid of a good subject, while, I believe, the deceased person’s soul remains entirely at peace.

(447) While taking part in spiritist circles, in the presence of the spirit of a deceased person, I have several times asked where the soul belonging to the medium’s body was, commanding the “present spirit of the deceased” to bring it and to have both himself and the soul announce that they were there.

At such an order, the spirit and the soul initially announced themselves separately. Then confusion arose in the manifestations of “both”; the soul from beyond the grave gradually recognized itself and its body, until the medium’s divided soul became unified. At a further command that it could continue to exercise its clairvoyant abilities from the subconscious, the medium entertained us as before with its remarkable manifestations. These, however, merely provided further confirmation of the subconscious activity of the medium’s own soul and a refutation of the spiritist view of the hereafter.

(448) There is nothing remarkable in a medium’s having been able, in 1873, to complete the unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood by the deceased English writer of genius, Charles Dickens. We know that no thought is lost; it continually lives in protonace, impressed upon it together with the whole activity of the deceased person’s life. Whoever writes something also has a goal and a plan. This writer had one too; he had a conception of the entire novel and thus knew how he would complete it. Therefore the whole novel passed into the fluid of Protonace. Although the unfinished portion was only a kind of skeleton, this was nevertheless quite sufficient for the medium’s subconscious activity to complete the novel. The subconscious guided the medium’s hand to finish the novel mechanically in writing. It is therefore nonsense to believe that the deceased writer himself wrote the second half of his novel through a medium in trance.

(449) Every strong thought that has just arisen in the brain and has not yet been physically carried out can be picked up and revealed by a medium, either in a circle or during spontaneous detachment of oduší, so that it seems to us a prophecy. There are many such predictions by people in natural or artificial sleep, for example predictions of the regicide in Serbia, the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Revolution, various crimes, poisonings, murders and so forth. The wife of the Roman Caesar dreamed of blood flowing from his statue. The next day he was murdered. Such a thought is prepared in the perpetrators; it remains only to carry it out physically. Caesar’s wife was nonmagnetic and received the murderers’ plan either upon her protosplana or during the spatial detachment of oduší. Bishop Dr. Lanyi had a vision in advance that Archduke Ferdinand and his wife would be murdered in Sarajevo.

(450) A sensitive person often provides protection against possible danger while traveling by train, at sea, in mines and so forth, because in natural or pathological sleep they see everything beforehand. In 1865 the ship Harry Bosse was in danger of being wrecked. A sensitive’s creative subconscious SELF clothed itself in the image of the deceased Captain Barton and appeared to the other sensitives with the command: “Drop anchor!” Then it vanished. The image was either a suggestive apparition or an actual materialization.

With loosened oduší, sensitives also perceive natural catastrophes and can describe exactly where disaster will occur, because chemical processes are taking place there before others notice anything. Discharges of the earth’s magnetism stimulate the loosened, sensitive oduší. Thus the destruction of the island of Martinique was announced in advance.

(451) Sensitives perceive in advance traps and dangers threatening their own lives. An ecclesiastical dignitary I knew, traveling on a visitation, awoke one night with a feeling of great fear and anxiety, so that he had to get up and walk about the room. After he had walked for about eighteen seconds, a heavy pendulum clock hanging on the wall above his bed fell with a tremendous crash, landing exactly where his head had been. Had he remained lying there, he would certainly have been seriously injured or killed.

If we hand a sensitive a sealed letter, they will guess its contents. Through the fluid of protonace, and also from the pyroton particles adhering to the letter, they see the person concerned writing it and describe the entire surroundings; distance does not matter. I have successfully carried out many similar experiments.

I vividly imagine and picture something in my soul: a knife, a book, a small hammer, a garden, a forest, a pond and so forth. The subject can tell what I am imagining. They do not name the thing all at once, however, because they recognize its image gradually.

Anyone who knows these and similar phenomena and can evoke them understands what happens at spiritist séances and never sees in it spirits from beyond the grave.

54. The Beginnings of Spiritism

(452) Metaphysical and metapsychic science, occultism, spiritism and so forth, is nothing new. People were already concerned with similar phenomena in antiquity: Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Jews, Indians and Greeks. Aristotle himself devoted himself to studying these phenomena.

Spiritism appeared in a new form in America. In 1848 the Fox family, who belonged to the Methodist sect, lived in the settlement of Hydesville near New York. There were four members: the father, mother and grown daughters Ley and Catherine. In February of that year strange knocking could be heard in their dwelling, terrifying every member of the family daily. It grew stronger from day to day, coming from cupboards, walls, doors, the sofa and especially tables. At last the daughters plucked up their courage and called upon the unknown cause of these phenomena to produce a specified number of knocks. This happened immediately: the requested number was knocked out. At the mother’s request, the daughters’ ages were knocked out. Later it was agreed that one knock would mean “no,” two “perhaps,” and three “yes.” A kind of alphabet was also used so that words and sentences could be formed. With this key they succeeded in discovering who caused the strange knocking. Asked the name of the knocking being, they received the answer that it was the spirit of a man who had been murdered in the house five years earlier and buried in the cellar. They then dug at the indicated place, and at a depth of six feet, about 180 centimeters, found the remains of a human corpse.

The murdered man was a peddler named Karel Rosna. He had spent the night in the house at that time, and since then there had been no trace of him.

Naturally, the discovery announced in advance caused a considerable stir. Three investigating commissions declared that they could not find the source of these sounds.

(453) In April of the same year the Foxes moved to Rochester, thinking that they would rid themselves of the phenomenon. It did not cease, however, but grew steadily stronger. The knocking was joined by the movement and levitation of various objects, the appearance and touch of materialized hands, and so forth. Here too a special commission investigated these phenomena and declared that it had found no fraud.

From an accidental occurrence there began to emerge the mysterious phenomenon of spiritism, which later swept over more than America alone.

In the fourth month after the move, the invisible agents used the alphabet to request that these phenomena be publicly investigated. After much deliberation, public experiments were held in private houses with large halls, where audiences of the most varied kinds could satisfy themselves of the knocking. The organizers then decided on a public meeting, as the invisible agents had requested. The mysterious forces promised to knock so loudly that they would be heard throughout the hall.

A public meeting was announced for the evening of November 14, 1849, in Corinthian Hall in Rochester. The knocking was heard again, just as had been promised beforehand. Three further public meetings produced the same result, and thus the spiritist movement began.

People flocked to the Foxes’ house to receive messages from spirits in the other world. Invitations arrived from various towns to hold sittings there. Within a short time there were so many that it was impossible to satisfy them all. Consequently very many people conducted experiments to see whether they too could succeed in “summoning spirits.” And indeed they did. Soon a great number of people appeared in America in whose presence similar phenomena, and even stranger ones than those at the Foxes’, took place.

In this form spiritism passed from America to Europe and spread among both uneducated and educated people.

(454) What are we to think of this? It is inconceivable that the phenomena involving the Fox daughters took place with the assistance of spirits. It is natural and certain that the Fox daughters were good automatic, or autosubjective, mediums, of whom there are very few. Their nonmagnetic nature permitted spontaneous spatial loosening of oduší, and vision into the past, or psychometry, occurred. We know that all human deeds are indelibly impressed upon the protonace nature of the fluid of cosmic space, because protonace is a real, constantly active substance, more than a mere film.

In her loosened oduší, the soul of one of the Fox daughters sensed the act of murder vividly materialized in protonace at the scene. As the oduší penetrated farther into the surroundings, the subconscious encountered the skeleton of the murdered man, whom it recognized from protonace. This happened with one daughter; the other was merely drawn into the events. Their subconscious was greatly disturbed by this, and the disturbance sought outward expression. At the prompting of subconscious reason, through the mere “I will,” the subconscious was able to release from its bodily resources the substances needed for projection onto objects in the home. Through audible sounds in these objects it made its inner unrest known to its immediate surroundings, to the parents and to its own consciousness.

(455) I know certain kinds of subjects, or mediums, whose conscious and subconscious SELF are active simultaneously and manifest outwardly. An example:

I put a pencil into each hand of the subject Křeček and asked that, from his psychic resources, each hand simultaneously write a different text. This happened as I wished. While he wrote with both hands at once, I could also converse with the subject about a third matter that had nothing to do with the written contents. From this phenomenon one can recognize that in the subconscious the human soul has the ability to think independently about several things at once, so that it seems to us as though several people were using the medium simultaneously.

(456) Mrs. R. wished to show me her special gift, automatic writing, and her poetic creations. She took paper and pencil and sat down. We talked about various things. I stood at her right side, a little behind her, so that she had to turn her body partly and her head fully toward me. We talked aloud. During our conversation, however, I noticed that Mrs. R.’s hand was writing rapidly, which continued for about seven minutes. All the while she kept talking to me, until she said: “I must quiet myself; I’ve written something.” As she spoke she looked at the paper and saw that it was covered with writing. She assured me that she had known nothing of writing. I believed her.

Similarly, the Fox daughters did not know that they themselves were the cause of all those phenomena. They produced them in the creative subconscious and at the same time could consciously hear the knocking and see the levitation of objects. In such cases, in similar automatic sensitives, the conscious and subconscious SELF are not dependent upon one another; both SELVES can independently think, will, manifest perceptibly and so forth.

At the sisters’ wish, the specified number of knocks was given. Their subconscious appropriated the alphabet signs for mutual communication and used them to tell their consciousness and those around them that the unknown force was the spirit of a man murdered in the house five years before, whose body was buried in the cellar.

But why was it precisely the spirit of a man that manifested through the alphabet? Because even before the knocking began, neighbors had accused the Fox daughters of associating with unclean spirits. This was pressure from outside upon the sisters’ sensitive subconscious, which accepted the thought and had to clothe itself in it, as a spirit. The principal cause was the former psychic activity of the murdered man, impressed upon protonace during the murder. Thus the subject’s subconscious SELF became the instrument of the existing causes described.

(457) Through innate instinct, the subconscious SELF likes to manifest as a personality, which we often variously mistake for another. In the case of the Fox daughter, through the reflections of forces, the activity of the subconscious SELF receives from living protonace the personality of the murdered man’s spirit. Her subconscious is bound by it, so that the manner of the murder comes to life again within her. The subconscious becomes a reproducing puppet of the forces and causes left in protonace by the murdered man’s individuality, so that his supposed spirit may manifest.

The subconscious, once awakened to activity, does not immediately subside, and so moving to Rochester could not rid them of the phenomena concerned. On the contrary, if the aroused subconscious is not satisfied, it often culminates in still stronger activity.

One should also note how, amid the great influx of requests from people seeking messages from supposed spirits through the Foxes and the impossibility of satisfying these requests, other people conducted experiments of their own, and new mediums really did develop through whose help the “summoning of spirits” succeeded. From this it is clear that there must always be some cause that calls subconscious activity into outward manifestation. Here it was the will’s desire to evoke something similar. The cause is therefore natural; it was not the intelligent activity of actual spirits from beyond the grave.

55. The Practical Use of Clairvoyance: Determining a Child’s Sex

(458) On June 20, 1923, in the apartment of Mr. Kubeček, an official in Červený Kostelec, I put the clairvoyant K. into the fourth degree of hypnosis in complete darkness. This subject is in no way a psychopathic personality, but his clairvoyant abilities are abnormal. In the presence of Mr. Tůma, an official, Mr. Kubeček placed an object on the empty table in front of the sleeping subject. In the absolute darkness it could not be seen by natural vision. I asked the subject to say what was now on the table. After a moment he answered: “These are mixed substances, sugary; it is quite small, square-shaped. It is sugar.”

Mr. Kubeček then exchanged the identified sugar for another thing. The subject said: “It is very thin, round; it is a long little piece of wood. It is a pencil, and there is metal at the tapered end.” Mr. Kubeček said that the subject had identified the object correctly, but objected that there was no metal on the pencil. I conveyed the objection to the subject, who in hypnotic sleep hears only me. The subject became agitated and insisted that the metal did run inside the entire length of the little piece of wood. We then realized that he meant the graphite and was classifying it among metals, although it is pure carbon.

Another exchange of objects followed. The subject said: “It is again a longer piece; the magnetism of wood radiates from it. The wood is rounded, but thicker, and at the end there is a larger piece of metal. It is some kind of mallet, a small hammer!”

(459) The hammer was exchanged again. The subject said: “It has edges. There is a circle at the top. I cannot recognize it because the magnetism does not radiate outward. It must be glass, because the thing absorbs its magnetism; it is a drinking glass.” We verified that once again he had named the object correctly.

Another exchange took place. The subject said: “It is round, white, elliptical in shape; its surface contains much lime. It is like a shell. It is an egg!”

The egg was exchanged. The subject said: “It is a longer object, with strong magnetism. At the top the edge is broken up. Now I know: it is a comb.”

Another exchange of objects. The subject said: “It is a smaller object, thinner at the top, with an uncertain magnetic outline. At the bottom there is a round opening; the whole thing is hollow, I can feel it. I know: it is a cigarette holder…” and so forth.

I should point out that in these experiments the subject was not mistaken once. This process of recognition, of a physical-psychic character, took place on the basis of vibrations of magnetism emanating from the object while the subject’s oduší was loosened, without use of the sensory apparatus. The object was not recognized all at once; instead, individual details were gradually distinguished until at last the concept of the object assembled itself from them.

(460) At an educational lecture on the metapsychic sciences held in Přelouč on June 21, 1925, I demonstrated, among other things, the clairvoyant phenomena described above before approximately 320 participants.

While the subject K. was in deep sleep, a pencil, a glass, a knife and a watch were placed behind his back, and he correctly and easily described all these objects.

Translator’s safety note: The medical and prenatal claims below are the author’s historical assertions, not reliable diagnostic methods. Do not use a clairvoyant reading to assess illness, fetal health or the safety of childbirth. Pregnancy care should include qualified maternity professionals and appropriate checks and scans; see NHS antenatal-care guidance.

(461) In December 1923 Miss H. from Dolní Radechová came to me and requested a diagnosis of her illness by a subject. He identified a disease of the leg with wounds extending to the bone marrow, through which diseased material seeped from the damaged bone and hardened. Because the young woman and her parents doubted clairvoyance, her father gave her a wrapped little box at home. Handing me the box, she asked that the subject say what was in it. I complied, and the subject reported: “I see objects with irregular outlines; calcareous substances predominate, and they contain human magnetism. They are small human bones.” I then asked the young woman what was in the box. “I don’t know myself,” she answered. “Father prepared the box himself. Wait, I’ll unwrap it.” Several small bones that had come out of her diseased leg appeared before our eyes.

This experiment belongs among cryptoscopic phenomena, that is, seeing invisible, nearby, concealed objects, in which the actual image of the thing gradually develops. Clairvoyance here consists in the displacement of oduší and its stimulation by external causes.

A good clairvoyant, if disposed and willing to undertake the experiment, can always readily recognize the sex of a child in a pregnant woman’s body, best of all in the morning. From the seventh month of pregnancy onward, he determines whether a girl or a boy will be born.

(462) In one of my articles in the journal Přírodní lékař [The Natural Physician], volume XXVII, no. 10, dated October 1, 1922, I informed the public in advance that a girl would be added to my family. She was indeed born on October 11, 1922, and is named Filomena.

The clairvoyant told Mr. Havlík’s wife in Česká Třebová two months beforehand that a boy would be born to them. He also described the course of the birth.

He likewise predicted the birth of a boy for the wife of Mr. Crha from the same town. Mr. Havlík personally confirmed to me that boys had indeed been born in both cases and that the births had proceeded as the subject had stated beforehand.

The subject announced to Mr. Křeček’s family in Červený Kostelec in advance that a boy would be born, and this too happened.

In Mrs. Teimerová of Rtyně he identified the correct position of a girl. She was indeed born two months later without complications. The mother afterward told me that the girl was healthy.

Mr. Urban in Červený Kostelec was anxiously awaiting news of how the birth of his daughter M.’s child would turn out; she was married and living in Vienna. He asked me to conduct an experiment at a distance with a subject, saying that he had a bad feeling. I carried out the experiment using the photograph of his daughter that he supplied. The subject K. reported that a boy would be born and that the birth would be difficult, lasting an hour, but that everything would end well. A telegram confirmed the birth of a boy. A later letter stated that the birth had been difficult, required a doctor’s assistance and lasted an hour.

There is no need to add further facts; those given surely suffice. There is not a single case in which we have been mistaken. I repeat that for the advance determination of a child’s sex to succeed, certain rules must be observed. No one except the expectant mother may be present. She must remain completely without thoughts and must not herself guess what the child’s sex will be. If she cannot do this, it is good for her, for example, to read something during the experiment without mental strain.

(463) Because here too we can easily influence the subject, I again urge the greatest caution. During experiments the subject must be allowed complete freedom, and no objection should be made to his statement. I too have erred several times, which a hypnologist sometimes cannot avoid and must learn from. From March 1924 my subject K. had a reversed conception of a child’s sex in his upper subconscious. It happened as follows:

That month, when determining the sex of Mrs. Hanušová’s child, he reported that a boy would be born to her. The woman objected that this was not true: the doctor examining her had declared with certainty that it would be a girl. I therefore told the subject: “You are mistaken; it is a girl!” The subject raised no objection. Yet Mrs. Hanušová did give birth to a boy. My objection was not without consequences for the subject. The following week I conducted further experiments to predict the sex of the children of Mrs. Sedláčková, Mrs. Volfová and Mrs. Seidlová of Červený Kostelec. All three gave birth to children of the opposite sex to that specified by the subject. I could not explain this phenomenon. I therefore put the subject K. to sleep, and also another subject, H., to examine the first. I explained the matter to H. After penetrating K., the subject H. said: “He has an alien notion about sex which he has accepted as his own. He sees correctly, but when he identifies a boy, according to the suggestion he has accepted, that is a girl for him, and vice versa.” I remembered my objection in Mrs. Hanušová’s case. I proposed to the sleeping H. that I remove this false conception from the subject K. He did not recommend it, however, objecting that the subject K. might close himself off and refuse to serve in determining a child’s sex. His subconscious SELF, he said, would not tolerate my coercion if I corrected it again. I followed his advice and continued to receive women, to whom we always correctly reported the child’s sex, but with this change: when the subject said “boy,” I had to correct it so that they understood it would certainly be a girl. And so it was.

If we observe the rules, we can be certain that determining the sex of a child not yet born will always succeed.

56. Diagnosis of Illnesses by a Clairvoyant

Translator’s safety note: This chapter reproduces historical claims and testimonials, not validated diagnostic evidence. Clairvoyant readings should not guide treatment, surgery, fertility or paternity decisions, or replace examination by qualified professionals. Do not delay medical or veterinary care on their account. The U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health advises assessing scientific evidence and discussing treatment decisions with a healthcare professional.

(464) When so many facts convince us of clairvoyance, why should it not be possible to use this splendid gift to diagnose illnesses, with the participation of a hypnologist who has mastered medical science?

A diagnosis established by a clairvoyant subject naturally follows a different route from a medical diagnosis. Pathological-anatomical changes are physical in character and are therefore perceptible to our physical sensory apparatus. With diagnosis by a subject, however, it is otherwise. The subject perceives not through the sensory apparatus but through psychophysical energy, namely the ensouled oduší, and can therefore identify metaphysical changes in the substance of the body. Clairvoyant subjects pick up changes in vibration, which they describe as shadows or kinds of colors. Vibrations invisible to our eyes become perceptible through clairvoyant ability. Thus a clairvoyant can be a successful assistant to a doctor in establishing a diagnosis.

The soul directly influences the matter of oduší and, with its cooperation, the entire body. This animation of the body appears to the subject as an intense radiation from every individual cell. The primary cause of this radiation is oduší. In individual parts of the body, a cell must contain in its protoplasm more or less of the substances suited to its purpose, according to what that purpose is. For example, a bone cell absorbs much potassium phosphate and carbonate from the blood, whereas a brain cell absorbs more phosphorus compounds. According to the building substances contained in individual parts of the body, the color of their radiation changes somewhat, and the subject distinguishes this well. Hard bones appear light blue to him. Marrow bones have a reddish tinge. A decomposing wound in a bone appears blue-violet. Cancer in the third stage appears as a dark area with countless illuminated points. These points are unknown viruses whose oduší radiates. We find the same in the lungs in tuberculosis, where there are also bacilli. In some patients the subject sees an area in the lungs illuminated dark brown, lighter at the edges. It is a condensation of diseased substances in the lungs. In dropsy, some areas even appear completely dark.

(465) Healthy blood radiates with a bluish tinge shading into white. If it is saturated with uric acid, its color changes toward gray. Blood vessels radiate sky blue. If the color between the stream of blood and the inner vessel wall is more or less brown, this signifies hardening of the arteries, and the subject immediately recognizes their poor elasticity. He sees a completely inactive organ as a black area and says that the organ is not there, that it is black there. These examples suffice to understand how the subject recognizes the kind of illness.

The subject can observe any bodily organ and inform us of its condition. From the outline of its radiation he sees whether the organ is still in order or not. Thus he identifies enlargement of the stomach, liver, heart, aorta and vessels, descent of the kidneys, tilting of the uterus, failure of valves to close, and sees where activity exists and where it does not, and so forth.

He also sees and recognizes parasites in the human body, by the radiation of their own oduší energy: roundworms, pinworms, tapeworms, trichinae and the like. After inflammation he sees the organ altered and shriveled. He sees foreign bodies that have entered the body as black areas radiating at the edges. From the nature of the radiant energy of their magnetism he recognizes whether they are stone, metal, wood and so on. He distinguishes ovarian disorders in women and determines whether they can have children. In this respect we have not been mistaken in a single case. The subject also reports whether the defect lies with the man or the woman. In the skin he sees each layer separately; the uppermost radiates most strongly, the second less, and the last least. The subject recognizes a child’s true father, and so forth.

(466) The subject who described changes in vibration to me in this way as shadows or kinds of colors was Miss B., in whom I discovered elements of clairvoyance. After six months of experiments, however, she lost this splendid gift through an accepted autosuggestion, because other people talked her into resistance to it. Today this resistance is so strong that she cannot even be put to sleep.

The subject K. also recognizes changes in vibration, but embellishes his findings with various explanations, and only someone who works with him daily can understand him.

To convince myself and others of clairvoyance in this respect as well, I undertook a scientific test. For two full years I received patients daily from throughout our republic and worked with them in cooperation with subjects, often from morning until evening. From the correspondence I established that we had examined 8,000 patients, and I can say that scarcely thirty of them could come forward with the objection that we had diagnosed them incorrectly. Over three hundred people were sent directly from us for operations, and these proved not to have been in vain.

I emphasize that no patient who was admitted was allowed to say a single word beforehand about what was wrong. Only after the subject’s statement could the patient speak of their illness. I have at hand several hundred attestations of the correctness of the diagnoses, which I had confirmed during one month. Here are some of them:

(467) He described my illness fully and correctly. — Josef Hájek, Kamenné Zboží near Nymburk.

My illness was correctly investigated in detail. — Anna Polišenská, Kroměříž.

My daughter’s diagnosis not only agreed with that of medical authorities but was far more understandable and to the point. — Josef Bajer, teacher, Třebechovice pod Orebem.

We are amazed at the correctness of the performance. — Josef Valenta, Přerov.

I affirm on my honor that my illness was correctly identified. — František Vondráček, official, Příbram.

I confirm that the sleeping subject correctly identified my child’s illness. — Marie Pohlová, Solnice.

He immediately found the injury to my spine and described it correctly. — Souček, Havlovice.

I must confirm to you the accuracy of the statement. — Jiří Soukup, Hořovice.

The statement agrees completely. — František Kovařík, Pardubice.

My illness was found and correctly identified. — František Buk, Vsetín.

The diagnoses you prepared with the subject’s help for my wife and me surprised us by their accuracy and truthfulness, and we owe you a debt of gratitude for preparing them. — Karel Matouš, Prague, Wenceslas Square.

With my own signature I confirm that he identified my illness very correctly. — Rudolf Roušek, Dvůr Králové n. L., no. 900.

I agree with the clairvoyant’s statement, for he described everything correctly to me. — Ant. Fišera, Račice near Plzeň.

With my own signature I confirm its complete correctness. — Rudolf Seidl, Dvůr Králové n. L.

He correctly identified my complicated illness. — F. Kabelíková, Litovel.

I hereby confirm the correctness of the identification of my illness and marvel at the precision in describing all its details and its progression. Vouching with his full name for the truth of these words: Fr. Janda, ornamental metalworker, Vrkoslavice, Jablonec nad Nisou.

I affirm that, after many examinations by doctors and professors, the whole statement is correct beyond expectation, and I positively admire this science. — Josef Křeček, Náchod.

I confirm the correctness of the statement with my signature. — J. Záleský, Litomyšl.

(468) The subject identified a shell fragment in the lower wound below the knee, which X-rays confirmed. Neither the subject nor the hypnotist knew about the wound, yet they found everything. — S. Hanuš, Červený Kostelec, now Prague.

Everything agreed correctly; even the telephone numbers were given correctly. — J. Hanuš, Královské Vinohrady, 8 Balbínova Street.

The subject’s description of the illness was entirely correct. — V. Rýč, Brno.

According to the diagnosis of Dr. Háněl of Prague, the right side of my lungs is damaged, pleurisy on the same side has healed, and I have anemia. Today’s statement by the subject was the same, which I hereby confirm. — Mervart, building contractor, Červený Kostelec.

Everything correct. — M. Matoulková, Trutnov.

I hereby confirm that my bodily condition was described entirely correctly and that the illness from which I suffer was particularly emphasized. — Růžena Sperakusová, teacher, Renčov, Kladno.

(469) Although we did not know each other, had never seen each other and had not spoken beforehand about the illness, the statement about my illness is entirely correct. — M. Pírková, Vamberk.

I confirm that the identification of my illness and my uncle’s is based on truth. — Vojtěch Pytlík, Plzeň.

My illness is the same. — Karel Netušil, architect and building contractor, Heřmanův Městec.

I confirm the correctness of the diagnosis. — Gustav Lammel, Úpice.

I can only confirm its correctness. — A. Kuldová, Nové Město n. Met.

Everything about my health that had hitherto been a mystery to me and to doctors was solved for me today in a few minutes, to the great surprise of everyone present. I will confirm it to any unbeliever. — B. Neužil, sculptor, Prague–Smíchov 208.

He correctly identified my illness. — Jan Klein, Vyškov.

He stated everything correctly. — Adolf Brad, Litovel.

Entirely correct. — B. Šprynarová, Lovosice.

He established everything correctly. The performance seems positively miraculous to me. — Fr. Doušek, Šťáhlavy.

(470) This will suffice for now. I conducted my experiments before thirty-seven medical authorities. None publicly declared it impossible for a sleeping subject to see and recognize internal illnesses, because through their own examinations they had satisfied themselves of its correctness. Unfortunately they did not confirm by signature what they had recognized, lest the public accuse them of supporting hidden metapsychic science. I know from my own experience, after all, that anyone who dares to promote ideas people have not yet heard of is considered a fool.

I wish doctors would make use of this splendid gift of clairvoyance and develop suitable subjects for themselves. The fear that hypnotic sleep is harmful is foolish. The chapter “Hypnotic Sleep” will convince us that it is not.

At first some doctors thought that the subject made a telepathic connection, sensed and stated only what the patient knew about their illness and what doctors had found. But they became convinced that they were mistaken. An example:

A nine-month-old child was examined. The mother had not yet taken the child to any doctor and therefore did not know what was wrong. The subject found corrupted blood accumulating and appearing to him as three black patches the size of a crown coin beneath the right shoulder blade. The child was undressed, and bruises were indeed found beneath the right shoulder blade. On other occasions we took patients who had not yet undergone an examination anywhere, and so did not themselves know the causes of their illness. After the subject’s statement they were examined by a doctor, and it was established that the subject was right. This was the best evidence that he really recognized changes in vibration.

(471) At the wish of supporters of metapsychic science, I went with my friend Mr. Tůma and the subject Křeček to the private sanatorium of Dr. Vojáček in Pardubice to establish several diagnoses. In the presence of doctors and specialists, my clairvoyant stated of a man of about forty: “The gentleman has diseased lungs. Here,” pointing with his finger, “I see a dark, unilluminated area the size of a walnut. Here beside it,” he pointed, “there is also no radiation. This area is smaller, the size of a cherry. The windpipe suffers from catarrh. The patient has regular fevers.”

After the diagnosis was completed, the patient was examined by X-ray, and two cavities were found of the sizes and in the locations specified by the subject. Another man, about forty-six, was brought in, and the subject was put to sleep again. Examining the patient, he reported: “He has already had an operation on his stomach and has a new ulcer formed at the stomach’s opening into the duodenum. He must be operated on again. The gentleman fears the operation needlessly, for he will be well afterward.”

While the doctors were examining the stomach by X-ray, a woman of about thirty-five was summoned. After being put to sleep, the subject penetrated her organism at my command and showed signs of agitation. He said: “Treatment has been neglected here through someone else’s fault. On either side of the spine I see two large nonradiating areas in the body: the kidneys. The patient’s blood is decomposing, and there is much water in her body, especially in her legs and lower abdomen. She will not recover.”

After examining these cases, the doctors told me that the subject had identified the illnesses precisely.

Before these experiments the patients had not been examined by doctors at all, so the possibility that the subject was telepathically obtaining information from a previously established medical diagnosis was excluded. He recognized the illnesses directly from changes in the vibration of colors.

(472) Miss M. Šolcová of Olešnice near Červený Kostelec requested an examination. The subject K. found that he could see a dark area in the region of the appendix. He reported appendicitis and said: “Give me surgical instruments; I will perform the operation myself.”

I objected that this was impossible. Agitated, the subject replied: “The doctor will make the incision in the wrong place and will have to extend it, because the patient’s frequent and prolonged sitting has shifted her appendix considerably upward and backward.”

I reminded Miss Š. to tell the doctor of this circumstance emphatically. Despite the patient’s warning, the doctor disregarded it and made the incision as he thought fit.

After the operation he told her: “You gave us quite a time with that appendix of yours; it had wandered off somehow.” After recovering, the young woman visited me accompanied by Miss Domáňová, recounted what had happened and confirmed the subject’s finding.

(473) I had an opportunity to verify in my own case the striking success of the clairvoyant subject Mr. Vavroušek’s diagnosis, for in 1932 I suddenly developed severe pain in the area from the right kidney to the bladder. During the experiment the subject reported that he saw lodged stones and sand. I therefore treated them for the next three years, without success. I ceased to believe in them because they did not appear in the urine even under microscopic examination, although my attacks intensified and recurred almost daily with severe vomiting. At that time I consulted the best professors of urology, underwent X-rays and cystoscopy, had urine analyses performed and so forth. There was not a hint of stones.

Nevertheless, during another experiment the subject insisted that he saw urinary stones, prescribed a strict diet and named dissolving agents. I did not believe him.

A physician friend took every possible trouble with the diagnoses and as late as December 1937 declared that my illness, pain and attacks were not caused by stones, denying their existence. In January 1938 the subject again told me that stones were the cause and that the medical diagnosis was wrong. A week after this experiment I passed the first stones and sand, followed by more at short intervals, and the illness improved. The attacks and pains diminished.

Here is clear evidence that a sleeping subject has the ability to establish a precise and correct diagnosis from changes in vibrations, shadows and colors.

I do not deny that there are subjects who cannot recognize changes in vibration but are excellent telepaths, so we must distinguish them from the former.

(474) A good telepath in the third degree of hypnosis senses, or receives, the patient’s condition directly from their subconscious, for the patient’s subconscious SELF knows what they suffer from and where the cause of the illness lies, although their consciousness often has not the slightest idea. But I prefer the first kind of subject.

Just as changes in vibrations can easily be recognized in human beings, so they can in animals. Here the clairvoyant’s ability is invaluable. He can describe what is wrong with an animal, because it cannot tell us itself. I have conducted successful experiments with all kinds of domestic animals.

Not every nonmagnetic sensitive can be brought, or bring themselves, into the fourth degree of hypnosis. Very few can do so, and even when they achieve it, clairvoyance is not yet guaranteed. Usually a subject exercises various abilities but cannot use oduší to extend their body spatially and penetrate with it the substance of external things. Clairvoyance is rare, and this ability is only very seldom innate. It depends on inner psychic dynamics and relationships to inner things, and likewise on the activity of the mediating oduší. Fatigue of one or both of these factors weakens or spoils the result. Of my clairvoyant subjects, only K. and B. were reliable clairvoyants. The others could not be relied upon without checking.

Because the ability and aptitude for clairvoyance are not given equally to everyone, a clairvoyant will always be only an excellent assistant and adviser to everyone, especially doctors; the final establishment of a diagnosis and the decision must be made by the doctor himself.

If a subject’s clairvoyant abilities appear only occasionally, they must be deepened, strengthened and developed by daily induction of sleep, so that the subject acquires the ability of spatial release through oduší.

Where this training is absent, especially among spontaneous, unguided and uncontrolled subjects, we often encounter only supposed clairvoyance, for these are mere telepaths. They present telepathy as clairvoyance and on this basis make incorrect diagnoses and statements.

I recommend conducting clairvoyant experiments preferably in the morning, when the subject and hypnologist are fully fit for them. We take only two or three patients for examination. If a patient is strongly magnetic, the subject will be unable to examine them, lacking the strength to penetrate their magnetic envelope. On the contrary, in such a case the subject will soon be fatigued by the magnetism emanating from the patient.

Translator’s safety note: The historical instructions below are not a clinical examination protocol. Do not leave an infant unsupported or withhold needed comfort, supervision or medical attention in order to conduct an experiment.

(475) We never magnetize the subject, for we would close their oduší, and they could then no longer release themselves spatially toward the patient. This happened during experiments in my apartment with V., a well-known natural-born magnetizer, in the presence of the physician H.

If the subject has no desire for the experiment, it will not succeed. The hypnologist must believe absolutely that the clairvoyant has the ability to see. In this way he assists the performance.

Small children and infants must be seated or laid down. No one may stand beside them, however much they cry. If the mother held the child on her lap, the clairvoyant would penetrate both bodies, and the statement would be incorrect.

During the performance the patient must not move, for this disturbs and greatly irritates the subject. During the examination the patient must not think about their illness, as they could impress their thought upon the subject; such a thought is more powerful and more readily received than the subject’s own performance, which is extremely delicate and sensitive.

Only the subject, doctor, hypnologist and patient should be present at the examination.

Let us not examine patients at a distance: it exhausts the subject, and the result does not always appear, owing to telepathic causes in the patient’s surroundings. We should not think, however, that success is impossible. As evidence I offer the following experiment conducted at a distance:

(476) A photograph of a certain sick woman was sent to me from the firm of N. in Prague. In the manner already described, I brought the sleeping subject to the place where she was at that moment. He described her: “She is lying down with a compress across her head. I see shadows in many places. There is a kind of slight opacity in the eye, a withering of the vessels of the cerebellum and weakness of the medulla oblongata. The patient suffers mental torment, and her hair is falling out. There are shadows in the lower abdomen and at the joints. There are bad humors there; the urine too is contaminated, and the aorta is partly enlarged.” This diagnosis was sent to Prague with the note: “From this diagnosis you will recognize whether we have actually located the patient correctly.” The following reply came: “Everything agrees completely, except that the attending doctor did not find enlargement of the aorta. But she probably has a slight enlargement, for everything tires her at once. Respectfully and sincerely yours, N., Prague–Smíchov.”

(477) A photograph of a certain gentleman from Čáslav was delivered to me with a request that I examine his condition at a distance. Looking at the portrait, I instructed the sleeping subject to receive the gentleman’s likeness from my esplana.

When he declared that he knew the gentleman, I asked him to release himself in the direction through Hradec Králové, roughly between Chrudim and Čáslav, and find the place where the person was.

After about a minute the subject reported: “I’ve got him now; I see him.” I told him: “Describe the place and surroundings where he is.” The subject said: “It is Čáslav, the square; to one side there is a park with a statue in it.” I asked whom the statue might represent, and he answered: “It is some warrior, a military commander. Now I know: it is Žižka. Then there is an inn, a hotel, and another house; nearby a street goes downhill. At the corner of the street is a house containing some office, the district administration. Then there is a shop like this, and the gentleman is in it.” He described him: “Yes, he is ill; he has some trouble using his right arm. He has an abnormal circulation of impure blood; the upper part of his body is congested with blood, including the brain. There is a disorder in a cerebral convolution; he speaks poorly, and it is a partial state of stroke, though it is now improving.”

In response to the diagnosis sent, the owner of the photograph wrote: “The person concerned is carried away by the truth of what Mr. K. discovered. God forbid that the attack should recur. — M. Máchová, literature teacher, Kutná Hora, Městské sady no. 466.”

(478) Mr. Tůma, an official in our town, sent word asking me to examine him at a distance, write down what the subject said and send it to him immediately. Naturally I complied with my friend’s request. The subject described him: “He is lying down; his right leg is swollen at the ankle. Blood vessels are torn; it was dislocated, but it is now in place. He has a fever.” I asked the subject to describe where he was lying. The subject said: “He is lying on a sofa between a sewing machine and a bed.” The patient afterward personally confirmed to me that the subject had stated everything correctly. He had indeed been lying on the described sofa in the specified place. The doctor himself had identified a dislocated ankle and put it back into place. Fine blood vessels were torn, and the patient had a fever.

Translator’s safety note: Do not reproduce the animal-injury experiment described in the following paragraph.

We have other evidence too that the soul sees and feels at a distance. I transfer the subject’s sensitive oduší preferably to an ensouled being, so that it can attach itself firmly: a horse, dog, cow and so forth. The animal must be at rest. Now someone goes and, unnoticed, pricks the animal with a needle. At that instant the subject feels pain.

Translator’s medical note: Pain seeming to arise from an amputated limb is a recognized, real phenomenon called phantom limb pain; it should be assessed and treated through the person’s care team. The anecdote below does not establish a continuing sensory connection with removed tissue. See the NHS explanation of phantom limb pain.

(479) Dr. Stuchlík told me the following case:

In a hospital it was necessary to amputate a little girl’s leg up to the knee. A hospital attendant placed the amputated leg in the coffin of a deceased person. After the operation, however, the little girl continually complained that something was pricking her calf. Although the entire calf had been removed and she knew it, she did not stop insisting and complaining that something was pricking her calf. The wound was healing excellently, so the cause of the pricking could not be sought in the wound. A physician, a psychiatrist, was informed of the matter. He asked to be shown the removed part of the leg. The coffin was dug up and opened, and it was found that the calf, by then almost decomposed, was resting on a small nail protruding from the side of the coffin. The leg was lifted from it and laid on a smooth place. They went to the little girl. She joyfully reported that nothing was pricking her anymore.

The girl was nonmagnetic and suffered from the disorder of spontaneous loosening of oduší. After the amputation the leg remained connected to the girl’s soul through oduší, for the soul, being present in its entirety everywhere in its body, was also wholly present in the spatially loosened oduší that remained connected with the amputated part until it decomposed.

57. Thought

(480) The cause of the origin and nature of thoughts is the soul itself, from whose capacity they develop. Thought is born of reason and proceeds from will. The word, the thought, is a vital act arising from the faculty of reason. Thought remains in reason, and reason in it.

When reason thinks, it continually creates new concepts from itself, “spiritual words.” This spiritual word of reason is a vital human act; that is, it belongs among the activities through which our life manifests itself.5

When we solve a problem, the course of thinking, insofar as we wish and strive, is given a new direction by the will. This striving determines the course of thought, which then has a meaningful character and tends toward a coherent, resolvable reality.

Every thought, whether concealed in the mind, expressed in words or transmitted telepathically, is born, lives and is transmitted in this life with the cooperation of matter. Thus a subject or medium always encounters matter, esplana or protonace, which has received and preserves within itself the manifestation of a former thought. This manifestation of thought is merely impressed upon it, recorded. It is rather like photography. A photographic plate or film does not receive an object in its substance, but in its likeness, and preserves within itself its whole character. After the soul separates from the body, the present manifestation of thinking and of our senses, bound to matter, ceases.

The soul has the ability to communicate without the mediation of matter, which is excluded in this life.

(481) For clearer understanding, I explain that God in His wisdom created the invisible, spiritual world, namely angels, and the matter of the visible worlds. This matter is under the rule of unknown forces that cause its development, transformation and grouping. Good spirits, angels, live “around” the RULER, who is the center of their rational and free activity. They are bound to Him by love and by the sovereign will whose laws they fulfill. Others are rejected for their rebellion, removed from God and subjected to evil, to disorder of the will. They can exert a bad influence upon the loosened oduší and protosplana of the human cerebellum, just as good spirits, conversely, exert a good influence.

Between the spiritual and material worlds God created a kind of middle realm of spirits joined with matter, which they animate, yet tending toward the Supreme Spirit because they are created for Him. This realm is the realm of humanity. As long as the spirit, the soul, animates matter, every spiritual manifestation and activity will take place with the cooperation of matter, without which it cannot manage in this life. It will be otherwise in life after death.

Unity and harmony between spirit and body supply the body with health-restoring psychic powers.

Thinking and reflection are the mightiest psychic power.

Willing is power and strength.

To concentrate the will means to unite one’s thoughts in a single point and hold them there as long as one wishes.

By continually repeating a thought, I create a force gathered, or concentrated, upon one point, growing ever stronger until it leads to action.

To train one’s will and know how to direct it through reason is humanity’s greatest and most valuable attainment.

Through this self-mastery I must give thought a definite image of effective reality, to achieve a quicker effect.

In healing, the efficacy of this image is more powerful than the will.

The will directs; thought supported by an image produces the effect.

Translator’s medical note: The following affirmations preserve the author’s claims. Positive thinking does not guarantee health or make a person responsible for becoming ill. These passages should not replace medical assessment or treatment; NCCIH guidance emphasizes evidence and consultation with a healthcare professional when making care decisions.

(482) If the spirit is suppressed, it sees only darkness. Therefore create images, speak and think of happiness. You will gain sight and will not be blind.

Speak and think of health; that is the best medicine. You will remain healthy. Whoever thinks about health will live in it. Whoever lives in it will make it their own.

Insist that health be spoken of; point out that there are more healthy people than sick ones, and you will heal your body and your spirit. The secret is contained in the words you utter.

Speak of success and good fortune. In this way you will pour strength into every languid spirit. A complaining spirit becomes backward-looking.

Wish for the best and expect the best; be cheerful. A cheerful mind prolongs life and makes it an unbroken chain of constant joys.

By continually concentrating and training all thoughts into one, to be healthy, this thought grows within you, becomes powerful and embodied, and approaches its full realization.

To receive the healing effect of thoughts, autosuggestion and mental images, you must yield to them openly and without resistance.

A person carries happiness and unhappiness within themselves. It depends upon that person alone.

Be happy, and your health will be better, your spirit clearer and your personality more attractive.

Will to govern yourself, and do not wish to be governed.

(483) Everyone becomes powerful and strong against all evil by concentrating their thoughts and mental images. Concentrated thought is a force I can direct toward a precise accomplishment.

The soul awakened and brought to self-awareness can consciously control its body and thoughts and exercise its influences and powers.

All evil thoughts evoke bad feelings and impressions. They act disruptively, destructively and poisonously in the body. Conversely, thoughts that act pleasantly and blissfully strengthen, heal and build new strength and energy for life.

From the manner of thought processes and mental images, it is clearly evident that thoughts and feelings are forces that produce chemical change within us.

Thus every person builds a world from within themselves, inwardly as well as outwardly.

The will is the sole force, because it has a rational foundation in the correct choice of imagination and thoughts that lead to deeds and success.

I must become master of my will and my thoughts. Through this I gain my happiness.

58. Natural Sleep

(484) Surely each of us has thought about sleep and tried to identify and catch the moment when we fall asleep, though no one has yet succeeded.

Through good clairvoyants this state can be observed. In a healthy person lying down to sleep, activity still proceeds throughout the gray cerebral cortex, manifesting as waves, ripples and currents. Our subconscious SELF rests upon the awareness that we are thinking. The thought “sleep” dwells in a radiant esplano and manifests as an ever more powerfully vibrating little node. In a newborn this esplanic node is absent: the child is not yet aware of sleeping, and so the mental image has not yet been able to form. Its sleep is natural; that is, the gray cortex is in continual repose and becomes active only when the child’s senses have been stimulated from outside.

The vibrating node acts upon the gray substance when it is tired and exhausted. At that moment the thought “sleep” itself presses upon us. As we lie down, we gladly accept it as our own; our conscious SELF willingly clothes itself in it and rests comfortably within it. Its effect appears in the gradual cessation of the gray substance’s activity; we feel the sweet fatigue of approaching sleep. Our consciousness and thoughts are dim; we no longer direct them. Through the predominance of the radiant esplano of sleep, the gray cortex suddenly ceases its activity at the appropriate moment, as though on command, and conscious happenings come to a halt. This manifests as a slight stiffening. By observing ourselves for a prolonged period, we can detect and notice this stiffening. At this time our consciousness has disappeared completely, and both brains come to rest. The soul’s influence has withdrawn into oduší and into the lower and upper subconscious. From there the soul restores balance, strengthens and at the same time sorts accumulated thoughts; it prepares the gray cortex with new esplana, while the old gray cortex curls inward toward the center of the brain and thus forms furrows. This is why there is a far greater flow of blood to the brain during sleep than during waking. It is nonsense to assert that in sleep the soul withdraws into higher spheres, the spiritual realm. It can, of course, release itself through oduší during sleep, which occurs in hysterical and nonmagnetic people who suffer from spontaneous loosening of oduší.

(485) Anyone who, for whatever reason, stays awake through the night and thus deprives themselves of all the soul’s work feels incapable the following day. During sleep the heart, lungs, arteries and digestive apparatus function through their own automatic nodes, directed from the soul’s lower-order center, which governs the oduší of the entire body. During sleep only the cerebellum’s protosplana awaken to activity, becoming stimulated and vibrating. Then, as if telepathically, through wandering silotons we receive impressions, mental images and so on from people throughout the world. Extraordinary activity of the soul occurs. If the stimulation of the protosplana is weak, it does not disturb the soul. Stronger impacts, however, can already stimulate the cerebral center. Especially toward morning, when sleep has strengthened the gray cortex, a vivid image formed in the soul can by itself, without the conscious SELF, set the gray cortex into activity: we have a dream.

During sleep attention and willpower are suspended, and therefore associative activity, under the influence of the subconscious, joins and separates mental images without a rational aim.

Our subconscious and conscious SELVES are here evoked artificially, balancing one another. The subconscious SELF clothes itself in received impressions and often appears as an independent individuality in one or more persons, or even animals. The conscious SELF remains with very weak will and reason. Both SELVES become helpless playthings, instruments of these alien impressions. This is not a manifestation of the conscious SELF, but of a lower order of psychic activity, evoked by external causes or experiences that have passed into the esplana and the soul’s consciousness.

Only when the impressions caused by stimulation are violent do the little clouds of the protosplana vibrate strongly. The medulla oblongata then vibrates too, after which gentle waves arise at certain places in the gray cortex with tremors of neurons, gradually more and more, until through the illumination of ever new neurons the whole gray cerebral cortex sometimes also trembles gently, though usually only certain fields. This produces a partial awakening of the conscious SELF, as we have already learned in the chapter “Protosplana.” A dream has arisen. At the same time the sorting of the dream begins, but only onto the lower esplana. In the upper ones, while the gray cortex is active, the awareness that we have dreamed is reflected. This is stronger than the dream, so that toward morning this awareness recalls the dream we have experienced; it passes back from the lower esplana into the gray cortex, and we experience it again.

(486) We must not imagine that everything we have dreamed was received from reality or will happen. The soul, continually active in dreams, can create an entire sequence of events from a single received impression. Its innate quality impels it to do so: the soul is tireless and unceasing activity. Sometimes we seem to observe an absence of thought in ourselves, especially when tired. This, however, is not repose or inactivity of the soul, but exhaustion of the brain’s matter, in which psychic activity can no longer be reflected. This activity remains lost to our consciousness, which in this life manifests only with the cooperation of matter. Even in full consciousness, after all, some 90 percent of our psychic power and activity of thought escapes us.

With stronger impacts of terrifying wandering silotons, the impression passes to the upper esplana, which vibrate so much that they strongly stimulate the entire gray substance. We suddenly awaken from sleep and cannot then fall asleep again. Sensitive people, however, do not awaken to consciousness and behave as though deranged, expressing outwardly in movement and words everything they experience in sleep. These are very sensitive people.

(487) It often happens that at the beginning of sleep we are suddenly disturbed by a violent jerk of the body, accompanied by a feeling of anxiety, which may even awaken us. The cause is certain nerves of our body that were little used in comparison with others during the day’s work. These nerves, fully fresh and connected with their allotted region in the gray cortex, have their place or field still fresh and unexhausted. Regions of the gray cortex exhausted by the day’s work fall asleep, or cease activity, much earlier than those that were at rest during the day. The influence of sleep has a much greater and quicker effect upon fatigued areas than upon areas spared exhaustion. The latter were falling asleep at the same time but had not been properly taken out of their activity, their rippling and waves. Activity was thereby automatically awakened in them. This stimulated the surrounding sleeping fields, manifesting as a violent tremor of the whole gray cortex with a simultaneous awakening of consciousness.

Something similar happens with one-sided mental overwork. The field concerned, with its esplana, which is continually mentally active during the day and has no rest, becomes exhausted and enters a pathological state, manifested in automatic activity both while awake and asleep. The person does sleep, but awakens very tired in the morning and knows that even during sleep their work, an invention for example, gave them no peace. This pathological state appears to the subject as an exceptionally radiant part of the sleeping person’s brain. He distinguishes individual enlarged esplana, vibrating intensely and stimulating the gray cortex, so that the cortex ripples and moves in waves. What the person studied all day is evoked again at night during sleep from the esplana into the gray cortex. Extraordinary psychic activity takes place in that same area. The surrounding gray cortex is at rest, and its esplana radiate little. They light up only when, while conscious, we want to remember something, though not always and not all of them, only those to which the recollection relates. As a rule the area concerned does not settle until toward morning, and the patient is somewhat strengthened by peaceful sleep.

Thus psychic causes are most often involved in disturbing sleep, and they sometimes attain a very considerable influence. A person finds nighttime rest as a result of their pathologically heightened drive to activity.6 Their brain works feverishly, thousands of ideas race through their head, and their mental preoccupation allows them no peace.

A person suffering from depression and a melancholic person likewise do not fall asleep easily. They torment their brain with groundless worries, reproach themselves for insignificant failings, and gloomy brooding keeps them awake. They toss about sleeplessly. The causes are always psychic in nature; only rarely do physical causes stand in the foreground. Feelings of guilt, worries and a bad conscience drive sleep away. Anticipated happy events have the same effect.

(488) An indispensable prerequisite for sleep to arrive is a complete mental halt and the switching off of all thinking.

We can also prevent this unfortunate state through a vivid image of our own sleep; that is, we see ourselves in undisturbed, peaceful, refreshing sleep. Through imaginative autosuggestion this image must be repeated daily twenty to thirty times before sleep. This creates new esplana in the upper subconscious, which then themselves calm the diseased area. Innocent recreation during the day is also recommended. Scholars, thinkers, inventors and the like generally occupy themselves with something entertaining so that they can turn their entire mind to a favorite pursuit. The activity of the overworked region concerned then ceases, and it calms and strengthens.

Unwise physical exertion overstrains the cerebellum. During sleep a convolution or ridge then begins to tremble, arousing unrest in the soul. In the morning we rise as though we had worked very hard. A dream in which we seem to perform heavy physical labor similarly exhausts us. As a rule we cannot finish the work in the dream. This happens because the impressions pass to the cerebellum for actual manifestation, the performance of the work, but remain there and only rarely pass to the motor nerves. Because the impression remained unfulfilled in the cerebellum, it acts back upon the gray cortex with the impression that the work is not going well, that we cannot finish it, cannot get anywhere although we keep walking, and so forth. This causes spontaneous spreading and contraction of certain cerebellar convolutions. Both brains are then active, and in the morning we awaken feeling battered, exhausted and so on.

(489) Besides cerebral sleep, about which we have already learned, there is also sleep of the body. By cerebral sleep we mean the disappearance of consciousness. Sleep of the body, by contrast, relates more to overall motor activity, the apparatus of movement, which, as we know, is subject to conscious will, to the controlled nervous system, unlike the visceral nervous system, which escapes conscious will and knows no interruption in its activity.

Thus it may happen that deep sleep occurs but, because the subconscious SELF has awakened to activity, the motor system remains awake. We call this state sleepwalking, or somnambulism.

The sleepwalker uses the apparatus of movement as in full wakefulness, directly from the subconscious. Yet there is not the slightest trace of consciousness. Thus in the morning after awakening the person has not the faintest recollection of the night’s events.

Conversely, deeper or less deep sleep of the body can also occur with clear consciousness. This state sometimes comes in the morning, for a few seconds after waking. Although we have fully regained consciousness, we are not yet able to control our muscles and move our limbs. Control of the body returns only a little later.

Translator’s safety note: Contrary to the assurance below, sleepwalking can lead to injury; a supposed protective subconscious should not be relied upon. Reduce hazards and gently guide the person back to bed. If waking is necessary, do so gently. Seek medical advice when episodes disrupt sleep or create an injury risk. See NHS sleepwalking guidance.

(490) In sleepwalking, or somnambulistic, people we observed during their sleep at full moon a constant unrest of the gray cortex, which rippled and moved in gentle waves during sleep. The conscious SELF had disappeared completely, but subconscious activity was awakening and taking control of the gray cortex. Stimulation of cellular protoplasm and the nerves under the moon’s influence was observed. Magnetism and oduší loosened around the body, the heart’s activity slackened and blood circulation weakened. The face contracted, and the motor nerves came under the influence of the subconscious SELF’s activity. Thus the sleepwalking person becomes a plaything of the mysterious powers of the subconscious. This disorder is not dangerous to health; it is actually harmless. A person who has entered the sleepwalking state must be left undisturbed. The subconscious itself protects the body from injury. Calling out would awaken the person’s consciousness, and that is harmful and dangerous in the sleepwalking state. Such people can be treated by repeated autosuggestion, that is, by seeing themselves in a vivid image as never again entering the sleepwalking state.

During the sleep of hysterical people, nervous unrest of certain brain regions was found, and in some also a loosening of oduší. Hysterical people respond well to treatment by magnetism and suggestion.

59. Autosuggestive, Hypnotic and Magnetic Sleep

Translator’s safety note: This chapter presents the author’s historical model and procedures. Its claims of universal curability, absolute control and complete harmlessness should not be relied upon. Hypnotherapy is not suitable for everyone and must not replace needed medical care; current NHS guidance notes particular concerns for people with schizophrenia, a history of psychosis or epilepsy. Any therapeutic procedure requires the person’s informed consent and appropriate professional oversight.

(491) Even many serious researchers identify these three kinds of sleep with one another. At other times they contradict one another. They claim that magnetism or hypnotism does not consist in any special force or fluid transmitted from the magnetizer or hypnotist to sensitive people, and that sleep can therefore be brought about without the cooperation of another person.

Yes, the facts show that one can put oneself to sleep without another person’s physical or psychic influence. We achieve this by gazing for a longer time at some motionless, preferably shining object, or by vividly wishing it. Autosuggestive self-induction of sleep is possible and real. A person’s brain is strained, and the strain tires it so much that the person falls into hypnotic sleep. The prerequisite is a particular state of consciousness, concentration and attention. This sleep comes about spontaneously and is identical with natural sleep. In it one cannot evoke any phenomenon obtainable in sleep induced through an external influence. I am not, of course, speaking of automatic mediums, which do not belong in this chapter.

Suggestion is a thought accepted without rational scrutiny.

(492) Suggestion in the waking state and in hypnotic sleep is an excitation that evokes a mental image, indirectly also other associated images, and determines, or stimulates, a person toward a particular action. Sometimes suggestive impulses may come from another person; they constitute an impression, not a physical impression but an intellectual or emotional, sometimes passionate one. Under this impression a person thinks or acts differently from how they would think and act in a normal state, when deciding for themselves.

Every perception implanted by suggestion and accepted tends toward the performance of a physiological act. Every stimulated nerve cell moves the motor nerve filaments, and therefore the organs from which movement proceeds tend toward carrying out the impulse. Stimulation occurs through a mental image or the concept itself.

Suggestion does not act directly upon the will, but through imagination and volitional sensory tension.

Autosuggestion is an impulse originating consciously or unconsciously in the subject themselves. Autosuggestion is far-reaching. Imagination influences vegetative life. It can produce both pain and painlessness in organs.

Fixed ideas, fanaticism and routine are merely different kinds of autosuggestion.

Under hypnosis a person is determined by the images and feelings we instill or suggest.

Through hypnosis under artificially induced conditions we bring a person into various degrees of sleep, from half-sleep to complete, deep sleep. Psychic, physiological and physical factors act in it. In hypnosis the senses are accessible only to the hypnologist’s gestures and voice. Through the ideomotor law governing the spontaneity of psychic life, the hypnologist’s suggestion becomes conviction and an irresistible power in the hypnotized subject. The subject is led toward the acts the hypnologist desires and indicates.

(493) Hypnotic sleep into which an experimental subject has been brought by the hypnologist’s will alone differs from autosuggestive sleep in that the hypnotist has absolute external influence over the person. Through this he evokes particular images in the subject, whether by words, facial expression, writing or thought alone, substitutes his will for theirs and compels them to awaken the hidden powers slumbering within them. In this sleep, if it is deep, or lethargic, a connection arises during experiments between subject and hypnologist through a fluid ribbon of oduší. This cannot happen in autosuggestive sleep, because the person awakens from it independently. In deep hypnotic sleep the sleeper does not awaken before the hypnologist himself wishes it. The subject is under his influence and in constant connection with him.

Magnetic sleep differs from the first two in that the experimental subject has been put to sleep by the transfer of magnetic fluid energy from another person. The magnetic fluid applied to the sensitive adheres around their body, and the sensitive absorbs it over three to five hours. The subject sleeps until the sensitive’s organism has fully utilized the applied fluid. Then the subject awakens independently, so there is no need to wait for the magnetizer’s instruction. The transferred energy has been consumed, and no cause remains for continuing in sleep.

(494) A person put to sleep through magnetism can be awakened at any time by any other person in the manner described in the chapter “Magnetism.” Only a strong-willed magnetizer can, by thought alone, prevent the awakening of a person he has put to sleep, even if his magnetism has been removed by another, nonmagnetic person. By contrast, no other person, even a nonmagnetic one, can awaken by thought alone someone in deep hypnotic sleep, that is, put to sleep by a hypnologist without the use of magnetic energy.

In deep hypnotic sleep objective spatial clairvoyance awakens, including in automatic mediums. In deep magnetic sleep spatial clairvoyance disappears; only subjective clairvoyance remains, for example the sleeper sees their own body and can describe their illness. In this case telekinesis, levitation, materialization and so forth are also impossible.

A peculiar phenomenon occurs with magnetizers who have managed through artificial cultivation to awaken and release their magnetism within their bodies. After magnetizing an experimental subject, their magnetism withdraws again to the place from which it came.

This happens because the magnetism is not surplus energy for the magnetizer; his organism itself needs it and draws it back within an hour. The person nevertheless remains asleep, no longer through magnetism but through the magnetizer’s mere faith. Unwittingly taking the place of a hypnotist, he supposes that his magnetism produces the same things that occur under a hypnotist’s influence.

(495) Hypnotic sleep is not equally deep. I distinguish five kinds:

First degree: Weary eyelids, inability to open them, though not always; a feeling of fatigue; the limbs can be controlled and consciousness is preserved. The subject remains inactive and observes that they are unable to overcome the hypnotist’s influence.

Second degree: Partial rigidity, closed eyelids, arms hanging limply. If we lift an arm, it remains in the given position for several seconds, then falls helplessly against the body. Consciousness and recollections are preserved, as is connection with the outside world.

Third degree: Light hypnosis, partial sleepwalking or somnambulism; sensitivity disappears, and there is intermittent inability to hear the surroundings except for the hypnotist, who is always perceived. Consciousness is clouded; immediately after awakening the subject cannot tell us what happened during sleep. Nevertheless, in all the first three degrees of sleep the experimental subjects assure us that they did not sleep at all and did everything only for our sake.

I have called these three kinds of artificial sleep, in which consciousness and the senses are intermittently preserved, the “entry subconscious.”

This normal manifestation of three distinct kinds of psychic activity can be disturbed when, through suffering and sorrow, the soul in its grief, often from mere psychic emptiness, is driven into its interior. This is a spontaneous withdrawal of the soul from healthy conscious activity into the entry subconscious, into which it introduces a disorder arising from suffering and sorrow by evoking diseased, harmful and unhealthy esplana.

I have named this disturbed entry subconscious the “lower-order subconscious.”

(496) The lower-order subconscious is one of the chief causes of mental disorders, in which the soul, especially in the third degree, independently divides and becomes autonomous as a second SELF. The will splits into two SELVES, of which the lower one becomes personified and assumes the individuality of some alien being.

This spontaneously induced state of the soul is pathological, and in it we encounter various forms and varieties of trances, ecstasies, visions, apparitions of demonic and harmless beings, various psychic sufferings, hallucinations and the like. Through unsuitable suggestions and failure to withdraw harmful images, an inexperienced hypnotist can damage all the healthy entry-subconscious states and produce mental illness, that is, the lower-order subconscious.

(497) Let us remember that a healthy spirit always gives forth and creates. It must not merely receive passively and retreat, for then psychic potency weakens, diseased, aberrant and burdened esplana form spontaneously, and there arises the danger of evoking the lower-order subconscious, in which the origin of all mental illnesses and disorders lies, apart from physical defects.

When a subject is brought into the deep sleep of the third degree, where we approach the very boundary of the pure subconscious of the fourth degree, higher abilities and qualities shine through into the entry subconscious from the soul’s pure subconscious, which is at the very entrance threshold of its activity.

At this boundary between the two subconscious states we encounter the soul’s higher abilities, which operate exclusively in the fourth degree: telepathy, partial spatial clairvoyance, knowledge of distant and secret events, penetration into other people’s thoughts, partial knowledge of languages never studied, scientific knowledge and skill in speaking about it, displays of natural strength, floating in the air, paralysis of certain organs, blindness, muteness, deafness and the like.

These phenomena are evoked during the soul’s continual activity either spontaneously or when we desire and expect them.

Because consciousness is not completely extinguished, almost all the states of psychic activity at this boundary of trance are still recorded in the esplana, and the subject, awakened to consciousness, can recall much of them.

In these states of the third depth of the entry subconscious, reason and will are suppressed and clouded, and the soul has inclinations and tendencies more toward evil. For this reason too the soul’s manifestations are often base and evil. Upbringing is decisive: its reflection in the esplana exerts a spontaneous influence upon the soul in this trance, and it is no unusual thing for the soul of a subject immersed in trance often to deceive us.

(498) Fourth degree: Deep hypnosis, a complete sleepwalking state or somnambulism; sensitivity disappears entirely, as does the conscious SELF with all five senses. The head sinks onto the chest. If we lift an eyelid, the eyes are rolled upward; if we stimulate them, they do not react. If we lift an arm or leg, it falls like dead matter. There is complete inability to remember after awakening. Not all subjects are capable of being brought into this degree of sleep.

In this state the subconscious SELF awakens fully with its higher abilities, whereas at the boundary of the third and fourth degrees they are awakened incompletely. Normal abilities have disappeared entirely. At the hypnologist’s wish the subconscious SELF takes control of the motor nerves, so the inability to move found in the earlier degrees is absent here. The subject behaves as though conscious. Reason and will come partly into play. The pure soul has awakened. If we direct it to examine its essence, it recognizes itself, its perfection and beauty, of which it becomes aware. The root of true ecstasy and mysticism lies at this depth of sleep.

In a state of omnipresence within a limited space, through a single pure act of its capacity the soul penetrates, encompasses, exhaustively grasps and recognizes everything at once. For example, in a single act it knows the entire contents of a book we have not read and would have to read for two or three days, as I have very often demonstrated with the subject K. The means of this knowledge is the unified existence of the soul with its spatial omnipresence. The physical body, with its deficiencies, defects and weaknesses, has receded into the background. The subject sees, hears, feels and so forth without the mediation of the senses. The soul, which has withdrawn with its qualities and abilities into oduší, receives everything directly at the hypnologist’s command and can therefore see, hear, taste, feel and so on with any part of the body. It is also possible, however, to apply the subconscious SELF to any particular sense. For example, I put a sensitive into the fourth degree of hypnosis and need to investigate something for the company without anyone noticing anything. I therefore awaken two senses for the subconscious SELF, so that the subject sees with the eyes and hears with the ears. The subconscious SELF then controls these two senses directly. The conscious SELF has nothing to do here, so after awakening the subject knows absolutely nothing about it. At this degree of sleep, after awakening, the subject will never in their life remember what happened to them during sleep. The soul leaves no trace in the esplana. I was already conducting experiments with Miss J. thirty-five years ago, and because her sleep was of the fourth degree, to this day she has not remembered a single moment, although I still work with her as a capable subject. I have observed the same in other subjects, especially K. and H., who have already been put to sleep several thousand times. This degree of sleep is absolutely harmless to health, and not the slightest psychic or physical disorder can occur if an experienced specialist works with it.

Translator’s safety note: The twenty-minute limit in the next paragraph is not a safe operating limit. Do not attempt to induce profound unresponsiveness, coldness or rigidity. An unresponsive person needs immediate assessment; if they are not breathing normally, seek emergency help and begin CPR as directed. See St John Ambulance’s CPR guidance.

(499) Fifth degree: A cataleptic state, or complete rigidity; the limbs stiffen and the body remains completely cold and without control. The subject must not be left in this state for longer than twenty minutes. A longer duration would be harmful, and in some cases tissue death could occur. Catalepsy is a separate kind of hypnosis. Thus there are four degrees as regards depth; the fifth is already of a different kind.

Hypnosis is neither a pathological state nor a variety of hysteria, but a physiological state similar to natural sleep, from which, however, it cannot arise. Hypnotic and ordinary sleep have one and the same basis, because from beginning to end the same signs occur in both. They differ only in that ordinary sleep comes when we determine it ourselves through autosuggestion, whereas hypnotic and magnetic sleep must be induced from outside by another person, thereby bringing certain aptitudes and abilities of subconscious activity into play.

Hypnosis is also sometimes called “partial sleep.” The only difference is that whereas in sleep psychic life is completely closed off from the external world, in hypnosis it is merely screened. The sleeper’s consciousness is closed and cannot receive impulses from the external world. The hypnotized person’s consciousness also disappears, but a small connecting bond always remains between hypnologist and sleeper, formed by a connecting fluid ribbon of light. Only the hypnologist has contact with the subject, and the hypnotist’s will penetrates through this ribbon, ray or line of light, so that he can issue commands and receive messages in return.

Hypnosis and suggestion can successfully be used to cure every illness except congenital or injury-induced blindness, deafness, crippling conditions and the like, by impressing the image of the suggestion, the vivid conception that the person is recovering, for the soul itself can restore the body to a healthy state. Let us beware of nonexperts, however, because the hypnotic state is no toy, and the consequences would be costly. A serious and experienced specialist, however, will cause no danger.

However much we might sometimes wish it, not everyone can immediately be brought into hypnotic or magnetic sleep.

Translator’s consent note: The covert procedure below is preserved as historical text. It should not be performed on someone without their informed consent; a sleeping person’s lack of resistance is not consent.

(500) If I seek to help a patient in this way, I proceed as follows:

I visit the patient during natural sleep. Without the patient knowing my intention beforehand, I deepen the sleep with several magnetic passes and thereby establish psychic contact. I proceed cautiously, gently and calmly. At the abdominal cavity I suggest deep sleep and the thought that the patient sleeps peacefully and soundly, cannot awaken, but clearly hears and sees me. Under no circumstances must the sleeper’s name be spoken.

In this way I evoke a dream in the sleeper. After a while the sleeper begins to murmur and finally speaks, incoherently at first. I help by suggesting that speaking is easy. The transfer is complete. After a short conversation I suggest in a low voice, but energetically and clearly:

“Now, my friend, I shall leave you, but tomorrow at two in the afternoon,” varying with the case, “I shall visit you. You will recognize me immediately by my taking a chair and asking you to sit down. You will obey, sit down, fall soundly asleep and pay attention to what I tell you! When I have told you everything, you will awaken when I count to three!” I now ask the patient to repeat the suggestion, to make sure it has been properly accepted. I take my leave with the words: “Now I am leaving you; until tomorrow!”

At two the following afternoon I visit the patient. I act seriously, confidently and with firm faith that my intention will succeed. Keeping my gaze on the patient, I offer a chair to sit on, which the patient immediately does, because their subconscious activity is already awaiting this command and is impelled to fulfill it.

The patient sits down and falls asleep. I have now reached the desired goal and gained the opportunity for therapeutic suggestions or for what I have resolved to do. I recommend having the sleeper repeat the suggestions. Toward the end I suggest that I shall visit again. I awaken the patient with the question: “Do you hear me?” As soon as the patient responds, I command: “Pay close attention to what I tell you. I shall now awaken you when I count to three. After awakening you will feel light, fresh, energetic and healthy. Attention! One: heaviness and fatigue are disappearing! Two: your normal state is returning! Three: you are awake now, you are healthy, you feel light, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you!”

I recommend that this method of treatment be practiced only by those who are certain of their performance and convinced that they will gain control of the subject. I strictly warn against misuse.

(501) We must not call a sleeping subject by name. We use “friend” or a similar word. If we called the subject by their name, we would disturb the depth of sleep or awaken them. If we wish to awaken them, however, I recommend using precisely their full name.

This artificial evocation of subconscious activity also has significance for the administration of justice, as an aid in establishing a culprit’s guilt. The investigating judge must, however, proceed gently and circumspectly, like a close friend of the person questioned who wishes to lift the weight of the deed from their conscience. Even in sleep the person under investigation usually wants to deny the deed, having consciously resolved to deny it firmly and thereby formed strong esplana directed toward denial. These prevent the subconscious SELF from expressing itself according to the esplana in which the deed is recorded. Nevertheless, the investigating judge will succeed, because when the soul in the subconscious looks into the course of the deed in the esplana, it will reveal the deed, being pure and hating crime. I state above that one must proceed circumspectly, which means that we must not mentally coerce the person questioned or impose the deed upon them according to our wishes, but merely enable the soul in the subconscious to confess if the person is guilty.

The statements must be compared with testimony, events and the circumstances of the case, to avoid abuses.

(502) In a hypnotized person it is interesting to observe that intelligence is considerably reduced in the first, second and third degrees of sleep. This is caused by the soul’s withdrawal into one of the entry-subconscious states. Reason and will decline because the sleeper now has only a dim connection with the esplana on which their intelligence depends.

Their will is generally replaced by the hypnotist’s. Often the hypnotized person resists suggestions contrary to the intelligence they have acquired through education. Because this has passed into the soul’s consciousness, it offers resistance. In the first and third degrees of sleep the soul resists as long as it still has contact with the esplana.

(503) By contrast, a hypnotized person with inadequate education and low intelligence offers no resistance at all when brought into the entry degrees of sleep. Such a person even accepts from the hypnotist the suggestion of questionable personalities and readily manifests in their individuality, for example that of a murderer, thief or informer. Although intelligence diminishes in hypnotic sleep, other abilities often awaken, for example heightened memory and the transfer of senses: seeing in complete darkness, seeing and reading by means of the fingers or nose, hearing with the calves or back, smelling with the heel or knee, touching with the chin and so forth. This transfer of the senses belongs among the abilities of the soul itself. It is inherent in the soul, which can manifest the ability either through an instrument specially adapted for it, the eye, ear, tongue or any other bodily organ, or without one, directly.

These truly unusual manifestations prove to us that we encounter an independent being, the soul, with its spiritual acts, capable of exercising its existence even beyond physiological principles.

(504) That hypnosis, properly conducted, is absolutely harmless is proved by the facts, for over the years I have brought a subject into the fourth degree of sleep even ten times a day. I convinced myself of this during a scientific test carried out over three years with subjects whom I hypnotized many times daily to prepare diagnoses. They often remained asleep from morning until evening, apart from being awakened at noon. Sometimes they were put to sleep as many as fifteen times a day. On the contrary, this state of the soul benefited them: for example, I took on Mr. K. with a serious pulmonary illness for which he had been discharged from the army, where he had previously received thirty-five tuberculin injections. Hypnotic sleep agreed with him so well that his condition improved greatly. For several years I brought Mr. H. and Mr. L. into hypnotic sleep daily without damage to their health. That hypnosis is harmless is confirmed by eminent practitioners in this field: Dr. Bernheim, professor of the medical faculty at Nancy; Dr. Brügelmann of Paderborn; Dr. G. Ringier of Zurich; Dr. Albert Moll of Berlin; Dr. A. Schenk von Notzing in Munich; Dr. A. Elenburg, professor of medicine in Berlin; and Dr. A. Liebeanl of Nancy.

60. The Strength of Will and Its Power

Translator’s note: The accounts below preserve the author’s historical claims, including reports of experiments on people without their consent. They do not establish telepathic control and are not guidance for coercing, frightening or endangering others.

(505) Will is innate in every individual, but not in equal measure. A strong will, energy, can be developed through practice. To develop, it must have the idea: “To be endowed with a strong will.” Without this idea the will is blind and will not awaken. Hypnologist and magnetizer alike must be equipped with a strong will and clear mental images to achieve success.

We would deceive ourselves if we sought a strong will in a healthy, robust and contented person. That person’s spirit rests contentedly and undisturbed in a healthy body. We are more likely to find a strong will in weaker people, and also in those who have long struggled with an ailing body and have had continually to overcome themselves, rouse themselves and suppress bad impressions. Such mental tension and self-overcoming awaken and form a strong will, giving a person tenacity.

We also acquire a strong will through daily practice, twice a day for a quarter to half an hour, and apply it to ourselves as needed. Some people have more worries than they can handle; they cannot free themselves of them after work, cannot fall asleep and occupy themselves with them even during sleep. Anyone without a phlegmatic temperament cannot obtain peace of mind amid great worries. If I have a strong will, I call it to my aid. During the day’s worries the esplana of the upper subconscious are expanded, radiate more, vibrate strongly and stimulate the gray cortex. A strong will can obtain peace; with the firm word “I will” it interrupts their activity, so that they pass from intense radiation into a normal state, contract toward the center and fall asleep. Only a strong will can resist them.

If I set a strong will in motion, exceptionally heightened activity arises in the gray cortex, silotons are released, and subjects report strong radiation around the head. The released silotons can be given a direction, making it possible to act upon a particular person. A thought has been sent telepathically. Stronger rays issue from the eyes of a person with a firm will than from those of a weak-willed person. Will itself is a blind force; reason must dictate its direction. The assaults of a strong will upon an unprepared person are astonishing: they almost fascinate the person and make a mere puppet of them. I shall give examples:

(506) I was walking across the fields to Zábrodí with my friend Dr. Pich. On the way we sat down on a field bank. My friend asked whether I could summon our friend Hanuš by thought alone. His home was about four hundred meters from us, and because of its position he could not see us. “I’ll try!” I answered. “I’ll help you!” my friend Pich said jokingly. After about seven minutes of exerting my will at a distance, I evoked Mr. Hanuš’s subconscious activity and substituted my will for his. Then we saw our friend Hanuš, barefoot and dressed only in a shirt and trousers, running across the fields and meadows straight toward us. He reached us out of breath and asked: “What do you want of me?” We laughed and asked him to sit down and talk with us. But he objected that he had no time, that he had weaving to do, and immediately ran back until he disappeared from sight. A quarter of an hour later Pich asked me to summon Hanuš again. I exerted my influence once more. After about two or three minutes our friend Hanuš came running to us again. We could not help laughing. “What do you want now?” he asked. “Well, for you to sit with us.” “Leave me alone!” he said and ran back. We intended to summon him once more. Hardly had he entered his cottage and sat down at the loom when I exerted my influence again. About six minutes passed, and dear Hanuš was again running toward us. He must have been angry, for he addressed us: “You fellows, what do you want with me now?” He received the answer: “And what do you want here? We aren’t calling you! Are we shouting to you? Speak!” “I know that! But there’s something going on, because I see you in my mind wanting me to come to you quickly.” “Yes, that’s it. You have to obey us!” At that moment, however, our friend Hanuš somehow collected himself and said: “Oh, do I? So you’re making a fool of me? I’ll have you know I won’t obey you again!” He turned and ran home. But I called after him: “You are in my power! There on the rise in the meadow you will freeze and not move from the spot!” Running, Hanuš shouted: “I won’t freeze, I can’t hear you, I won’t obey!” But I held a vivid image and attacked him with the thought that he would halt in mid-run at the specified place. Hardly had Hanuš reached the little rise when he stood still as a pillar, one leg forward, the other behind. He only turned his head toward us and called: “Let me go; I believe you now!” He scolded us, for we were laughing at the tops of our voices because the thought had caught him in a comical position. When we had tormented him enough, I called: “You are free; you may go in peace!” And he immediately did so.

(507) A theatrical rehearsal had ended in our association’s rooms. I went to the caretaker, Mrs. K., where about thirteen of our members had just gathered. They immediately asked me to conduct some experiment with them for a laugh. I did not feel inclined and refused. “Then at least try whether you could put us all to sleep at once!” Among them were about six people whom I had already put to sleep, and I believed that the others would be drawn into sleep by them. I ordered: “Sit in a circle and all join hands!” When they had done so, I joined the chain myself. I exerted my influence on everyone. First the sensitives just mentioned fell asleep; I acted upon the others with my gaze, until one after another they were put to sleep. Those passing into deep sleep fell right off their chairs, forming ridiculous groups. I awakened the caretaker K. to show her how all the others were asleep. Then I awakened everyone.

(508) Toward autumn in 1920 I traveled to Trutnov with my brother Vojtěch. On the way we talked about my experiments. At the same time I exercised my will by concentrating on various objects, because I was to demonstrate experiments the following day. This, however, proved fateful for my brother, for when strong will is awakened, discharges of megatrons and silotons arise around the hypnologist. Although my brother knows how to defend himself, he succumbed to my influence; fatigue, closing eyelids, muscular contractions and general helplessness came upon him, though he still retained his will. To lessen my influence, he had to keep about sixty paces behind me if he wished to get out of its reach.

In Trutnov I felt hungry, so I entered a sausage shop and asked for five crowns’ worth of salami. The shop assistant, a young blonde, took a whole coil in her hand, and at that instant I thought how gladly I would eat the whole thing. The assistant really did wrap the entire coil in paper and hand it to me. I objected that I wanted only five crowns’ worth, whereupon she said: “But that’s what I’m giving you for five crowns.” I could not explain it; it was a first-class shop, yet other people asking for ten crowns’ worth of salami did not receive even a third as much as I did. Prices were still very high that year after the war. Thinking the assistant had made a mistake, and also to satisfy myself, I sent my exhausted brother to buy another five crowns’ worth. I stood in the shop doorway and watched her with the curious thought of whether she would give my brother a whole coil too. Hardly had I thought it when she wrapped a whole coil of salami for him as well. I could explain the matter only by supposing that the assistant was a sensitive person susceptible to telepathy.

My brother was feeling worse and worse, so I wanted to get him quickly to the railway station. Because there too he kept wanting to sleep in my presence, I sent him onto the platform, first giving him the suggestion: “I’m going to the restaurant. I’ll come and look in on you several times in case you feel unwell. Since there are many people here, raise your hand if you need the suggestion renewed!”

(509) I left. After a while I looked out of the restaurant doorway and saw a hand raised at the end of the platform. I went to my brother and again helped him a little by suggestion. I did this several more times. When the train arrived, I wanted to put my brother in a different compartment, but was unsure how he would fare there, because a fluid connection existed between us and there was no longer time to demagnetize him. I therefore kept him with me.

In the compartment he sat opposite me. His muscular contractions were stronger again. Then my brother said: “If you let it loose on somebody else, perhaps it would leave me.” I knew this would not be true, but understood that his own belief would strengthen him if I indulged him. I said: “On whom, then?” My brother answered: “Well, pick someone out; you’ll see I’ll feel better again.” I looked around the compartment and said: “Do you see that man over there?” “And what will you do to him?” my brother asked. “Make him laugh!” I answered. Hardly had I thought it when the gentleman stood up and, laughing loudly, leaned over the seatback straight toward us. I too had to laugh. That, however, was fateful. My brother burst into convulsive laughter at the same moment, and the other people in the compartment, looking at one another, gradually began laughing. Because my brother was almost writhing with laughter, I opened the window and, looking outside, calmed the whole company with a forceful thought, for I could not give myself away by a spoken suggestion. Calm ensued. After a while I sat down and saw the people looking foolishly at one another. Then I looked at the gentleman whom I had chosen as a victim to give my brother relief and remembered how he had laughed. This thought caused everyone in the compartment to start laughing again, even harder than before. I therefore quickly looked out the window and did as I had before. Now I did not turn away from the window again.

(510) We got out at Červený Kostelec. On the way from the station I had my brother walk behind. After about a hundred paces I noticed that someone was continually walking beside me. Since it was dark, I wanted to make sure who it was under the next streetlamp. To my astonishment I recognized the man whom I had chosen as my victim on the train. I therefore asked: “Where are you going?” The answer was: “We’re going together.” It was clear that the gentleman was still in my power. “Now you will speak sensibly! Where are you from?” I asked. “Trutnov.” “And where are you going?” “Poříčí.” “Where did you just get off the train?” “In Poříčí,” he answered. “And where are you going for the night?” He said: “To the night shift at the power station.” I said nothing, but remembered that it was precisely when the train had stopped at Poříčí, where the gentleman should have got out, that he had become a victim of laughter. I considered what to do with him. I could not identify myself to him and explain the matter. I knew, however, that he would come fully to himself once he left my surroundings. At that moment my brother called from behind: “I can’t walk!” So I gave him a loud suggestion: “You are moving quickly forward, faster still!” In a moment my brother ran past us at high speed and disappeared into the darkness. But before long he called again: “Stop me!” I therefore had to shout again: “Now you are standing still!” As we approached him, I turned to the other gentleman and commanded: “You are going back toward Poříčí, and I am going ahead!” He turned quickly and, like a soldier, began marching toward Poříčí. I watched him for a while, knowing that his subconscious SELF was his guide and protector and would take him safely to where he should be. When we arrived home, Mr. K. and Miss R. were visiting us. I pulled a ring of salami from my pocket and asked: “How much did I pay for this? Guess very low!” Mr. K. said: “Well, if it’s low, twenty to twenty-five crowns.” They did not believe at all that it had cost only five crowns. After calming down from the suggestion “You are moving quickly forward, faster still!” my brother said: “I didn’t know what would happen to me, because my legs began running by themselves faster and faster, without my being able to stop them by my own will.”

(511) I demagnetized my brother. Later I put to sleep the subject H., who had just come to visit, so that he could follow the gentleman on his way to work. For this purpose I took the subject back to the time when I had parted from the gentleman with the command already mentioned. I shall record only briefly what the subject stated: “He is walking quickly toward a town.” I therefore ordered the subject to follow him. After two hours I asked him about the gentleman again. He answered: “When he came to the town he was supposed to reach according to the command, he suddenly came to himself. He stopped, looked around as though in a dream and realized that he was not in the street by which he had always walked from the station. The street was empty. He saw on his watch that it was eleven o’clock. Thoughts swarmed in his head; he saw himself riding in the train and did not know why he had laughed so much there, and gradually recalled in fragments individual moments of that time. Later it occurred to him that perhaps he had been hypnotized.” Evidently he had retained about 60 percent of his consciousness on his journey, but could not help himself; he was governed by a mysterious power…

(512) Once, while I was working in my workshop, the subject K., who was present, told me: “I’m going across the way to visit Miss F., so you know where I am in case you need me.” About an hour later one of my workers asked whether I could draw K. into the workshop by thought alone, away from F., with whom he was deeply in love. I stopped working, began acting through the strength of my will and sent a command toward the place where K. was, ordering him to come to me immediately. Within two minutes Mrs. Fišerová, the mother of the young woman K. was visiting, came into the workshop and said with a smile: “Mr. K. asks what you want of him. Because he doesn’t want his visit interrupted, he is sending me. But I am coming more out of curiosity, to see whether it is true that you were just summoning him through your influence to come to you, as he assured us.” Mrs. F. was surprised when everyone present told her that I had indeed just wished this.

On another occasion I assured my workers that Miss Č. must be in the workshop within ten minutes. Not even seven minutes passed before she entered cheerfully. I asked why she had come. She said that she had been sitting on a chair when it suddenly occurred to her that she must come to us at once, without knowing why. I have conducted similar experiments many times with others too.

I have often put people to sleep at a distance by thought alone, without their knowing that they were to be put to sleep. At the command of another person present, I awakened those deeply asleep by thought alone. Witnesses: Messrs. Augustin Keyzlar, V. Dvořáček, E. Křeček, Miss Stonjeková and others. By thought alone I also awakened people whom another hypnologist had put to sleep. I awakened them in places where that hypnologist had suddenly lost faith in his ability to awaken the subject he had put to sleep.

I put a subject to sleep through the action of my magnetism and leave. At another person’s request, from a distance and at any time, I draw my magnetism back through the strength of my will, and the person invariably awakens within three or four minutes.

Translator’s safety note: Prolonged unresponsiveness and barely detectable breathing are medical emergencies, not states to manage by “magnetism” or suggestion. Seek emergency help; if a person is unresponsive and not breathing normally, begin CPR as directed. See St John Ambulance’s CPR guidance.

(513) A mishap befell the well-known psychiatrist Š. To carry out hypnotic treatment, he put a young woman of about eighteen to sleep. The treatment succeeded, and awakening her was very easy. But after about the seventh induction of sleep she refused to be awakened. The doctor used every means. The deep lethargic sleep was already in its sixth week. A car was sent for me, and at an urgent request I went with my subject K. to the sleeping person in Prague.

The room where the patient lay was draped in black fabric; dark red light shone from the side walls. The sleeper lay in the middle of the room. I asked what the decoration was for and was told that Mr. Š. had ordered it. I did not believe in these magical enchantments, and because it was already evening I ordered full lighting to be turned on.

The young woman had a corpse-like appearance, and her breathing and pulse were almost imperceptible. After a while I began to awaken her in the usual manner: I removed the influence of the foreign magnetism and began magnetizing her anew by creating a common radiant body. Through the strength of my will I acted with a spoken, commanding suggestion. Despite my exertion she did not move at all. I attacked her again. The subject K., who was present, began to grow nervous and asked me to put him to sleep so that he could examine the patient and discover the reason for the failure.

The subject then reported: “The girl’s subconscious SELF has closed itself off from the external world. Her trust in Mr. Š. has been obstructed; emotional resistance has arisen from unsuitable suggestions. You must gain her trust. I can, however, see a magnetic connection between you. You will awaken her if you send out the image of a good, sincere and kind friend who wants to give her relief. Create sympathy in the form that you care for her; try to win her through love, a desire for closeness and conversation. Tell her about beauty and joy, and also that she will gladly obey you in everything. Send these wishes only in your mind, but with living faith.”

I followed the subject’s advice, and it still took a considerable time before I noticed the first muscular twitches in the girl’s face. This encouraged me, so I worked all the more to create a relationship with myself, and indeed the first movements of the chest and hands slowly began. Only the eyes opened with difficulty. Gradually she came to consciousness. She did not yet perceive her surroundings and could not control her tongue. I helped her with suggestion, and her first faintly spoken sentence was: “You stayed with me?” The subject’s advice was effective. Mere commands did not help. Trust in a moral and pleasant life had to be restored.

(514) On September 15, 1925, in the restaurant at Náchod Castle, before about 250 people, chiefly from educated circles interested in these sciences, I demonstrated the following experiment among many others:

With the aid of magnetism I put the subject K. to sleep by my will and announced that I would awaken him by the reverse procedure, through willpower and withdrawal of magnetism, doing so from another room chosen at will.

I invited several of those present to follow me, and we left the room. At the witnesses’ signal, after three minutes I awakened the sleeping subject K. by my will within seven seconds.

Translator’s safety note: Do not attempt the piercing or surgical experiments described below. Lack of reported pain does not prevent tissue or arterial injury, and hypnosis is not a substitute for appropriate anesthesia and medical monitoring. Severe bleeding requires immediate first aid and emergency care; do not wait for suggestion to “seal” a wound. See St John Ambulance’s severe-bleeding guidance.

Any part of the body, including internal organs, can be operated upon painlessly in a person who has entered the third or fourth degree of magnetic sleep under a hypnologist’s influence.

Painlessness can also be produced in full consciousness, but only in a person who has already been brought into these degrees of sleep at least once.

Painlessness has arisen because the conscious SELF has withdrawn into subconscious activity and interrupted its connection with all the sensitive sensory nerves. With a few passes and a suggestion it is possible to command that the desired part of the body become completely insensible. At the hypnologist’s command the soul manifests no sensitivity in the specified part of the body, even in full consciousness.

We distinguish two kinds of insensibility: in the first the body is flexible, blood circulates regularly and a wound bleeds when an injury occurs. In the second the body is rigid, blood circulates only slightly, the wound does not bleed and immediately closes, growing together.

On that same day, during the Náchod demonstration mentioned above, I commanded the subject K.: “With five magnetic passes your arm will become rigid and insensible!” It happened as I commanded. Then, using large pins for securing women’s hats, I pierced the muscles of his arm through a thickness of eight centimeters. I did the same to the subject H. In full consciousness, the subjects H. and K. felt no pain, and the wounds did not bleed even after the pins were removed.

(515) If the rigidity, or catalepsy, of the limb upon which we operate is insufficient, it may happen that we injure an artery. During a scientific lecture and demonstration in the presence of many educated people and specialists in Mr. Böhm’s hall in Česká Skalice, I accidentally pierced the main artery in the left arm of a subject in a state of rigidity. This was caused by insufficiently deepened catalepsy. The moment blood spurted out, I plugged the wound with my thumb and acted through strong suggestions to intensify the catalepsy of the arm. Through greater rigidity the muscles and artery contracted and closed the wound. After fifteen minutes I released the arm, and the wound was completely healed.

On January 25, 1926, we had arranged a meeting at Mr. Josef Středa’s in Horní Kostelec, where Messrs. Keyzlar, Dvořáček and Horák of Červený Kostelec were among those present. Among other things, the conversation turned to whether I could put Mrs. K. to sleep by thought alone from a certain distance, despite every possible resistance, and I agreed to try. At the same time, however, Mr. Dvořáček, to whom she readily yielded because she was his subject, strongly acted to prevent her sleeping through continual conversation, commands and movements. She herself strongly resisted the pressure so as not to become the object of admiration in this experiment.

Sleep was achieved within five minutes amid great tension among all those present. After half an hour’s sleep I again awakened her by thought alone. The reason she succumbed to my influence was not only that she was a subject by nature, but chiefly that my influence, although telepathic, was stronger than the direct verbal influence of Mr. Dvořáček, her long-standing hypnotist.

(516) In 1919 a hypnotist and a conjurer visited our town. The hall “U Středů” was packed with spectators. My friends told the hypnotist about my experiments, but he merely ignored me contemptuously and rudely. This angered my companions, and they asked me to demonstrate the strength of my will to him in some way. When he began using suggestion to find suitable subjects in the hall, at my offended friends’ request I worked against him. I also did so to satisfy myself of the hypnotist’s strength. I knew that he had enjoyed great success in the surrounding area.

The effect of my influence appeared immediately. He found no one, which is almost impossible in such an overcrowded hall, for many sensitives are always present. He repeated the suggestion, but without success. He began apologizing to the audience, saying that nothing like this had ever happened to him anywhere and that he could not explain it at all. Then I left the hypnotist alone and talked with those around me. Suddenly I heard laughter and saw the hypnotist leading my good subject Miss Č. onto the stage by the nose. My friends immediately pressed me not to stand for it. The young woman had already been caught; the hypnotist held her with all the strength of his will, immediately giving her a new suggestion: “You are a grandmother holding your grandchild!” and handing her a small doll. I immediately acted with a counterthought: “You still see only a doll!” The young woman freed herself from his influence and said to him, laughing: “Why, you’re handing me a doll! Do you think I don’t recognize it?” and ran off the stage. The hypnotist performed no more experiments of this kind afterward.

He had announced two performances. The next day he learned who had caused his failure the previous evening, and came to ask me not to attend again. I had not intended to harm him, only to humble his pride and convince him. I explained this and at the same time cheered him with the promise that I would send him three of my subjects. That evening he conducted successful experiments with them alone.

(517) Once I was traveling to Plzeň with Mr. Chráska and my brother V. A young married woman sat beside me in the train. From her ticket I knew that she would travel with us for a long time. I therefore chose her as the object of an experiment and drew Ch.’s and my brother’s attention to it. The woman fell asleep in a moment. At that instant I noticed that her husband was also falling asleep. I dynamized the thought that the woman would awaken in exactly thirty-five minutes. She did indeed awaken at precisely the appointed time, but immediately shook her husband and said: “Away from this place; it feels unpleasant here!” Both moved elsewhere. It is interesting that there was a mutual magnetic connection between this married couple. I had wished only the woman to sleep. But the thought was also transferred to her husband’s oduší. If the wife is more magnetic, she has influence and power over her husband. If the husband is more magnetic, as is most often the case, he has influence and power over his wife.

(518) Very often I entertained audiences with eight to sixteen subjects, with whom I conducted all kinds of experiments without putting them to sleep. During experiments I often tested whether they could withstand my influence, directly challenging them to resist. To provoke them consciously, I mocked them and said I was merely making fools of them and that the audience was laughing at their weakness. Many really became ashamed and proudly declared: “So! You were making fools of us? I’ll have you know we won’t obey you anymore, and we won’t go onto the stage!” “Good!” I said with a smile. “Now show the audience that you can resist me. You aren’t asleep. You have retained your free will. So it will be up to you whether you refuse to obey!” Some still replied proudly: “We did it all only for your sake!” Then I dismissed them into the audience. After a considerable while I warned the same subjects that I would begin acting upon them and that they should prepare themselves. I added that through the strength of my will and a discharge of magnetism I would bring them all back onto the stage so that they could entertain us. They began laughing, however.

I therefore assumed a serious and unpleasant role, discharging magnetism to establish sufficient contact with their sensitive oduší. I looked around the hall and, exerting my will, declared emphatically: “You already feel my influence. You are in my power. You are resisting, but you recognize that you are growing all the more feeble, weaker and weaker! I now control you fully. You feel my power and attraction. I already control the motor nerves of your legs. You are taking steps: one, two; one, two. Yes, you are coming to me now, quickly, faster! You are actually running! Now you are beside me!”

I had not yet finished the suggestion, and many were already on the stage at the beginning of my words, although they said aloud to themselves: “I’m not going; I won’t go!” Yet they went, not knowing that they were going. Others, noticing that they could not resist, plugged their ears and looked elsewhere. This did not help either; they had to come. Others grasped benches and chairs and came onto the stage clutching chairs convulsively, to great laughter from the audience. When all without exception had come to me, I mocked them again. Then I seriously asked why they had not resisted. They said they had resisted strongly, but someone else had controlled them from behind, practically pushing them toward me, and it had been impossible to defend themselves. That “someone” was, of course, their own subconscious SELF, which had accepted my suggestion as its own. I explained this to them. Some then “grew horns,” grew bold again and challenged me to try once more. They assured me that I would not get them onto the stage again. I readily agreed, knowing that their will was untrained and could accomplish nothing. The subjects firmly embraced the hall’s iron pillars with their arms and legs. Exerting my will, I acted on their hands and then their legs until they flew violently away from the pillars. The rest went smoothly. There is no subject who can say that they ever defeated me by their will before an audience.

(519) Once, in the interest of scientific research, I conducted experiments at Mr. Středa’s in the village of Horní Kostelec. About fifty witnesses were present. I missed the excellent subject F., a headwaiter. He was sent for. Mr. F. came, but assured both me and the audience that he would not let himself be put to sleep and that no one would get anything out of him anymore, because afterward people laughed at him and talked about him too much. I told him that his decision interested me greatly, and asked him to sit down and cheerfully try to resist my influence. Mr. F. boldly sat down, assuring those standing around that he would not yield. In fourteen minutes he succumbed to sleep.

Under a strong exertion of will and a powerful magnetic discharge, as many as fifteen sensitives at once would fall asleep at the mere word “Sleep!” Others had to move away from my vicinity. Their sensitivity could not tolerate me. Many who had come from afar were bound to me so strongly that they could not leave my presence. I had to order them to do so, and then they could.

(520) One Sunday in July 1922 I was expecting a visit from Mr. Rýč of Brno to have a diagnosis established with a subject’s help. It was already after ten, and R. had not arrived. The subject K. therefore asked whether he could take a train trip somewhere. I agreed. At one in the afternoon R. appeared. When I asked why he was so late, he answered that the express had been delayed and he had then missed his connection. Regretfully I told him that the subject had had to go somewhere by train that morning after waiting for him in vain until then. Mr. R. deeply regretted this. Before Messrs. P. and D., who were present, I therefore declared that I would try to summon Mr. K. back from a distance by willpower, having him use the next available train connection to return. The first train from Josefov arrived around four in the afternoon. I therefore took Mr. K.’s photographic negative, through which I vividly pictured his appearance, and at the same time sent the thought in various directions, toward Jaroměř, Hradec Králové, Opočno and nearer places too, commanding the subject to take the next train and return to me. I exerted my influence in this way for fifteen to twenty minutes. After a forty-five-minute pause I began again, following the same procedure. Then we waited for the afternoon train that connected with the places concerned. D., a good telepath who was present, rose, saying: “I’m going to meet him. I believe he’ll come.” At about half past four the door opened, and to our joy both gentlemen arrived. On the way from the station Mr. D. had, of course, told the subject everything. We, however, first asked the subject to tell us how my influence had affected him and what had happened to him.

(521) The subject K. related: “I was in Nové Město nad Metují visiting my girl M. We arranged to go on an outing together with her sister to Peklo near Nové Město. Both young women went home to get ready, and I waited in front of their house. Suddenly I was overcome by indescribable anxiety, fear and an urge to return. Just then the two sisters arrived. I don’t know how it happened, but I told them I had to go home immediately. They would not believe it, but I insisted and set off. They snatched my coat from my hand. Furiously I tore it back and ran to the station. They must have looked at me as though I were mad. Hardly had I run into the station when the train was there, and I had to board without a ticket. (Note: it is evident that my first suggestion must have struck the subject in front of the house. He had to run to the station because from the image I sent his subconscious knew that otherwise he would miss the train.) I felt the anxiety and compulsion to go home all the way to Václavice. Then my thoughts grew somewhat clearer, and I considered what I had actually done. Meanwhile I had already changed trains and was traveling onward to Starkoč. I did not know why I was going home, and I worried what the young women would think of me for having done such a stupid thing. I decided to go back from Starkoč and apologize to them. (Note: we recognize that this was the period when I was not directly influencing him.) I had not yet got off the train in Starkoč when that terrible anxiety and compulsion to be home as soon as possible seized me again. I could hardly wait for the train from Česká Skalice. (Here I was influencing him for the second time.) As the train approached Kostelec it stopped again, but by then I could no longer turn back. On the way from the station I met Mr. Dudek, who explained the mysterious torment to me.”

I can turn my strong will against myself too, suggesting to myself, for example, that I shall die by morning, and I believe that it would happen.

I could give many more interesting examples, but I believe those above suffice.

We see what a trained, strong will can accomplish. The mind itself can be trained and cultivated through the action of the governing will, which works true wonders. To achieve this, we must persistently perform mental exercises, or meditations.

(522) Telepathic experiments conducted through willpower take place on the basis of psychophysical energy. When the will is exerted, powerful tremors and vibrations of neurons and esplana occur. Siloton particles of thought-fluid, transformed into waves of energy, begin pouring into space at an astonishing speed, containing and carrying within them what we desire. They are carriers of thoughts, and if we give them a direction and a goal, they strike anyone we wish. If no direction has been given to them, I call them wandering silotons, which travel independently by their own force. They evoke visual and auditory impressions and thought-images in the person. Especially if the person is very sensitive, they act powerfully, so that the person cannot resist them.

As long as the human soul is joined to the matter of the body, it cannot in any case or in any manifestation dispense with a physical route. A purely psychic route is impossible here. Only after separation from matter will the soul be capable of perceiving objects and events of the external world, and the states of other souls, directly. In this life similar experiments take place by psychophysical means.

61. Acquiring a Strong Will

Translator’s note: This chapter preserves the author’s historical moral judgments and health claims. Mental illness is not evidence of bad character or weak will, and affirmations do not guarantee freedom from illness. Do not use the exercises to ignore symptoms, deprive yourself of necessary nourishment or fluids, or replace professional care. For evaluating health practices, see NCCIH’s guidance on informed healthcare decisions.

(523) I have often been asked to give more rules and methods for acquiring a strong will. To do so, we must first discuss people who lack it.

People of weak will are the oversensitive, the hot-tempered, the scatterbrained and those driven by their desires. They are hesitant, indecisive people who cannot submit to discipline; those who cannot adapt to steady employment; poor craftsmen, moody people of the world, fickle, unstable, unpersevering, timid people, those with various whims and feelings of inferiority, and so forth.

In unstable people we observe a disintegration of the will. Volitional activity fails to form from its individual components. It is a state of psychic disorder, disturbed equilibrium and anarchy. Volitional activity presupposes awareness of certain elements, images, goals, motives and so on.

They do have a desire for truth, but not an active will. They cannot observe, investigate or judge, but above all they cannot free themselves from prejudices and superstitions that suit their feelings or imagination, or from which they derive personal gain.

People of weak will lack guiding rational ideas; they are limited and unstable in their conduct and act only according to superficial notions. They seldom master their first impulses and are exceptionally susceptible to outside influences.

Overall, it may be said that people of weak will, as well as the feeble-minded and hysterical, manifest weakened psychic functioning, in which they cannot maintain equilibrium amid changes in their surroundings.

These people often avoid healthy society, yet it is precisely society that imposes an order upon a person through which their character is shaped.

A human being is a social creature. Society forms the person and supplies their psychic abilities with fully accessible means to develop and attain a level at which refined mental images become intelligence in the realm of knowledge and will in the realm of action.

By living only in their inner thoughts, they lose the ability to act in the external world and cannot direct themselves or make decisions.

Thus people of weak will are those who have not submitted to society’s influence in acquiring a strong will, while the strong are those who have accepted it. Through all this a strong personality develops in them. Personality is the development of both physical and psychic individuality; it is an expression of social development.

The development of a morally strong personality cannot occur without countless falls.

Training a strong will also requires systematic physical and mental education: necessary rest, proper nutrition, bodily exercise and mental exercise, in which the esplana and cerebral cortex grow stronger.

(524) A weak-willed person does not know what they want, cannot weigh the consequences of their actions and loses zest for life, volitional energy, and the desire to fight, struggle and strive. They inevitably approach extinction, lose their place in the world and are excluded from humanity’s active history.

People of weak will cannot overcome the psychic difficulties of various apprehensions, fears, feelings of inferiority, indecision, vexation, lack of self-confidence, fatigue and the like.

All evil and characterless people have weak wills. Everyone must understand the fundamental truth that both good and evil lie hidden in a person in the genes inherited from their ancestors; therefore everyone should put themselves in order, establish order and arrange their unruly desires. Baseness and ignorance bind the human being; reason is then inadequate and the will weak.

To acquire a strong will, self-knowledge, “I am,” is above all necessary. This self-knowledge, often practiced in guarded silence and concentration, will grow ever more within you.

If several times a day you say or think the words “I am,” you are aware of the enduring existence of your real personality and will feel within yourself the growth of a strong, powerful SELF.

To acquire a strong will, you must cultivate attention. It increases the intensity of psychic activity. Attention must be strong so that it can concentrate freely. It is a phenomenon of consciousness and is regularly accompanied by physiological states and aroused tension, through which especially the gray cortex is strengthened. A strong will gives a person new goals and fills their life with new meaning.

(525) Write on a piece of paper: “I am persevering!” Look closely at these written words. Fix your mind and full attention upon them. After about a minute close your eyes, will it, and you will continue to see them. Look closely at them for a considerable time. This mental image will impress itself upon your esplana and leave a lasting trace there. Your spirit, your conscious SELF, will change and have something to rely upon. At other times you will therefore practice the words: I am noble, I am good, I am healthy, and so on. You will become what you begin to make of yourself. You will acquire extraordinary psychic strength.

To acquire a strong will, a person must compel themselves, cultivate self-denial and continually overcome themselves. They must master and control themselves; then they will triumph over physical weakness, and their will will grow stronger. They will be a new spirit, a new value. For every person is not only a personality but also an individuality, a unique and unrepeatable being.

The will can be trained for firmness and flexibility like a muscle. One must first recognize the nature and laws of one’s own will and realize that the soul is the cause of feeling, perception and action. We must understand the meaning and necessity of the individual exercises to begin training a firm will successfully. The will develops through one’s own searching and inquiry.

See to it that your willing is always clear, firm and precise as a command! You must always look truth firmly in the eye. You strengthen your will by disregarding unpleasant feelings and small pains and paying no attention to them! At least once a day do something you have to force yourself to do! In this way your will grows stronger. Training the will consists in practicing and repeating thoughts!

Only through absolutely unconditional obedience to yourself will your will gain certainty and firm strength. A trained will gives a right course in life and scope for self-realization.

It is good to practice gazing at the center of the root of your reflected nose in a mirror. It is suitable to combine this with a breathing exercise, deep breathing for fifteen to twenty minutes. While doing so, hold the thought: “My will is growing stronger!” In this way we grow accustomed to looking everyone firmly and sincerely in the eye and facing everything directly.

By suppressing the appetites and cravings of the body, your will also grows stronger!

Keep a complete fast one day a week. Impose partial silence upon yourself and hold one thought in your mind: “Always forward with a keen, direct, strict will!” In this way your will is tempered.

(526) All acts of self-overcoming and suppression of wishes, small and great, contribute to strengthening the will according to the law of its accumulation and growth in power.

Unavoidable evils, adversities and mishaps must temper you toward full mastery of your moods and yourself. Use them to practice firmness of will so that you can confront and resist them, becoming a victor over physical weakness!

You invigorate and strengthen your will by resolving to be absolutely courteous all day, kind in behavior and chivalrously gentle, all of which means self-overcoming. Whoever overcomes themselves increases their strength and the power of their will, as well as their creative ability and force.

I cultivate a strong will when I can postpone gratification of my instinctual images and emotions. I must be nothing but spirit and will, master of myself. Through this self-control I can close myself against unsuitable thoughts harmful to the nerves and avoid them!

To acquire a strong, healthy will and a flexible spirit, you must awaken vital strength, value your personality and continually fight against bad habits and instincts, for only in this struggle does the soul gain flight and the will grow strong.

Do not say: “I can’t help my nature!” Do not make an idol of your weakness, to which you daily sacrifice your passions: drinking, smoking, women, gambling and so forth.

Do not treat yourself softly, gently, indulgently; do not live comfortably! In renunciation and the endurance of slights, resistance, storms and adversities lie power and strength for fortifying the will.

If the will is not hardened, the strength to resist is lacking. Thus neurosis is a disease of weak will. The will becomes delicate and soft. An overdelicate willing of actions brings nervousness.

(527) If attention turns toward sensations inside the body, they intensify, because the person watches their body and at the first opportunity drives themselves into the cruel bondage of hypochondria. The will was too soft to offer resistance. A strong will masters perception, memory, imagination, thought, feeling and attention.

Any form of physical hardening also means a strengthening and growth of the will. Only someone who has themselves completely in their power can afford freedom of creative thought, and only someone who has passed through the school of self-restraint, self-compulsion and self-denial can withstand the assaults of evil in freedom of spirit.

A trained reason freed from passions and a strong will are the youth of the day: everything is cheerful, fresh and light; we feel strong and can command all our abilities.

As are the qualities of our will, so are the qualities of our character!

Therefore it is necessary to begin with the firm resolution to carry out all the exercises and rules given, tirelessly and without restriction, so that I may be different from what I have been.

I repeat the following autosuggestions fifteen to twenty times in the morning, in the evening before sleep and in spare moments, only one each day:

My willing is evident, clear and definite as a command! I free myself from all manner of pressures and order all my worries to leave!

I shall always be mentally and physically upright, taut within and without!

I know that energy held in check proceeds undiminished and directly toward its goal!

I know that a courageous person does not think, like a fearful one, that they will have to suffer. They do not expect suffering; they prepare inwardly and outwardly to defend against it, and with the best defense: attack!

Always forward with keen, rigorous struggle! Only clarity and precision of will!

Therefore everything of which I am aware must be absolutely definite, clear and precise in my consciousness! The clarity and precision of my consciousness, into which I place my willing, compel me to make an exact test!

(528) I believe that I am entering a state of complete self-mastery. My will grows firm and tempered; I direct my moods to meet every resistance!

I can retain the images, conceptions and impressions I need. Images and conceptions that harm and burden me will remain far away!

I know that a strong will is power and that the greatest obstacle in life is only weakness of will!

I know that the growth and strength of will mature reason and memory!

I know that the thoughts of the fearful run into a blind alley. The thoughts of the courageous travel an open road!

I know that intelligence grows upon the content and form of cultural life!

I know that human weaknesses make a person a repellent creature whom a morally educated person prefers to avoid!

I can look at an object, a little cup, a coin and so forth, for a considerable time so that its image remains completely fixed in my mind.

I concentrate upon only two thoughts: the coin is round and silver-gray! I admit no other thought into consciousness. Through this my will becomes very strong!

I can give myself the inexorable command that I will admit no sick thought into consciousness, but only the healthy thoughts I desire!

(529) I know that powers must first be trained upon harmless things. Therefore I practice persistently so that the result rewards the effort, and I know that with practice the defense that automatically rises against negative thoughts functions more quickly and surely!

I know that a strong will is readiness of spirit. It is the first secret of success and the foundation of great, daring deeds! Therefore I first picture every thing and thought to myself in practical terms!

I know that a firm will removes all worries!

I know that a clear, orderly, tempered, strong and hardened will makes a person master of themselves, master of others and master of their happiness and entire life!

I know that my body must be under the rule of a powerful, governing, developed will, animated by noble ideals!

I know that I must grow spiritually above undesirable excitations such as fear, sadness, sorrow, anxiety, anger, rage, jealousy, rivalry, envy, melancholy, irritability, regret and so forth!

I know that manual work brings a person to the realism of life!

I know that I can welcome evil and unpleasantness in order to refine my will!

I know that work is an expression of will. Strengthened will means strengthened capacity for work!

I know that every intentional performance requires will above all!

I know that, if I am distracted, I shall calm myself by fixing my concentration upon observing only one thing that moves slowly, such as a small cloud in the sky, or is entirely motionless, such as a coin, an apple and so on!

I know that a person who has energy will also show energy!

A man who thinks of courage will become courageous!

Whoever thinks “I am not afraid” will not be afraid!

Whoever thinks “I will and I can” will attain what they wish!

A person who thinks “I am healthy” will not be ill!

Whoever thinks “I am armed with a strong will” will not be weak!

(530) Dear reader!

You may also adapt and simplify the autosuggestions given above. And do not forget that you can expand the set of suggestions yourself according to your own needs!

Remember that you must have a genuine interest in acquiring a strong will and must continually nourish and strengthen it. From strong interest a strong will gradually develops. A person increases their own worth. As you portray yourself in the esplana, so you will be!

Action and willing must join in an indissoluble bond, just like command and obedience. This is the foundation of self-control! Therefore your willing will always be clear, definite and evident, and you will remain attentive, upright and taut as a command, strictly obedient to yourself!

Psychic abilities, aptitudes and powers exist in us potentially, but not yet in actuality. Everyone carries the source, but not everyone participates in it. There must be a strong will that wills. It protects against backwardness and primitiveness, whose mark is the collective soul. Such an individual lacks a personality of their own; they do not create their works independently but merge mentally with a group in which they are lost, becoming a mere machine. Conscious willing for cultural expansion does not develop.

Remember that every task begun and left unfinished undermines your will. Do not set yourself something you cannot accomplish! Gradually a noble feeling of certainty and self-confidence will grow within you. At every opportunity seek to apply your “I will, I must,” so that it penetrates your thinking and masters what you desire.

Only through absolutely unconditional self-obedience will your will gain certainty and full strength. Look toward the future with great confidence, and it does not matter what your present is like now, for you are on a sure path and will become a person filled with a healthy, strong and creative will. You are on the path to mastery of life.

Be consistent! Lack of consistency in thought produces inability to comprehend a greater benefit farther ahead. Intellectual consistency appears on the side of will as moral character. People who think badly and inconsistently cannot act morally; they do not know what is good and what is evil. Their morality collapses under the first impact of passion and temptation. Morality founded upon ignorance and incorrect thinking is shallow; it cannot lead to genuine improvement of a person and the creation of ethical values. The highest intelligence and morality are the fruit of a strong will seeking the true meaning of life.

(531) From time to time awaken a good mood and retain it for a while. It is a strengthening and calming bath from which you emerge refreshed and fortified by inner brightness. Be cheerful, full of good humor and a lively, flexible mind. At the same time take care to adorn your will with noble feelings, because a firm will must be directed by wisdom, deliberation and feeling.

A sense of one’s own value and worth is the backbone of the soul. If a person has a higher goal, their strength grows with it and their will becomes more powerful. Faith in oneself gives courage for the contest with life’s tasks.

Do not be soft and delicate with yourself or others! To temper and harden the will there must be strict self-obedience! Put all your decisions concerning will and health into a suitably clear light. In this way you gain a more direct and open relationship with yourself.

Will means power; a strong will subdues a weaker one. Whoever trains their will doubles, multiplies twentyfold, their abilities and achievements. Their certainty grows in equal measure.

Someone who masters themselves absolutely and completely stands upright before another person, is no one’s slave, rises far above their surroundings and subdues everyone. In this way you can make yourself happy so that you may bring happiness to others.

A weak-willed person is a burden to themselves and others, timid and frightened.

A strong will discovers talent and awakens consciousness to activity. There is no person without some talent, some aptitude for devising, inventing and combining new things. It is the gift of seizing opportunities, speculation, boldness and enterprise.

A strong will and perseverance are the mark of all outstanding people, whose qualities are calmness, courtesy, certainty and ascendancy. A strong will gives temperament and a personal stamp.

A strong spirit has a firm will and always speaks clearly and definitely.

A weak spirit must be led and is incapable of criticizing itself.

Mishaps and failures, great and small, are an element in better understanding. Time is your capital; you must know how to use it. Wasted time is the ruin of life.

A strong will desires knowledge. A person who does not read and educate themselves becomes worthless and useless. The human spirit must continually be perfected. Strive to reach the highest goals of human knowledge.

(532) The best means of strengthening the spirit and its abilities is to voice thoughts that have proved themselves in life.

A firm will clarifies its surroundings, drives away gloom and leads to creativity.

Stop seeing yourself as a ball thrown into the world by chance. Remember that a strong spirit can create a body corresponding to itself.

You must realize that in a firm will you are directly given a creative power through which you can make of yourself what you wish. Human will is the foundation of psychic life. Realize two principles: you will be what you make of yourself! You can determine your own worth!

Today you know that will is power! Physical, but above all mental, health depends on the strength and order of the will. This mighty force penetrates almost the entire body, setting it into an active state, carrying away harmful substances and repelling outside influences. A weak will brings discomfort, ill humor and discontent, which worsen every illness. Whoever has a strong will has no fixed ideas!

You see that training a strong will pays off in every respect: you can apply it profitably in enterprise, trade, a craft and art. In a so-called “secure position,” however, you will not exercise it as much, and it will atrophy. Realize that in a courageous person the thought of danger is interwoven with thoughts of action, while in a weak person it is interwoven with thoughts of suffering. A strong will never allows itself to be surprised, for it always considers all possibilities rationally in advance. A strong will overcomes obstacles, drives away illnesses, calms the mind, prolongs life and both receives and gives a higher flight. But it must not lead to pride, which is a sign of psychic emptiness and a one-sidedly directed will. A weak will and undeveloped reason create a crisis of humanity. Its chief marks are indifference to humaneness, moral inconsistency, insensibility to injustice, mockery of idealism, indifference to truth, cowardice in conviction and audacity in inhumanity. Be open in spirit. Saccharine and ingratiating people are of inferior character. It is necessary to consider the paths and methods you will follow. A truly educated person who continues to educate themselves will lead themselves and other souls toward the only right orientation in today’s world. Throughout the vast system of life’s tasks, the most important is to instill in one’s soul a conviction of the immeasurable greatness and importance of spiritual values.

(533) If a multitude of tasks presses upon you, work as though they did not affect you, and calmly deal with one thing after another. Banish from your consciousness once and for all whatever brings no benefit!

It has been and remains one of the most important tasks to sort the contents of one’s psychic life for useful motives and, with an energetic stroke, strike out all useless thoughts forever.

A strong will also reaches into the mental realm. If you have a misunderstanding with the authorities, a friend and so forth, go to them in your mind and explain the reasons for your wishes; you will see them fulfilled! If an organ of yours is diseased, you will bring it to recovery by speaking to it often! Illness is nothing other than a disturbance of physiological order.

There is no illness or intrusive harmful thought that can withstand a strong will!

Realize also that procreative force is a creative force and contains the highest proportion of vital radiant energy. It can therefore be used by the entire organism and transformed into vitality. In this way it serves regenerative rather than procreative purposes. This too happens at the wish of an active will.

Consider that reason does not always reliably show the course toward a safe harbor; one must attend to its improvement and refinement. Otherwise it can also lead us in the opposite direction. What use is reason when waves of passion rush in and overwhelm it so that it ceases to indicate the appointed course? What use is reason that allows passions, whether alcohol, drugs, tobacco or gambling, gradually to destroy a person? Here only a firm, tempered will can help, like steam power driving mighty machines against every resistance. Whoever sees the meaning of life only in amusements will not acquire a strong will!

Every thought is the germ of an act that wishes to be born, and it must be strengthened by firm will to become a clear mental image and finally an act. An inner division, willing and not willing at the same time, is often a great obstacle to attaining a strong will and success in life.

(534) Assembly-line production also weakens the will. It drives people into groups and thereby deprives the human spirit of initiative; sound thinking is affected. Psychic aptitudes, abilities and strong will are insufficiently exercised. The spirit’s activity withdraws into subconscious activity, and feeble-mindedness of the human race results. Through the struggle for existence and a mistaken view of life, depression increases and inferior offspring are born. In typical depression the attitude toward life is negative. Dynamism is reduced, and cacophoria arises, kako meaning evil: the patient feels unwell, “life goes badly” for them, their pace is slowed, and their relationship to life is anxious and painful. Improvement of the human spirit, reason and will depends upon the development and practical application of innate powers, aptitudes and abilities in one’s own work and individual activity, through which both the individual and all humanity can be healed.

A weak will believes in fate. What people call fate is only their own foolish conjecture. They lack rational judgment and firm will. Strive to acquire all useful ideals for yourself. Ideals of goodness that have been realized return eternally.

To deepen your knowledge, have a strong will, a developed and understanding reason, and an extensive world of thought.

Finally, realize that perseverance brings success. Initial enthusiasm without perseverance is insufficient. You must make these brief, useful and practical instructions your own. A hypnotist too must assimilate them if he wishes to work successfully, for the strength of his will must exceed that of the people with whom he works! I discuss perfection, the powers of reason and will, and correct thinking in the book The Cultivation of Reason and Will: The Human Being of Tomorrow. Anyone interested in a healthy system of thinking and wishing to learn it, anyone wishing to fulfill their desires, must know the powers of their spirit, reason and will, which can be brought through education and cultivation to development and maturity, so that they become human powers. A strong spirit is conscious of the strength of its thinking, is rationally balanced and stands above life. The new age requires high intelligence so that a person may mature in perfection and bring forth new values. Cultivating the powers of reason and will is the spirit’s victory over life, over its psychic and material poverty. Whoever cultivates the powers of the spirit becomes powerful, lives above time and subdues life.

(535) The book The Cultivation of Reason and Will will solve your complex problems: Searching for and knowing oneself; investigating human life. How can the powers of all the spirit’s resources be awakened and mastered? How can the future and existence of civilization be secured? How can we struggle for a new and better human being? How can we arrive at truth and goodness? How can we combat human misery? How can reason and a strong will be educated? How can great tasks and goals be achieved? How can we emerge from spiritual decline? Guidance against the modern crisis of life! Answers to the fundamental questions of human life! Investigation and utilization of new discoveries of the powers of matter and spirit.

62. How to Defend Against Hostile Influence

Translator’s note: The telepathic methods below are historical claims, not established protection against threats or abuse. If someone poses a real danger, use practical safety measures and seek appropriate help; do not rely on supposed mental control of that person.

(536) It happens that someone harbors hostile intentions toward us and wants to hurt us, for example harming us through gossip and slander, drawing us into various disputes and preparing criminal plans, injuring our bodies or property, provoking quarrels in the family, enticing someone to adultery, or nursing hatred and revenge that lead to serious crimes, even murder. It also happens that a certain person becomes so attached to someone that it causes unpleasantness.

The person concerned is usually sensitive and may unwillingly have succumbed to our influence. This condition worsens and intensifies partly through our own fault, because by tormenting us the person continually gains our attention. We think about them, and instead of firmly driving the thoughts away we succumb to them. In such a case let us obtain their photograph or picture their likeness as vividly as possible, in the latter case placing our face in our hands. Let us think of them as intensely as possible and, with firm and living faith, give them commands: “You must immediately and completely break off your attachment to me. You now have an insurmountable aversion to me; you feel horror at your conduct, and every recollection of me envelops you in dread and fear. You will avoid me; you have no courage to speak to me. Your threats disgust you, and you lose the ability to carry them out!” and so forth. The commands must be sent with great psychic strength to establish telepathic contact. There must not be the slightest doubt about the result. This mental influence at a distance succeeds best when the person concerned is in natural sleep. Their subconscious, their soul, is then more accessible to impressions. One must continue exerting this influence until a clear result appears. Let us avoid all contact with this person. But we must not cultivate hostility toward them. On the contrary, let us preserve love and friendship toward them. In this way we achieve that their soul, which hates evil in the subconscious, recognizes our good intention, acknowledges it as right and accepts in the suggestion sent our endeavor, which takes root in their esplana. They will begin to feel aversion and fear toward their own conduct.

(537) A hypnologist will achieve the result more easily. He commands a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis to connect with the person concerned and convey the commands.

There are two kinds of appetite in a human being: spiritual, the higher, and bodily, the lower. Conflict arises between them. A trained will, through the activity of reason, can have absolute mastery over released, unruly appetite and restore the disturbed harmony between them. If lower appetite is unleashed, unrest arises; rebellion against the spirit compels us to do what we do not wish, until at last we succumb. Therefore its unbridled nature must not be freed from the rule of reason and will. We must become aware of these abilities of the soul and strengthen them through practice for the necessary defense.

63. Through Depth of Life to Happiness

(538) If you wish to be happy here on Earth, maintain and cultivate a cheerful mind in all circumstances. Do not forget that a person is also destined to be happy.

You must know yourself. Therefore seek to acquire only pleasant and elevating views and feelings. Do not torment your soul with earthly worries and gloomy moods. Never grow angry; cultivate contentment and do not rage. Beware of evil, for evil signifies weakness of will. Force yourself into a cheerful mood. Set your will to creating the esplano “I shall leave worries behind,” for use when the soul needs rest. Worry, envy, anger, rage and quarrels are evil for the soul and harm the body, bringing various illnesses and nervous and mental disorders. Therefore train your will. Do not postpone what you can settle today, lest you burden your soul.

Happiness lies within the person themselves. The human soul is astonishingly rich in aptitudes and abilities through which to express itself. But people do not know how to live. The reason is that they do not understand themselves. They cannot perfectly arrange everything they have within. A person lacks self-knowledge, education and understanding. The more perfect a person is, the happier they are! A person is weak, unable to master themselves, yielding to their body and its needs. Weaknesses, moods and passionate preferences enslave a person and lead them away from happiness. Such a person does not live a true life. Whoever can master themselves can transform their life into happiness. But people cannot do this, and so there is more sorrow than happiness in human life. Yet there is the power of the spirit, which puts everything in order with the help of educated reason and strong will; therefore corporeality must be ennobled by spirit!

A person knows little about their spirit, yet spiritual reality exists. The questions of this reality can be resolved scientifically. It is an error to suppose that the spiritual is a reflection of the material! A person lives more from spirit than from matter, after all. Therefore the human spirit takes precedence over matter. For matter to prosper it must be governed by spirit. The human spirit can place its creative power into matter. It animates every work created with the abilities of its soul, and thus spirit triumphs over matter. We must win happiness through every word, thought and feeling. Everything that proceeds from the soul should be beautiful and noble. A perfect life and the attainment of happiness should begin with the smallest psychic manifestation, with the tiniest created object. Everything concrete can be a stimulus to happiness. Without feeling and love, true human coexistence cannot be realized, nor happiness attained. You must have confidence in yourself. A strong will will help you toward it. It is a source of energy. A person endowed with a strong, ready will has self-confidence and is then not disheartened by defeats.

(539) If you are ill, do not grieve. Illness too awakens the spirit to useful, great deeds.

Always choose things that are good, pleasant and useful. Reject all wickedness and deviousness directed against life’s natural beauty; do not be a skeptic, but live in a bright present. The past with its suffering is already over! Remember joys and successes experienced, and disregard troubles and failures. Live in a constantly sunny mood and expect only good things from the future. In this way you clothe yourself in the mysterious power of your soul. Be mentally balanced: a balanced person is one who lives with reason, will and feelings in harmony with the subconscious. An example: I put a subject into the fourth degree of hypnosis, in which the liberated soul manifests to us. I ask it to look into its own esplana. If it is horrified and resists, the subject is not a balanced person. If it remains pleasantly calm, we may speak of psychic equilibrium.

You must therefore overcome and educate yourself. Everything dangerous and obstructive must disappear from the brain and be removed completely. You must suppress your instincts, place healthy images beside diseased ones and make yourself master of a new psychic development. You must exert the strength of energetic willing, and the will will be installed like a superior over the other driving mechanisms of the soul’s dynamic force. You must have deep faith in yourself and the goal of becoming better. The source of human happiness is reason and will; in reason consciousness and free decision reach their culmination, and this is the best human activity. You must educate yourself through all-embracing moral principles so that your corporeality is entirely penetrated by the spirit of God. Awaken faith, and it will be not merely an act of knowledge but a willing will. Be filled with God, and you will be powerful over life already here on Earth.

(540) People who do not believe in God destroy their happiness by suppressing conscience. The formation of faulty laws follows, because they do not proceed from the true foundation. They suppose that moral laws are not given beforehand by God, but developed over millennia as the most expedient order, and that every legal form originates only in purpose. They therefore recognize no absolute justice, not even legal justice, and claim that all expediency is merely relative, and that morality and law, as well as justice, are consequently relative too.

For each individual, the good is not always merely what they inwardly feel as a moral duty and what they recognize scientifically, for moral consciousness can be suppressed and disrupted by faulty upbringing. It would be an error to seek to found morality only upon an inner moral law, thus upon one’s own will rather than upon the will of God, the lawgiver.

To derive the legal order from a body of human norms and from the expression of human willing and expediency for people’s coexistence under given conditions is mistaken and misguided!

God is absolute goodness and the foundation of everything that ought to be! There are absolute goods and the idea of justice. Moral laws are placed beforehand in the essence of the human soul and revealed by the injunction of God’s Ten Commandments.

A person is a task to themselves: they should strive to discover themselves and to know the revealed law. As we discover the subconscious, we learn what a person is: that the soul has a relationship to God, depends upon Him and has been given a moral law that gives the person morality and imposes duty. The foundation is already given. It depends upon the person themselves to discover themselves and realize themselves in deeds. Natural law is therefore the expression and development of the natural moral law given objectively and immutably by God. It is an error to regard the legal order not as a part of the moral and revealed order, but as a body of purely human norms established and proclaimed by legislative power.

64. Mental Illnesses (Causes, Types, Analysis)

(541) How many truly normal people are there? None! Yet some state must be ideal. Only reason, however, can recognize it. If we act otherwise than reason would judge fitting and right, we may speak of a deviation from the ideal state. The maturity of reason, given by natural instinct and acquired through upbringing and education, is individual to each person. On that basis we may establish a higher percentage of perfect people.

Abnormality consists in a stronger, unhealthy esplano, created by an innate indisposition and poor education and upbringing, which directs it without the abnormal person being aware of the fact.

The psychology of the mentally ill is justified only insofar as the patient has not lost freedom of action and forfeited his individuality.

In this chapter I shall speak of three ways of treating traumatic neuroses:

Finding diseased esplana disconnected from consciousness, with a traumatic stimulus, identified in hypnosis or by analytical means, and breaking them up through an intervention by suggestion.

Creating a new esplano with an opposite stimulus, a healthy mental image, whose healthy influence would combat the diseased esplano that has spontaneously entered into conscious activity.

Finding consciously repressed, disconnected diseased esplana and attaching them to the associative activity of conscious processes. By giving them the opportunity to enter into association, the influence causing the mental illness disappears.

I shall also discuss mental illnesses that have arisen from disease of the central nervous system, predominantly the brain, and those that have arisen from a hereditary disposition or aptitude.

(542) At every moment of life, the individual is a product of heredity, upbringing and environment. We change not only physically but also in our behavior and character, which are spiritual processes. I must remind those who wish to treat mental illnesses of the existence of the spirit. Those who do not believe in the human soul will not succeed in treating mental illnesses.

All classes and strata of human society are infested with psychopaths. Their thinking is not logical; it is diseased. According to the kinds of illness, their perceptions and judgments are interwoven with illusions and affects. Their concepts are unclear. Isolated feelings disrupt their logic. These occur in unhealthy personalities, whereas in healthy ones all feelings, or affects, form a harmoniously attuned, integral system called the SELF. In a healthy person, thought is an expression of the whole personality, including its emotional aspect.

Mental life is the conscious creation of something ever new, rather than intuitive and instinctual creation, through constant change, abstraction, synthesis and growth. No moment resembles the preceding one. The healthy creative activity of the human spirit shapes experiences: it changes and reproduces new activities. In the mentally ill it is the reverse. Unclear concepts, fear, anxiety, sadness, pain, lack of interest, inferiority. The cause is that the dynamic power of the spirit does not receive from reason and will a sufficient object for thought; it expresses itself in constant repetition, as unproductive mental images force themselves spontaneously into consciousness.

Human cognition cannot be merely an intellectual function without emotional coloring. Exact science itself is the work of schizoid personalities, whose difference lies in the sphere of the will, because cycloid personalities lack sufficient aptitude for it. Schizoid personalities show an affinity with schizophrenia, and cycloid personalities with manic depression. Schizoid psychopaths are personalities with complexes, and their thinking may be disturbed by isolated affects. On the other hand, they also have the ability to split off the intellectual aspect completely from the emotional. Nevertheless, they are capable of achievements of genius.

Insufficient knowledge of the human being leads to incorrect explanations of mental illnesses. The inherited quality of aptitudes and inclinations is the first factor here. Not only positive aptitudes but negative ones too are inherited.

(543) The passions, disputes, enmities, crimes, drunkenness, mental illnesses, sexual experiences, and various mental impulses arising from the terror and fear of our ancestors became strongly materialized, were embodied in their genes, and are transmitted from one generation of descendants to the next. Every child brings more or less of this unhappy inheritance into the world. Under the influence of an environment akin or similar to them, these aptitudes and inclinations soon awaken and have a deterministic effect on the child’s mental development.

A newborn child enters the world with the mental activity of one entire component, the vegetative faculty, including its sexual function, and with the second component, the sensory faculty, considerably awakened. The child’s entire mental development in the early years is governed by instinctual vegetative and sexual forces, while remaining under the constant influence of inherited aptitudes and good and bad inclinations, as well as the environment and the mother’s educational influence. These factors shape the child’s malleable soul toward good and evil. Its conscious face is embodied in the esplana. The conscious SELF of the rational faculty is formed later through the parents’ painstaking upbringing, as well as through the child’s environment, knowledge and experience.

(544) Until the conscious SELF develops and becomes independent, so that it is capable of its own rational judgments and will, it remains captive to the first two faculties, which are fully active and which it then serves slavishly, offering no resistance. On the contrary, from a desire for well-being, which is always its aim, it submits to all instinctual experiences of bodily and sensory gratification. Even when it is in the grip of instinctual dispositions, the psychic principle asserts its desire for bliss and pleasure without discrimination as to the object. Thus the instinctual person develops, with a lower SELF and full trust in everything material that gives him some pleasure, which, because of his insufficiently awakened rational faculty, he never denies himself.

It is precisely at this stage of a child’s development that an experienced educator should be present, so that through misunderstanding the child and through his own lack of skill he does not awaken unsuitable inherited aptitudes and inclinations, but instead knows how to leave them latent; or so that unsuitable drilling and harsh commands, without instruction and explanation, do not provoke various neuroses in the child by suppressing the instinctual manifestations of which the educator disapproves. A neurosis is a distorted substitute for the denial of a bodily or sensory experience that has been repressed into the entry subconscious states. A psychic defect has arisen in the individual’s development.

During the child’s third year, the faculty of reason and will, which possesses the conscious SELF, begins to develop. Much depends on the education of this third psychic component: whether it becomes a freely deciding factor and the higher SELF takes the lower, instinctual SELF into its service, or whether, conversely, the higher, rational SELF is swallowed up by the lower SELF.

(545) Psychic lawfulness has a holistic character. Healthy upbringing should proceed concurrently, with the cooperation of all three faculties, to create a unified, whole personality. If upbringing does not guide the instinctual SELF toward unity with the rational SELF, even in morally mature personalities the rational SELF may be a cause of neuroses. Their instinctual SELF, with its demands and wishes, comes into conflict with the higher SELF, which itself, through rational deliberation and the pressure of conscience, violently represses the instinctual appetites of the lower SELF. This unfulfilled wish, repressed into the entry subconscious states, does not disappear but penetrates consciousness in various forms of symptoms. We recognize that two factors are decisive in the development of neuroses: an unreasonable educator and one’s own uninstructed reason. A proper educator counters these possible dangers in good time by remaining constantly vigilant in bringing up children and acting as a bridge between the instinctual SELF and the rational SELF, continually attuning, reconciling and unifying them toward unity of will. If this does not happen, we bring up neurotics of both milder and more severe kinds.

The milder type can be treated by psychoanalysis. The more severe type is harder to treat: it is the one in which the instinctual SELF has already become completely independent and separated from the rational SELF, and torments the conscious SELF in the guise of a particular person or animal. This is a state of complete splitting of the personality: schizophrenia. In this case, treatment by psychoanalysis can no longer be applied; patients are inaccessible to it. In treatment, we must first try to unite the two SELVES into one, and only then can we proceed to seek the fundamental cause of the illness by psychoanalytical means. Alcohol and venereal diseases also weaken the overall constitution and give rise to endogenous psychoses, which, while they remain latent, diminish the power of the spirit. When they become manifest, however, they are a scourge of humanity.

(546) In a normal person, the powers of the vegetative and sensory faculties are restrained, directed and governed by reason and will. In an animal they are determined by the instinctual order. If the education of reason and will is neglected, or if their development does not manifest itself through their own powers, a person becomes dangerous and may even sink lower in his passions than an animal, his powers of the first faculties lacking a governing factor, represented here neither by reason nor by the laws of instinct. [Translator’s note: the source prints “si!” where “sil,” meaning “powers,” is evidently intended; the final comparison is syntactically unclear in the Czech.]

In every nation there are greater or smaller numbers of people whose rational faculty is insufficiently awakened and whose lives are governed by the instinctual SELF. These people, even entire groups, do not develop mental illnesses, provided alcohol and syphilis are not at work. This kind of person is little subject to illusions, feelings and pangs of conscience. They are prolific and live contented, undemanding lives. In social life they show little feeling toward one another; in battle with an enemy they are fearless, because crude instinctual power is at work in them, but less reason and will, and therefore they succumb to the suggestive influence of the reason and will of stronger people. Consequently, they like to work in larger groups under unified leadership. Neuroses are thus the fruit of an awakened faculty of reason and will whose education took place belatedly and incorrectly, and did not proceed in parallel with the education of the vegetative and sensory faculties. In place of a unified personality, a divided and disordered person has arisen. If we do not neglect to educate all three psychic faculties in unity, we create a wholly attuned personality, a whole person, who is the power of the creative spirit and of life’s existence.

(547) Man clearly shows that he is the most perfect of all creatures on Earth. The soul, endowed with reason and free will, acts in complete harmony with the body. Neither the soul alone nor the body makes a human being human, but the harmonious union of both. If this harmony is disturbed, man becomes an irrational creature. We then speak of mental illness.

If we master the metapsychic mysteries, the treatment of mental illnesses will be placed on an entirely different basis.

(548) The darkening of the spirit, or mental illness, does not proceed in the same way in all patients and manifests itself in very different ways. It usually develops from insignificant beginnings. Either the seed of the illness has existed since birth, or a disposition to such an illness develops only years later, from various causes. We say that it is constitutional, meaning that it is closely connected with the person’s physical makeup.

The causes that promote the development of the illness or bring it about are varied: severe nervous diseases, undernourishment of the cerebral center, disease of the thyroid gland, toxic poisons in the blood, hardening of the cerebral arteries, acquired and inherited syphilis, disease of the pituitary gland or hypophysis, delayed menstruation, brain injury, sexual excesses, unhappy family circumstances, great worries, deformities of the head and face, one-sided mental activity, disputes, loss of property, speculation, overwork, grief, senseless striving after anything, disappointed love, lawsuits, enmities, alcoholism, various psychopathic dispositions, the influences of upbringing, and so on.

We find that mental illnesses arise from various causes. First there is hereditary disposition, the individual past; then the influence of early-childhood experiences; and then everything we have grouped under the concept of “actual denial”: misfortune in life from which arise various privations, renunciations, misunderstandings, and the pressure of moral strictness that the individual insufficiently understands. If help is not given in every case right from the outset, it is difficult to achieve anything later. Let us be attentive particularly with children. When there is a hereditary burden, certain deviations from the normal state appear even in youth. Such children are irritable, immediately agitated, easily offended, angry and selfish; they enjoy tormenting animals, have an inclination toward criminal impulses, and are passionate, distrustful and solitary. At the same time they indulge in fantastic reveries about impossible ideals, and so gradually arrive at perverse opinions, unhealthy judgments and various eccentricities.

(549) In all the cases mentioned, the relationship to the external world may become obscured, even completely confused. Distorted, persistent mental images, or fixed ideas, arise, which at the beginning of mental illness are usually confined to a particular region of the gray cerebral cortex with its esplana. Whatever lies outside the fixed idea appears correct. In other respects such people think, speak and act entirely reasonably.

A state of the lower-order subconscious sets in through the fault of distorted, diseased esplana. The first cause of the illness’s emergence is insignificant. Usually it is some repressed thought, impression or mental image, from which, in time and with the cooperation of the lower-order subconscious, a complex develops of causal sequences of several intersecting mental images, whose directions either harmonize or interfere with one another disharmoniously. As the illness progresses, this causal bond, joined together from diseased mental images and events, splits into new complexes with a new SELF, which become independent and combat one another.

(550) The complexes are not organized into a single functional whole; they react separately and independently of one another, as if assigned to several nervous structures or several persons. Thus two, three or more conscious personalities arise, assigned to the same brain. It is a division of thought content with an outlet in several forms of expression. The complexes split off from the conscious SELF, and the divided wholes of consciousness become active by turns. Many nervous, hysterical and generally psychopathic persons live in such a state.

The initial sign of mental illness is usually melancholia, or dejection. If allowed free rein, it manifests itself in continually increasing symptoms. In frenzy the symptoms are most violent, but they lose their violence until, in idiocy, or imbecility, the illness reaches its permanent conclusion. Yet this is not always the case. Frenzy may arise and pass into melancholia. Complete or merely short-term recovery may then occur, followed by a return to frenzy. Mental dullness may also occur, from which frenzy may develop, and this may pass into permanent feeble-mindedness.

(551) Various degrees and kinds of mental illness are distinguished: melancholia, mania, derangement, confusion, feeble-mindedness, idiocy and insanity. From a general standpoint, mental illnesses manifest sensory delusions and disturbances of reason and will.

Sensory disturbances: the patient hears voices and sounds, sees all sorts of apparitions, speaks to them, and is persecuted and physically tormented by them, although at that moment they do not exist. See “Diseased Complexes.”

Disturbances of reason: patients perform unhealthy acts and are unaware of their bad behavior. Usually, in a larger gathering, a peculiar agitation arises in them, and rational activity suddenly deserts them. With an inability to discriminate, confusion gradually arises, an inability to arrange thoughts correctly; diseased mental images, sensory delusions and weakness of will arise, and a tendency to commit bad acts appears.

Disturbances of will: either complete indifference or great irritability with occasional fits of frenzy appears. Obsessive mental images also rest on a lack of rational activity and weakness of will. From this arise disturbed feeling and thinking, which cause disturbances of willing and acting.

(552) Some patients do not know what they are thinking, saying or doing; their spirit is as though in a fog, constricted and pressed down to the lowest degree of their conscious SELF.

Others experience terrible moments of mental anguish that almost crush them, until they sweat from it. Consciousness becomes more and more clouded, until complete confusion and idiocy ensue.

Some cannot sleep and are burdened by terrifying mental images to the point of exhaustion.

Others suffer terrifying sensory delusions. The patient levels distressing accusations against himself, fears incurable illnesses, insanity and death, and not infrequently puts an end to his life in such a depressed state, especially when he lacks religious faith that would support him in such dreadful moments.

(553) A very rare manifestation of mental illness is a diseased impression or thought anchored in the esplana, usually arising from an external cause, from a lack of reason and will. For example, someone has seen a drowned person, and the experience gives him no peace; the image keeps returning and compels him to drown himself too. From a similar cause, another is driven to shoot or hang himself, and cannot overcome it. Someone has read about marital infidelity; the image has become fixed in his mind, and he begins to suspect his wife. It torments him, gives him no peace even at night, and he thinks he will go mad from it. Others, having weak hearts, have heard that someone suffered a fatal heart attack. From that moment they watch themselves constantly, are anxious and afraid, and expect at any moment that it will happen to them too. At night they dream of dying, wake in alarm, and then their hearts begin to pound violently. Another is tormented by the thought that he should steal something, and has no peace until he does so. A woman despairs over unhappy love and thinks she will not survive it; she sees herself drowned, another sees herself run over by a train. Such thoughts torment them from morning until evening and are accompanied by anxiety, fear, fatigue and the like.

In these pathological cases, a particular mental image becomes intrusive and constantly persecutes the patient. Such images are usually described as obsessive, from obsession, or intrusiveness; the patients are accompanied by the fear that they will succumb to the act they dread.

(554) Others manifest alternating excited spirits and depression. This is the cycloid type.

Cyclical functional psychosis, or manic-depressive insanity, is distinguished by periodic attacks, some of which may last months or years. The attacks are characterized either by an increased pace of life, excessive activity and excitement, energy, restlessness, noisiness, a succession of bizarre thoughts, talkativeness, uncontrollable wildness, merriment and elevated mood, or mania; or, conversely, by dejection and despondency, often associated with a sense of guilt and concern for one’s health, and low spirits, or depression. Mania may be mild or violent. In extreme cases of “depressive stupor,” the patient becomes completely insensible, to the point of having to be fed artificially. These moods are not caused by some external event. In some patients, attacks of melancholia and mania alternate; in others, one type predominates and recurs at certain intervals. Depression and melancholia are symptoms of one and the same illness. They are characterized by changes of mood from heightened normal states to anxious ones, with predominant sadness, low spirits and severe despondency, when everything seems gray and hopeless. In extreme cases of agitation, anxiety, sadness and an unfounded sense of guilt, there is often a danger of suicide. We recognize that manic depression erupts in two main forms: melancholia and its exact opposite, mania. Both forms of the illness are based on increased dominance of the feelings. [Translator’s note: the source has the grammatically damaged phrase “Cyklická funkcí psychóza”; “cyclical functional psychosis” follows the apparent intended meaning.]

(555) The most widespread mental illness is schizophrenia. Its principal feature does not always rest on constitutional causes, but on emotional disintegration. It is emotional abnormality, most often with a tendency toward apathy. Patients occasionally become happy without reason, or conversely sad, and fall into a world of dreams.

There are several types of schizophrenia: the hebephrenic form is characterized by foolishness and childishness in thought and action. The affected person indulges in barren speculation and criticizes everything inappropriately, needlessly debates everything with fervor, neglects himself and his work, and has an unstable, unpredictably changeable character. Catatonia is characterized by immobility, or stupor, and muscular rigidity, or by the opposite extreme of frenzied excitement and activity. The paranoid person suffers from delusions and hallucinations. Simple schizophrenia usually manifests itself in emotional dullness, flight from reality, neglect of one’s appearance, anxious mental images, often also in mad speech and signs of delusions and hallucinations.

One kind of schizophrenia is paraphrenia. This illness is not a separate psychosis but a combined psychosis. The underlying process is schizophrenic and results from the combination of schizophrenia with manic-melancholic psychosis. At other times manic depression is added, giving rise to paraphrenia with its unrestrained delusions and hallucinations. Fantasies, delusions and hallucinations arise predominantly from the dynamic mobility of the soul of the lower vegetative and sensory order. The strongest wishes are always of an instinctual, homosexual nature. Strong homoerotic wishes that are unfulfilled and unreasonably repressed are often the governing mental image of paraphrenic delusions and fantasies in susceptible people, and penetrate consciousness in various disguises, impairing its activity. In a person weak in reason and will they lead to a splitting of the personality and the destruction of his intelligence.

A schizoid criminal showing no symptoms, the illness being latent, is far more dangerous to society than a schizophrenic with manifest symptoms. Schizoid constitutional criminality must be distinguished from pathological criminality. The pathological cause of criminal behavior is disturbed activity in certain parts of the brain that are the seat of self-criticism, memory and feeling. The criminal commits an offense when one or all of these mental qualities are put out of action, either through heredity or as the consequence of a disease that has affected the brain. He lacks sufficient self-criticism and does not realize the consequences of his conduct because of a lack of intelligence and feeling. Nevertheless, he is responsible for his acts, since every action is conditioned by the activity of the will, which in this case is unimpaired. Disturbed brain activity, however, is not the true cause of criminal behavior. Deeper causes precede criminality. The principal one lies in faulty upbringing, another in the suppression of the emotional component of reason, and also in heredity, through the action of genes burdened with the crimes of ancestors. A child can be protected from criminality by educating feeling, reason and will, and, in laying the first foundation stones for life, cultivating a pure character grounded in Christian moral law.

(556) Another functional disturbance is paranoia, conditioned by persistent and systematic delusions without other disturbances of personality. Paranoia arises when schizophrenia and manic depression combine in equal proportions and exert equal influence. The paranoiac suffers from delusions of grandeur and a fixed suspicion, or persecution mania, although he seems completely normal and reasonable. He is a victim of his delusions and is therefore dangerous. He may attempt to attack or even murder a person whom he is convinced is wronging him. The paranoiac continually returns to his delusion and is unshakably convinced of its correctness. An obstinate, delusional conviction exists in him. Another kind of paranoiac consists of people given to exaggeration, with wild complaints and accusations, who torment those around them by constantly repeating the same idea. Others see many people looking at them, and their gaze is annihilating, so that they feel afraid. They believe that these people are plotting against their lives, slandering them, and so on.

Something alien has split off from the healthy, harmonious person, a subconscious SELF has been evoked, and a “secondary soul” has formed, arousing unrest and fear, speaking to the patient in strange voices and conjuring mad images for him in the most varied forms. These are esplana, with their experiences, mental images and impressions, living on their own account.

This distorted mental state, a psychic peculiarity manifesting itself in various forms of expression, we call schizophrenia, and together with cyclical psychosis it is the most widespread of mental illnesses. Recessive heredity plays a part in both schizophrenia and depression, and they often erupt after an unpleasant experience.

(557) The study of pathological psychology has shown that subconscious phenomena often play a more important role in life than conscious phenomena.

The group of pathological cases includes that secondary soul, the so-called splitting of the personality.

This splitting occurs when, through various sufferings, isolation and longing, the soul retreats into the entry subconscious, from which it introduces a disturbance into the upper subconscious by forming diseased esplana. These form particular complexes that, through the soul’s activity, organize themselves into an independent second SELF, which pushes back the conscious, normal SELF, so that two or more personalities alternate in one body, while the healthy entry subconscious changes into a diseased lower-order subconscious.

We must also realize that many pathological disturbances of mental activity rest on anatomical or functional changes whose seat is in the brain, and on progressive paralysis.

Struma, or goiter, and cretinism, arising as a result of thyroid disease, also signify mental impairment.

In most mentally ill people, however, the brain is outwardly completely normal, so that the seat of the illness must be sought in a hereditary burden and especially in distorted, diseased esplana arising from mental anguish and the like, through which a disturbance of brain activity has occurred.

(558) The less attention the patient devotes to the external world, the more he falls into a half-dreaming state. If he gives himself over solely to internal mental images and combinations, he passes into dreaming. If the patient then devotes most of his time to imagined people and things, speaks to them and so forth, dreaming becomes a diseased state.

If the imagination is excessively vivid or in some way disturbed by a diseased condition of the nerves, the person ceases to distinguish between realities and mental images. This projection of internal mental images into reality without the discerning control of reason and will is then called hallucination.

Madness, delirium or raving, and idiocy, or imbecility and feeble-mindedness, are the dreams of a waking person. In a normal state, a person has command over both his inner and his outer life, whereas the various kinds of madness signify a loss of this command. The associative faculty therefore works without restraint. The person is not deprived of external perception, but everything is in disorder and confusion for lack of control. Madness, or mania, is either complete, concerning all activity, or partial, when only certain mental images associated with emotions of anger, pride, love and others become fixed in the imagination and exclude the rest: monomania.

Delirium is a transient mania in which the person falls into hallucinations and which is often accompanied by other illnesses, such as epilepsy.

Feeble-mindedness is an arrest of the development of intelligence at a certain low level; the most severe degree of backwardness is idiocy.

(559) This is a deeper form of disturbance and weakening of mental activity from birth. Mental weakness is conditioned by developmental disturbances. The intermediate degree is imbecility, or weak-mindedness, and the mildest is debility, or backwardness.

In hysteria, the principal feature is a mental inability to achieve internal organization and wholeness.

The mentally ill also have quiet moments, but their minds are rarely clear. They waste away physically; the digestive apparatus fails and eventually will not accept food.

Almost all people of pyknic physique, stout to fat, have a “cycloid” temperament, that is, they have alternating moods and are extroverted.

People with an adrenaline deficiency are usually neurasthenic. They lack energy, are irritable and indecisive, and often suffer nausea and pains. This also concerns brown-eyed people, who tend to be sensitive, fearful and tearful.

Functional mental disturbances need not always be hereditary or physiological, but are mostly the result of several years’ formation of harmful habits. Many psychoses result from a culmination of the failures that befell individuals when they had to adapt to their environment. “Predisposing” and “unexpected” factors also mostly influence the emergence of functional disturbances. Heredity makes people susceptible to mental illnesses, but the illness does not erupt unless it has been provoked.

(560) In contrast to mental illnesses, or psychoses, neuroses have a milder form. Neurotics suffer from a “diseased mind” and are “odd” or “eccentric.” In many respects, however, they appear normal. Yet they are assailed by fear, anxieties or compulsive states. They are nervous and often suffer physical difficulties: headaches, dizziness, digestive problems and other ailments. Most neuroses have a psychological origin and arise from certain emotional conflicts that apparently have no connection with them. A forgotten emotional shock is usually the cause of a neurosis. It must be uncovered by psychoanalytical treatment through free association so that the patient becomes aware of it and comes to terms with it rationally with the aid of the psychoanalyst’s explanation. The cause of the neurosis is removed, and the illness disappears.

Neuroses arise from constitutional weaknesses and a lack of energy, which may have its origin in heredity. The vegetative, instinctual power of life, with its inherited primitive traits, impulses, inhibitions and strivings, feeling and thinking, has an immense influence on our mental life. The forbidden or socially condemned impulses of our “collective subconscious,” stored in the genes, continually strive to cross the threshold of our consciousness and are repressed by the moral SELF. This creates conflicts that, if strong enough, lead to neuroses. Repressed mental images and wishes may creep into consciousness as dreams, although in altered form. Their true meaning changes into a symbol. In psychoanalytical treatment we also take dreams into account and analyze them.

(561) Thwarted self-fulfillment is likewise often a cause of neurotic disturbances. It is then necessary to rediscover the innate capacity for life, which we enable to find expression in some direction.

Those susceptible to mental illness must avoid a hostile attitude toward their neighbors; otherwise a diseased conscience, self-punishment and depressive states will be evoked.

In this way I could enumerate endlessly the various kinds of mental disturbances, milder and more severe, which have entered the soul like parasites, disturbed its peace and balance, and gnaw at a person’s health like a destructive worm.

To understand the mentally ill, we must enter deeply into the psychology and souls of the patients.

The patients’ souls are occupied with mad mental images and ideas. It is an endless battle taking place within. The struggle taking place in the soul, the madness that governs all thoughts and feelings, and the fear that weighs oppressively upon the mind fundamentally alter the entire picture of experiences, show it in distorted form, and lead to a bodily interpenetration of everything experienced inwardly and outwardly.

(562) By analogy, in medical psychology and psychiatry, a bodily illness appears to us either as a material phenomenon, if we examine it by physical or chemical methods, or as a spiritual phenomenon, if we examine it psychologically, or psychoanalytically.

Through psychoanalytical treatment we treat hysteria, poriomania or pathological wandering, psychasthenia, phobias or fear and obsessive mental images, depression, neurasthenia, weakness and fatigue associated with much pain and suffering, anxiety neuroses, persistent distress, hypochondria, and preoccupation with one’s own health and bodily functions.

I know means by which I can establish how far a mental illness has progressed. The mentally ill react little to stimulation by external causes, because their subconscious SELF weakens and retreats into the lower-order subconscious. But I cannot yet make these means public, lest they be misused. Patients would test themselves by them, would constantly watch themselves, and would thereby only become more entrenched in their illness.

(563) According to Professor Horace B. English, a psychologist at Wesleyan University, there are five to ten million feeble-minded people in the United States alone as a consequence of mental backwardness.

But do not be alarmed! Every disturbance can be cured in its beginnings, that is, at a time when the organic foundation of the diseased esplana is still weak. Later, only with great difficulty. A great many mentally ill people have been brought to me. I studied and observed their condition, kept many with me, and on the basis of my research treated them and also cured them.

To enable us to enter into the mental torments of a patient and form some idea of them, I give here one of many examples, recorded in a sick person’s own hand. Because of weakness of will, the mentally ill are usually unable to express their torments adequately in words, although they are often aware of them. I therefore used my will and my magnetism, which supported them, so that they could record their condition adequately with pencil on paper. I did not influence them through suggestion, since then they would have had to write something at all costs; instead, I linked myself with them magnetically and exerted my faith so that they would write only what they actually experienced mentally, what they suffered from.

The account comes from an intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who was ill. She writes:

(564) “Indistinctly outlined feelings and thoughts begin in me; they carry the thought of tormenting or agitating myself over something, whatever form it takes, whatever it may be. I find myself as though in another world of inexpressible impressions and feelings for which there are neither words nor thoughts. My head hurts, my chest is tight, I want to cry or laugh convulsively. There is something unknown here, astonishingly remote from ordinary feelings and thoughts. I have no words for it. The most bizarre thoughts may occur to me, and I have absolutely no sense of judgment or reason with which to realize that they are nonsense. In that state of suffering I help myself with a certain thought, but it is unclear, foggy, and expresses very little. It seems to me that I am returning to a normal state, yes, now that thought seems tremendously stupid to me. It is coming over me again now. I know I am writing, but somehow I lose the sense of what I am writing; I almost do not know what I am writing, and I am at home, I see the school and myself at about eight years old. But it cannot be said; it has to be felt. It is everything and it is nothing. It is absurdity, tremendous absurdity. All feelings are heightened at the same time; something like intense hypersensitivity sets in. It is something beyond my thinking. It is a rapture, a being carried away, but low, terribly low. The thought occurs to me that I am going out of my body through my head. I am terribly frightened by it; I analyze it, but not rationally, I have no reason here at all. I analyze it and fall into chaos, I do not know which way to turn, and I become more and more entangled in the muddle. I begin to be alarmed at why I am analyzing such stupidity, and already it gives rise to a chain of nonsense stretching into infinity. It seems ridiculous, but it is not. I am no longer in that state, but I am afraid of it. I become afraid of that fear; I do not know what it is: absurdity, not understanding. I look at my hands: I cannot comprehend that they are my hands, I do not know how I came by them. I look at my body and am frightened: is it me, or someone else? The speech of the people around me seems to come from an immense distance. (Note: people were talking in the room just then.) I do not understand where I am, what I am, what they are saying to me now. (Note: she was being spoken to.) Why are they saying it? I see an image of the past, my grandfather’s house, and I am constantly there. The thought occurs to me that I am going mad, although I have no reason for it and can myself find nothing to suggest it; why should I admit such a thought out of fear for myself? And now I am seized by such astonishing terror that I am simply going mad. The torments of fear disappear: I explain it to myself through reason, and suddenly I recognize that perhaps I was not really terrified of going mad at all, but of something else. Yet again I invent reasons for that dreadful fear. I am incapable of thoughts, I do not know what to think; my head is empty; I have to analyze every thought of mine, I am afraid of every thought of mine, I am incapable of taking pleasure in anything or of feeling anything. I am seized by a terrible hatred of myself, of my SELF, into infinity… But it is dreadful, so dreadful that nothing could be more dreadful… I analyze beauty, the concept of beauty, the meaning of beauty… how do I come by it? I drown in thoughts; I lose myself, vanish, dissolve into horror-filled terror, monstrous horrors…”

(565) At this point the patient’s writing hand failed her. The person concerned also had moments of mental peace. When she emerged from her mental suffering, she read what she had written and recalled everything, saying as she did so that the evil from which she suffered was not described here at all; it could not be expressed by any word that would enable us to form some idea of it. “Anyone who has never experienced it will never believe it. If I recover, perhaps I too will no longer understand it,” she said.

In fourteen days with me, the girl recovered sufficiently to resume her studies.

In what did this girl’s mental illness consist? The harmony between matter and the soul of the conscious and subconscious SELVES had been disturbed. I offer an analysis of this illness:

The soul is immaterial, without particles, simple, and therefore the illness did not and could not arise in it. The matter of her cerebral center was not impaired, as the subject also confirmed. There were only partial anemia and overwork through study; the esplana in certain regions were also greatly enlarged and radiated and vibrated more than those surrounding them. The cause was excessively passionate reading of occult books, as the subject established and the young lady’s parents confirmed. She was very delicate, dreamy and precociously mature. She positively devoured metapsychic phenomena, and because almost all occult writings contradict one another in their explanations, much of what she read was difficult for her still weak spirit to grasp and remained intellectually unprocessed and undigested in the esplana, because a rational and convincing explanation was lacking. Her diseased mental images became disconnected from conscious activity and lived on their own account. Meanwhile she wasted away physically.

(566) For this reason the esplana concerned, overfilled with all those unhealthy impressions, images and thoughts, were constantly restless and, in their constant and extraordinary activity, needed very large quantities of the finest nutritive substance, which, when the supply was inadequate, they sucked from the brain’s gray matter. It is understandable that a certain weakness had to arise in the gray cerebral cortex, manifesting itself inwardly in weak undulation and rippling of the gray cortex during conscious wakefulness, and outwardly in mental fatigue and weakness of will in the conscious SELF. That is why dejection, or melancholia, was observed in the patient at the beginning. Constantly tired, she liked to indulge in physical and mental inactivity, though not complete inactivity, for her conscious SELF was constantly being pulled along and carried away by those irritated, active esplana into a stream of the most varied illusions, fantastic thoughts and impressions. At first this did her spirit quite a lot of good and was pleasant to her, because she did not even have to exert herself to think, and yet she was thinking. Through this, however, the conscious SELF grew weaker and weaker. For the conscious SELF gains strength and power only when I myself wish to think, while also allowing the gray cortex healthy peace and rest.

From the weakness and fatigue of the gray cortex, and thus also from fatigue and lack of will, a retreat occurred from conscious activity into the activity of the entry subconscious, where, as explained earlier, the soul liked to indulge itself and dream in mental comfort, carried away by a lively, fantastic imagination. This initially healthy, normal activity of the entry subconscious later changed, under the influence of restless, irritable, burdened and unhealthy esplana, into diseased activity of the lower-order subconscious.

(567) In this person, the weakening of the conscious SELF resulted in the weakening of the surrounding healthy esplana, in which the reason of the conscious SELF asserts itself in relation to the visible world. A weakening then naturally also occurred in the mutual connection between consciousness and the upper subconscious of the healthy esplana, in which rational knowledge of the external world is reflected.

We know that the soul is constantly active and knows no fatigue. Because its activity in the conscious SELF was weakening, the activity of the lower-order subconscious SELF had to arise and awaken, all the more so since the young lady knew of this activity of the subconscious SELF from occult writings.

(568) But the lower-order subconscious SELF is like a speeding train without a driver. It has no governing factor, is not directly acquainted with this visible world, and brings and asserts other impressions, which it has received mostly by telepathic means or conjured up itself in fantasy. These impressions, pressing into consciousness from the lower-order subconscious, are alien to the weakened conscious SELF, are not its own, because they are formed in the esplana of the conscious SELF. [Translator’s note: this apparent contradiction is present in the source.] These intruders, which have entered empty esplana, suddenly appear to the oppressed and weakened conscious SELF. What happens? Feelings of fear, anxiety and the like arise, for these impressions, experiences and images were not received and formed in consciousness, during conscious brain activity. They are outside consciousness. Thus a disturbance of harmony arises, and diseased activity of the lower-order subconscious is evoked, disrupting the psyche. The psychic SELF, with its content stored in the esplana, is unreceptive to accepting intrusive, senseless behavior and the mental images of the lower-order subconscious. Functional associative continuity is thereby lost.

Chaos arises in thinking. These esplana, containing alien impressions, live at the expense of the person’s own healthy esplana and suppress consciousness, which ceases to be active in relation to the external world, so that this world then appears alien to the soul. Thus the lower-order subconscious SELF has frequent opportunities to take the place of the conscious SELF and fully assert its unhealthy activity. At such a moment a more intense psychic manifestation arises, expressing itself throughout the gray cortex in strong rippling and irritation, thereby awakening old esplana present from the time when the young lady was healthy. And so she suddenly sees herself as an eight-year-old girl, then is with her grandfather again, and so on. The weakened conscious SELF then stands there as a receiver of everything formed and awakened during lower-order subconscious activity; anxieties, fear and mental torments arise.

Conversely, however, these old, awakened impressions are also alien to the lower-order subconscious SELF and, with its boundless imagination, stimulate it to create the most nonsensical ideas, which then arise in the brain as if a film were being shown in a cinema.

(569) That evoked lower-order subconscious activity is poisonous to the activity of the conscious SELF. In the chaos of the agitated esplana, the lower-order subconscious SELF too must suffer quite often. That is why, in the young lady, it wanted to escape to freedom from the tormenting prison of the body and urged her toward suicide; impressions arose as though the soul wished to fly out through her head. The lower-order subconscious SELF completely suppressed consciousness, which did not recognize its own hands or body, and impressions of madness returned, which would have erupted outwardly had there not been timely intervention and treatment.

We know that the lower-order, even healthy, subconscious SELF forms images, thoughts and so on very rapidly. The weakened conscious SELF is thereby terribly tortured, tormented and beaten down, because everything is alien to it, and suddenly complete exhaustion and prostration of consciousness arise.

This violence and power of subconscious activity, manifesting itself unrestrainedly in the brain, soon exhausts the gray cortex. In the young lady it would then fail after two or three hours, exhaustion would arise, and it would settle of its own accord into quiet. But it was the quiet of a person loaded with so much that he must rest beneath the burden and is unable to move it for several hours.

(570) Brain activity in the esplana is like a large railway station with a great many switches. For everything to run properly and to prevent a catastrophe, a collision of trains, the station must have an alert switchman. It is precisely the same with brain activity, where there are a great many esplana. There the rationally healthy conscious SELF directs and sorts everything, so that concepts do not become confused. If the station has a sleepy, tired and incapable switchman, a catastrophe must occur. Something similar happens in brain activity when the conscious SELF is weak and exhausted.

That is roughly what an analysis of the above-mentioned girl’s mental illness looks like. I can analyze every other case in a similar way. To this I wish to add some general remarks explaining the usual course of the development of mental illness. At the same time I shall describe how mental disturbances appear to a subject observing the brain.

First I shall repeat what was said in the chapter on the brain and its activity. The conscious SELF awakens to life through the movement of the entire gray cortex. Awareness of something rests on the awareness that we are thinking. The external world stimulates our senses; thought formations, impressions, mental images and concepts form in the brain and are captured on the rays of the esplana in the form of luminous little knots.

(571) If someone is beset by worries, miseries, troubles, failures, difficulties and the like, the esplana become burdened with an unhealthy thought with which he constantly occupies himself in his mind. Through this continual thinking and dwelling on one and the same thought, the esplana concerned and their little knots become greatly enlarged, because they have been forcibly and unnaturally stimulated, and pass into more powerful vibration and radiation. This, however, has a harmful influence on the gray cortex, since the content of the unhealthy esplano forces itself spontaneously into it and disturbs the person’s peace of mind.

We know that the thought contents of the esplana should impinge on the gray cortex only when we wish them to. If this happens spontaneously, the cause lies in overstimulation of the esplana. Exceptionally, this happens to everyone after intense mental strain. The conscious SELF suffers from the disturbance thus arising in the upper subconscious. For the gray cortex is stimulated to activity by constantly recurring thoughts and becomes exhausted, and the soul, whether it wants to or not, must remain ceaselessly aware of the same thoughts and events. After a performance, the amateur actor sees in his thoughts again the action he has performed, the scenes and speeches; he hears the prompter, and in this state, sometimes even after several hours, he falls asleep. He grows weak and tired, constantly disturbed by the thought concerned. A patient tormented by such a fixed idea generally avoids company and refrains from speaking, lest he perhaps make a mistake in his speech. He becomes melancholy because he suffers mentally. In time the fixed mental image gains ascendancy over the psychic conscious SELF and impels the patient toward outward manifestations, and we observe how confused he is and how he constantly repeats the same thing. We say of such a person that he suffers from a fixed idea.

(572) The matter is somewhat like a musical instrument, an organ, for example. If the instrument is in order, a current of air enters each individual pipe only when I press the corresponding key, thereby opening the valve that controls the air supply. If the instrument is defective, that is, the valve does not function, the pipe remains open and air enters it without the organist’s wish, without pressing the key. The pipe then sounds continually and disrupts the performance. Harmony is disturbed; concord has ceased to exist.

We also know that all esplana need nourishment. They receive it through the evaporation of nutritive substances through the neurons of the gray cortex. Because the fixed idea has brought one or more esplana into an abnormal state and the association of thoughts according to the law of simultaneity is disturbed, the patient being unable to activate healthy, related esplana, they need more nourishment and draw it in greater quantities from the gray cortex of the entire cerebral region in which the abnormally enlarged, irritated esplana are situated. This is detrimental to the gray cortex, which then becomes diseased in the same place, and consequently the psychic capacity of the conscious SELF weakens. It then lacks the strength to resist, the fixed idea gains ascendancy over it, and the illness becomes manifest.

(573) If I succeed in putting a mentally ill person to sleep and bringing him into the fourth degree of hypnosis, in which consciousness disappears completely, we observe that his spirit is entirely healthy: the mental disturbance has suddenly vanished. How is this possible? It is because, as we already know, in the fourth degree of hypnosis the subconscious SELF has no connection with the esplana. This is proof that what is involved is a disturbance of matter, and not of the soul.

In mental confusion, an advanced subject observed a disturbance of brain activity in the esplana. It consisted in the fact that many little knots in the upper esplana were extraordinarily enlarged, and many of them were joined together, fused into one another. Thoughts were no longer being sorted but merging together. During the activity of the conscious SELF, the corresponding impressions were perceived already merged, so that the conscious SELF expressed itself outwardly in a confused manner in accordance with them.

(574) In cerebral neurasthenia we observed enlargement and weakening of the neuronal cells of the gray matter in various regions of the brain. In some we also observed constant movement of the gray cortex during the day, and often even in sleep. In the exhausted gray cortex the soul is bored, tired, irritable, agitated, easily startled, and so on. When the gray cortex moves during sleep, sleep is restless, and patients rise in the morning tired and nervous. In some we observed greater enlargement and radiation of the knots of the esplana. Occasional stronger vibrations stimulated the gray cortex in its activity, bringing it into an event, a dream.

In weakness of memory we observed insufficient activity in both the lower and upper esplana, insufficient vibration and radiation. In some patients, certain places were even empty, without esplana. And such people actually complained that they had forgotten many things entirely and could not recall them when questioned. At the same time they complained of having very poor memories: whatever they did not write down, they forgot. The cause was undernourishment of the esplana, that is, insufficient evaporation of nutritive substance.

In sudden arrest or failure of memory, we observed that a particular cerebral region of the gray cortex fell into a state of rigidity, or catalepsy, in which it remained for several seconds or even minutes. Such individuals suddenly forget what they are thinking about, what they are speaking about, and so on, although their mental capacity otherwise remains intact. At that moment they do not know what they have done or accomplished, and so forth.

In weakening of the will we observed a diseased state of the gray matter, weak activity in rippling and undulation, which gave rise to depression. Here the principal cause was overwork and sometimes also undernourishment of the gray cortex, caused by poor blood circulation and poorer quality of the blood.

(575) In dejection, obstinacy, disobedience and lying, we observed persistent inflammation of the nerve endings of the medulla oblongata, which surrounds and penetrates the brain. The content of the esplana consisted of illogical concepts and mental images.

In the frenzied we observed powerful movement of the gray cortex and many broken connecting fibers of the neurons, frequent cataleptic states in certain regions of the brain, and abnormally enlarged esplana with little knots.

In the feeble-minded we initially observed weakness of the gray matter from lack of nourishment to the brain, and weak, insufficient vibrations of the esplana; after some time, disintegration of the neurons and esplana as well, usually in a particular region. Insufficient development of the gray cells, or neurons, was also observed, their number sometimes greatly restricted, along with pathologically altered connecting fibers and indistinct furrowing of the brain. Much fluid is present in the brain’s cavities.

In very rare cases the soul makes a substitute arrangement for its conscious activity in the radiant esplana, in their nuclei. In these radiant upper esplana, the upper subconscious is then situated on the rays and luminous little knots. The lower esplana of the upper subconscious already have a direct connection with the nuclei themselves of the upper esplana at the time when the conscious SELF is awake and developing its thought activity.

Thinking is the conscious joining and separating of mental images into new wholes for the purpose of cognition, which is a conscious adaptation to the conditions of life.

The result of conscious adaptation is knowledge.

(576) A person thinks and judges so that the resulting knowledge may be true. What he decides and works out after his own experience and correction of errors, he is convinced is correct and true. Truth is the judgment of an individual subject; it is subjective. Thoughts and findings that we evaluate objectively, without reference to our own person, are correct or incorrect. I myself recognize their correctness and maintain that everyone will recognize it, provided he has sufficient knowledge to do so. Truth is an expression of the subject’s conviction of the correctness of an opinion, judgment or assertion. Sometimes conviction attaches itself to findings not thought through rationally or verified by experience, to an opinion that has grown from an initial conviction on a rational foundation of very weak reasons.

The average person often relies on the convictions of others, and thus, without an opinion of his own, remains remote from his own knowledge and takes an incorrect and mistaken path. He often falls into ruin, and this failure frequently also leads to psychic disturbances. False perceptions and hallucinations arise.

(577) A hallucination is a diseased perception. It is diseased because it arises without a physiological stimulus from outside and because the patient is unshakably convinced that this stimulus exists. Close to hallucinations are inserted thoughts: the patient knows and is convinced that someone outside him is imprinting or suggesting thoughts to him. Hallucinations arise through mental deception; the patient believes them and takes them to be true. In this they differ from normal false perceptions, which also arise in healthy people, with the difference, of course, that a healthy person knows and is convinced that they arise without a stimulus from outside.

The hallucinating person cannot be persuaded that his deception arises without a physiological stimulus, and is unshakably convinced of its existence. Memory deceptions and delusions have the same psychological character. A memory deception is a recollection of an event that did not happen. The patient believes he has experienced what he read about, what he dreamed of, or what his imagination created for him.

A delusion is a judgment whose content is always false, but of whose correctness the patient is convinced. Delusions mostly hatch as momentary ideas. For example, the patient is convinced that someone is persecuting him, that they want to poison him, that he has suffered a legal wrong, that he has a higher social mission, or that other people are harming him.

Conviction of correctness is an essential feature of these disturbances and accompanies incorrect judgments.

We recognize how important it is to distinguish the correctness of a judgment from its truth.

(578) Insufficient conviction characterizes obsessions, intrusive thoughts by which the patient is besieged. In these unpleasant states the patient has to reassure himself repeatedly that he has locked the door properly, turned out the light, and so on. Such people lack the subjective element of belief and conviction that proceeds through an internal rational judgment toward establishing correctness, so that they can escape such constant, distressing doubts.

Psychic neuroses must be divided into states actually present in consciousness, the present content of consciousness; states potentially present psychically, the sum of all contents insofar as they are in the esplana and can be reproduced; and repressed psychic states, which, being unable to enter consciousness from the esplana, seek various indirect paths to find expression.

The cause of the repression of various kinds of mental images and impressions may be upbringing in which the educator, through inappropriate, harsh and forceful drilling, suppresses the individual’s development in his innate vitality, for example because these impressions and mental images are often of sexual origin even in early childhood. Frequently the cause is some unpleasant affect: fright, fear, ridicule and the like. A psychic trauma has formed, arising in various circumstances that were poorly explained.

Something prevents these mental contents, dwelling in the esplana of the upper subconscious, from entering consciousness and dynamically expressing themselves. They therefore have a disturbing effect on the course of intellectual and emotional life.

(579) In bringing up children, let us not forget that the vegetative faculty has the character of wholeness at the child’s birth, does not develop, and also fully possesses sexual power, which asserts itself in every child from the earliest age. Its reproductive striving breaks forth, indeterminate in character, and manifests itself indirectly in various forms of mental experiences, feelings and images, in irritable behavior, observation and touching of its own sexual organs, sucking a finger, a boy’s preference for his mother and a girl’s for her father, and so on. This excitement, producing bodily and mental pleasure, is in reality a hunger for unconscious and unknown sexual gratification.

(580) The vegetative faculty has the character of holistic activity and is the first driving force in a child’s development. The sensory faculty asserts itself in some sense organs immediately after birth, in others a short time afterward. The rational faculty awakens last, under the influence of environment, upbringing, knowledge and experience. If we neglect the education of feeling, reason and will, they remain in the service of the instinctual vegetative and sensory faculties, which consume most of the spirit’s dynamic power for their activity. Unless the education of instincts and feelings, as well as of reason and will, is well chosen, the child lacks psychic equipment for the struggle of life. Through an insufficiency of the rational faculty, the unrestricted vegetative force in its instincts comes into conflict with the conscious SELF and the environment in which the child lives. In time inferiority arises, and sooner or later the child succumbs to neuroses.

A child generally has sexual instinctual acts and manifestations from the third year onward. If we disapprove of them, we must not forcibly repress them with shouting and punishment without prior instruction and explanation. I do not mean a direct explanation, but the use of various words, pointing out, for example, their impropriety.

(581) Comparative research into the causes and stimuli of illness leads to the conclusion that these people, remaining stuck in the vegetative faculty, readily become ill through denial and repression if the educator, or reality in later years, prevents them from satisfying distorted, though even normal, sexual wishes. Denied, unsatisfied mental impulses of a sexual nature, merely repressed without a moral and rational explanation, remained unconscious. The faculty of reason and will did not manifest itself. The absence of clarification and explanation, and the repression, then have traumatic effects in these people.

The repressed, unsatisfied experience retreated from conscious activity into the realm of the unconscious, or entry subconscious, which it changed into the quality of the lower-order, diseased subconscious. The mental experience did not disappear; it remained active, and its force penetrates weakened conscious activity in various unpleasant symptoms and feelings. That activity is weakened and tired because the experience, through its action, continually drains the mental power of conscious activity. Thus a neurosis with a traumatic stimulus arose. A neurotic symptom always has a meaning, because it is connected with the patient’s experiences. An obsessive neurosis manifests itself in patients’ being occupied with thoughts in which they are not actually interested and being impelled by them toward actions that give them no pleasure. As the illness worsens, they lose interest in the present and future and constantly occupy themselves with the symptom. A hysterical neurosis may also manifest itself, affecting all organ systems and thereby disturbing their functions.

(582) Hysterical and obsessive neuroses rest on the fact that certain unconscious processes exist in the patient that contain the meaning of the neurotic symptoms. Symptoms do not form from conscious processes. As soon as the unconscious processes have become conscious, the symptom must disappear. By means of psychoanalysis we can best deal with an experience that always contains a very strong affective component.

Repressed mental images of life’s goals, including images of drilling that have themselves remained hidden in the esplana, and images arising from unreasonable self-education, as well as childhood anxieties experienced at birth and evoked by unsuitable punishments, which were accompanied by strong feeling and by a loss of their associative capacity, are the cause of many neuroses and mental illnesses.

Awareness of inferiority and inadequacy is also often a cause of repressed mental images. These repressed images, situated in the esplana, have not matured there in their own right and do not enter into associative activity in consciousness during thinking. They have escaped the power of the other esplana and remain excluded. Through their reflection, these immature, repressed mental images, not finding expression in ordinary life, act upon that hidden and unknown unrest in normal mental processes which manifests itself in various states of neurosis, hysteria, anxiety, fear, obsession and the like. They must be distinguished from other bodily actual neuroses, such as neurasthenia, hypochondria and so on, which we treat by biological means, suggestion and autosuggestion.

(583) The symptoms of neuroses are substitutes for what has been repressed, and are harmful to the patient’s life because they escape his will, thereby bringing him suffering and destroying his vital energy.

The soul, robbed of conscious volitional expression, retreats into the entry subconscious states and introduces a disturbance into them, whereupon they become the lower-order subconscious, in which the mental illness visibly manifests itself.

Through the action of internal and external pressure, repressed mental images are joined with fantasy, in which they free themselves for a time from the dominion of intolerable pressure. In fantasy, longing takes the form of a fulfilled wish, for the creations of fantasy possess psychic reality for the neurotic. This brings satisfaction without clouding consciousness, although the gratification has no material reality. Dreams too, particularly symbolic ones, are often a distorted substitute and an expression of a fulfilled wish belonging to repressed mental images.

(584) In treatment by the method of psychoanalysis, the psychiatrist must arouse the patient’s trust through his personal charm, ask him to lie down, and with the aid of magnetism form a common body, enter into the patient’s state, recall what has been pushed below the threshold of consciousness by placing his hands above the temples, persuade the patient that he will remember everything easily, and neutralize the mental images, thereby making the illness curable. He will speak with interest about the patient’s diseased complex, analyze it and illuminate it, thus freeing it of its diseased effect. In doing so he will act suggestively, encourage and advise, but never command. As he gains trust, he can then remove the oppressive mental image through a deep intervention into the patient’s intimate life, drawing what was unhealthily repressed and forgotten into normal consciousness, illuminating it and making it understandable for awareness in the waking state. He will proceed in the same way with intrusive mental images. In this way we establish a new plan of life for the patient. If he succeeds in recalling with complete clarity the thought of the event that caused the difficulties, and in awakening the affect in the same mental disposition and agitation, crying, rage or convulsions, as originally experienced, and expressing them vividly in words, he draws it into normal consciousness; it thereby enters into association, or is abreacted, and the effect of the diseased trauma disappears.

A healthy person can explain various things to himself, “analyze” them himself, and thus escape the circle of oppressive mental images. The neurotic and the hysteric cannot do this without a physician’s help.

(585) Investigating the events that preceded the mental illness, seeking by means of psychoanalysis mental images that the patient often conceals and that are sometimes insufficiently clear even to him, is not easy. To recall them it is often necessary to use hypnosis, in which the oppressive mental image can be examined and removed either immediately through suitable suggestions or, after awakening, in the waking state through proper clarification. Instead of hypnosis, however, the psychoanalytical method can also be used.

Psychoanalysis is an associative method: we proceed from the assumption that thoughts, mental images and impressions arrange and associate themselves in the esplana according to the laws of simultaneity, connection and similarity. They have thereby formed a unity that always strives to preserve itself. If one member is recalled, the others are recalled in sequence as well.

Therefore, in several examinations, we give the patient a number of stimulus words, up to 150, in rapid succession so that he has no time to think. The experimental subject answers with reaction words that awaken in him at that moment and occur to him. He answers without any rational participation or criticism, and also without inhibition of the will, in the sense that even if he would normally be embarrassed to utter some of the words, he utters them. It is important that he communicate fluently everything that occurs to him at the given stimulus. For example, the physician says, “Cane.” The patient: “Pain.” The physician: “Pain.” The patient: “Fear.” The physician: “Woman.” The patient: “Naked.” The physician: “Wound.” The patient: “Grave,” and so on.

To arrive at a result, we often use the patient’s own reaction words as stimuli, thus reaching sensitive points, and, in a relationship of trust, induce the patient to recount events he has never yet told anyone. In doing so we pay close attention to conspicuous signs, the symptoms of the neurosis, and have him tell us things most closely related to these symptoms. If clarification does not result, we attach further stimulus questions to them, taking account of the laws of simultaneity, connection and similarity, until we succeed in recalling the repressed mental image in full, although often the patient had not even the faintest conscious inkling of it.

(586) Some reactions are of a kind that can readily be explained from the stimulus word without taking a hidden meaning into account. Many, however, do not even appear to have a connection with the stimulus word. Yet a definite result is always found. Often we use notable symbolic passages from the patient’s dreams as a stimulus, frequently achieving considerable success. In the analysis of dreams, we find that certain momentary ideas correspond to concealed dream thoughts.

Practice will teach us how best to proceed in psychoanalysis by the associative route. Although Wundt’s and Freud’s methods exist, it always depends on the examiner’s entering into the patient’s individuality and arranging his procedure accordingly.

The roots of the causes of mental illnesses reach back to earliest childhood, when we lay the foundation stones, the stimuli, in upbringing. Through misguided upbringing we give rise to alien stones that leave deep affective traces and disrupt the spiritual structure of the personality, and which we strive through psychoanalytical treatment to remove and replace with new ones.

The psychoanalyst works almost exclusively with the lower-order subconscious. At other times he uses the method of free associations, freely arising ideas. The patient lies down on a couch and the physician sits with his back to him, so that the patient has the impression of being alone in the room. He is given the task of communicating aloud every idea, every thought and mental image, without deliberately thinking about anything. I repeat: let us instruct the patient to immerse himself in a state of quiet self-observation without thinking, and to communicate to us, without any criticism or alteration, everything he can observe within himself: feelings, thoughts and memories in the order in which they emerge, without excluding unpleasant, private, senseless or unimportant ideas. We discover various types of volitional associations: the obsessive-neurosis type; the hysterical-neurosis type; the extroverted type in constitutional psychopaths with a predisposition to manic depression; and the introverted type in schizoid constitutional psychopaths with a schizophrenic predisposition. [Translator’s note: the source here says “volitional associations” (volních asociací), following its discussion of “free associations” (volných asociací).]

(587) During treatment we ask the patient to try to record the course of his falling asleep in the evening as well, without the intervention of consciousness. (What is involved is mental activity in half-sleep, while consciousness is still awake.) These are usually childhood experiences; detailed childhood fantasies return to him, and with them a part of childhood, including fantasies of a sexual nature, and so on. In the morning he writes down on paper his experiences while falling asleep. He also records a dream he experienced during sleep, for symbolic dreams are often reproductions of unrealized and repressed experiences. The physician obtains valuable material and stimulus words for further psychoanalysis to uncover and abreact the repressed complex. Let us not ask daily for the results of psychotherapeutic treatment during the period of falling asleep; every other day is sufficient.

As self-psychoanalysis progresses, gaps in associations are often accompanied by unpleasant affects. This is the affect of the particular complex the patient encounters. It sometimes happens that the affect disrupts the complex and the entire cause of the complex’s formation is recalled into consciousness by itself, thereby abreacting the whole complex and bringing about the patient’s recovery.

If, however, the patient is suggestible and has difficulty with association in the waking state, I prefer hypnoanalysis.

(588) A young man complained to me that he constantly suffered from unexplained anxiety, restlessness and fear, and that the physicians agreed it was hysteria. Neither any medicine nor involvement in company helped.

I performed an analysis on him by the associative method. At the very first examination I reached the conclusion that the patient’s birth had been very difficult, although he knew nothing of his mother’s difficulties at the time of his birth. His mother was therefore called, and to my statement, “Your son’s birth was very difficult and took a long time!” she replied in surprise, “Yes, but how do you know that, Mr. Kafka? He took two whole days to be born, so that a physician had to be called!”

Through the activity of the child’s soul, the difficult and prolonged birth impressed itself upon the virgin esplana in anxious mental images and impressions, which later discharged themselves in the young man’s soul in the form of various unpleasant symptoms and occasional terrifying dreams, with dangerous ascents to immeasurable heights and falls into depths, oppressive passages through tunnels and shafts, and so on. Through illumination of the causes and his becoming aware of them, the symptoms disappeared.

(589) The prerequisites for the associative method are provided by the fact that the symptoms are the work of a lower-order subconscious process. A relationship exists between the lower-order subconscious and the possibilities for the existence of symptoms, whose seat is the repressed esplana with their mental images; that is, whenever we encounter a symptom, we always find in the patient’s lower-order subconscious certain processes that have the character and significance of symptoms. Once the analysis has been performed and the meaning of the symptoms clarified, they usually disappear.

(590) There are mental illnesses resting solely on a hereditary foundation. We call them endogenous psychoses.

All endogenous, congenital psychoses have their foundation in the genetic matter of the human body. A phylogenetic deposit, originating in the diseased mental life of blood ancestors, is the source of the psychic disposition to evoke the illness. The entire cell is predisposed: the nucleus, genes and protoplasm. The products of hallucination, diseased fantasies and delusions, arise from the material embodiment of the activity of the spirit’s lower order. If a biochemical disturbance in the organization of the properties of matter joins it, it accelerates the mental illness into a manifest state. A healthy spirit resides in a healthy body. Disturbances of the blood, regulation of metabolism, arteriosclerosis, disturbances of internal secretion, rheumatism, tuberculosis and other pathophysiological mechanisms bring latent psychosis into a state of activity. Physical and mental vitality is impaired. Endogenous psychoses are an inborn deposit, and complexes of somatic-biological processes summon them into activity. The foundation of becoming ill with endogenous psychosis is a phylogenetic deposit and a biochemical disturbance, a kind of somatosis. The psychosis is then a clinical symptom of the concurrent somatosis. The somatosis may be in any part of the body, but only through the brain can it call the phylogenetic deposit into manifestation. It is not the brain alone but the entire body that governs mental life. When all these factors mature, the congenital mental illness erupts between the ages of thirty and forty.

“Endogenous” means an internal disposition or susceptibility originating from parents, grandparents and still further back. The illness is transmitted through genes, plasma and aptitudes. For the illness to erupt, the child must inherit aptitudes for it from both parents. But this condition is not always the rule. There are people burdened through both parents who nevertheless do not develop an endogenous psychosis: it is hidden, or latent. They remain constitutional psychopaths. If they inherit the above-mentioned aptitudes from only the father or only the mother, the endogenous illness can virtually never erupt. The aptitude for endogenous psychosis has been suppressed for a time by a healthy aptitude, but has not vanished. It remains hidden in the genes, to revive in a later generation when it encounters the same aptitude. As soon as a latent psychosis manifests itself through symptoms, it is a neurosis. The symptoms of neurosis are hypochondria, phobias, obsessive psychosis, and hysteria, often manifesting itself in disturbances of organ functions although the organs are healthy, while the psychosis remains latent.

Among the most important endogenous psychoses are manic depression, paraphrenia and schizophrenia. There are few truly manic-depressive people; most remain in a latent state. It is mostly schizophrenics who enter institutions.

Paraphrenia is a milder form of schizophrenia. Alongside his delusions and hallucinations, the paraphrenic retains his intellect. Premature dementia, the disintegration of the personality, does not occur. In pure schizophrenics it does occur. The disintegration of the personality need not always be preceded by a hereditary and biologically conditioned aptitude with inclinations toward a disturbance of brain matter. People of a sensitive and subjective nature, scourged by life’s failures, lose strength in their relationship to the world. Their mental activity retreats into the activity of the entry subconscious states and in time becomes independent there as a second SELF. From repressed wishes and luxuriant fantasy it builds illogical thoughts and delusional mental images, which, through the organization of this secondary soul, mature into independent wholes, or complexes. At the same time it continually extends its activity to newly forming, empty esplana and changes them into diseased ones. This diseased activity of the lower-order subconscious SELF, with the continual expansion of complexes, removes the conscious SELF from activity. At the same time, through inordinately heightened activity, it exhausts and chemically damages the physiological matter of the brain until the personality disintegrates.

(591) If a healthy aptitude meets an unhealthy one, the unhealthy aptitude yields to the healthy. The child remains predisposed, however, but to neurosis rather than psychosis. He remains a constitutional psychopath. A disposition to neurosis is not given only by an incomplete hereditary burden; true neuroses, or psychoneuroses, are conditioned above all by faulty upbringing into a psychopath, though not a constitutional one. Of course, a disposition to neuroses is also often constitutional, that is, conditioned by the hereditary burden of one parent. Both the leptosomic and pyknic types are likewise susceptible to them. The most severe constitutional abnormalities are conditioned by a complete burden of endogenous psychosis.

There are several kinds of psychopaths:

Unburdened, and thus nonconstitutional, psychopaths, who are products of faulty upbringing, have an inclination toward true neuroses, or psychoneuroses.

Constitutional psychopaths arise through hereditary burden and, at the same time, incorrect upbringing. With proper upbringing, only constitutional abnormalities would be involved. These are of two kinds: those incompletely burdened are susceptible to neuroses; those fully burdened through both parents to endogenous psychoses. A psychopath is not always a sick person; he may even be an above-average person. For example, in a psychopath with a tendency toward melancholia, the supposed morbidity may express itself in self-sacrifice in work for the welfare of humanity.

(592) A neurosis often holds back the development of an illness into psychosis. The best-known neurosis is hypochondria, and it occurs in constitutional psychopaths. The most severe hypochondria is often the beginning of schizophrenia. Hypochondriacal symptoms, with self-observation of insignificant defects, are mental symptoms, not organic ones. Hypochondria is often difficult to distinguish from a similar form of hysteria. Schizophrenia often does not erupt because it proceeds as hysteria, thereby arresting its development. An obsessive neurosis manifesting itself in compulsive action or thinking is in reality a psychosis whose development has stopped and which proceeds in the form of an obsessive neurosis. A true obsessive neurosis does not develop into psychosis. A burden of inclination toward endogenous psychoses leads to deterioration of the constitution, and thereby also to a constitutional disposition to bodily diseases.

(593) Constitutional psychoses do not always impair physical health and are compatible even with longevity. A common characteristic of psychopathic constitutions and psychic dispositions or inclinations is, first of all, that they are original, primitive, congenital and constitutional, and that they manifest themselves from the very beginning of mental life.

A perverse constitution manifests itself early in children through disobedience, lack of discipline, vindictiveness, cruelty and the like. Individuals of such a disposition are characterized throughout life by a lack of moral sense and feeling.

A mythomanic constitution has an inclination toward distortion, lying, fabrication and simulation.

A hyperemotive constitution is characterized by such people reacting with extraordinary violence to emotional stimuli and, in these reactions, exceeding a useful degree of psychic shock. They are described as overly sensitive or as nervous. They remain in a kind of mental distress, manifesting itself in various states of anxiety, apprehension, fear, hesitation and doubt, but also in blushing, pallor, palpitations, sweating, crying and diarrhea. Nervous crisis, obsession and phobia are pathological intensifications of this constitution.

Among the abnormal are people who desire everything, who are self-seeking, acquisitive, greedy, proud, conceited and grandiose.

(594) Constitutional psychoses have their origin in hereditary inclinations and have become manifest only through mistaken and unreasonable upbringing and way of life. Various offshoots, parasites, have formed on the trunk of life, draining strength from the conscious SELF. A disturbance has arisen in the foundation, in the order. Insufficient bodily resistance, an unawakened, crippled spirit, is a spirit of weak activity. The consequence is that the leading and principal faculties, feeling, reason and will, have not become powers of the spirit, have not developed to maturity and adulthood so as to form an attuned, unified personality capable of logical thought directed toward society and the external world.

To bring these endogenous and constitutional psychoses into a latent state immediately upon the appearance of the first symptoms, a restoration of health must occur in both the physical and the psychic order. To strengthen the organism we use an exclusively plant-based diet, which I describe in later chapters. We attend to regular metabolism, proper blood circulation, exercise in healthy air, suitable sport, walks and cheerful company. We add treatment by suggestion and, above all, reeducation of the spirit, reconstruction of the character and the entire personality.

(595) A well-educated spirit is unified, a strong personality, and principled. It is a power of constant activity, working through the reflection of its own forces always toward some goal. This power provides continual self-awareness and relationships to the world and to healthy society. If this does not happen, diseased, automatic activity arises, suppressing and disrupting the psyche. Healthy self-confidence in constant activity can be achieved through practice. By exercising the will, we strengthen the conscious SELF, which then manifests itself in heightened mental tension, providing self-control while discounting all symptoms of neuroses. If creative mental activity ceases to work, that is, to remain in psychic tension, mental life is thrown out of balance and exposed to the operation of automatisms and all the symptoms of psychoses. Constant psychic tension and constant vigilance constitute a dynamic attitude that provides new forms of life’s manifestations, determines directions, and seeks and gives greatness to life. It is creative activity, reality, effective activity and perseverance, which deliberately and rationally joins what is given into a purposeful phenomenon distinct from its elements. Its opposite is mechanism, repetition, fear, inferiority, lack of deliberation, lack of independence: disintegration.

(596) Mental illnesses resting on a psychic stimulus from diseased esplana and arising during the individual’s lifetime are also treated in the manner described, with the addition of treatment by psychoanalysis. These are illnesses in which the diseased esplana have become disconnected from association and contain isolated affects with their repressed corresponding content, forming a complex.

65. The Treatment of Mental Illnesses

Translator’s safety note: This chapter preserves the author’s historical treatment claims, not clinical advice. Do not use it to administer anesthetics, withhold psychiatric care, or stop prescribed treatment. Hypnotherapy may be unsafe for people with schizophrenia or a history of psychosis; see NHS safety guidance.

(597) How did I treat various mental illnesses? Let me state at the outset that everyone whom I took under my direct magnetic influence underwent treatment by psychoanalysis, and, provided my subject established beforehand that I would restore him to health, was cured by me.

I shall give a case that will help explain the method of treatment:

I was asked to cure Mrs. S., who had become so deranged that two physicians had ordered her to be taken to an asylum within three days. I went to see her. The subject established congestion of the gray matter, strong radiation from certain esplana, and mutual fusion of the knots of the esplana, in some places even of the esplana nuclei themselves. Because I was at that time being prosecuted by physicians for unauthorized treatment and my method was a novelty, I declared that I could restore her to health by my method within five days. The unfortunate woman’s head was full of distorted perceptions, hallucinations, delusions and fixed ideas. It was hallucinatory perception without an actual object. She also had enemies who wanted to destroy her. We would have fared badly had we tried to talk her out of her delusions and persuade her. She would have insisted upon them all the more and might even have become furious.

What did I do with the patient? I connected myself with her magnetically. With the first magnetic passes, under the known conditions, I removed her diseased magnetism. With further passes in the direction from her body toward my own, I linked myself with her magnetically. At the same time I suggested aloud to her lower-order subconscious: “From this day you are getting well! You are already taking my words as your own! Repeat with me: I know I am getting well, I am getting well already!” The patient repeated like a machine: “By the fifth day I see myself completely mentally healthy!” She repeated this several times, supported by my living faith and mental tension. At the same time I analyzed her illness and clarified its cause. What was happening in the patient’s soul? Mental power, scattered among diseased and hallucinatory mental images, was being gathered together for the conscious SELF.

The determination of psychological processes consists in our observing human nature as the seat of life, sensory perception, impressions and rational activity.

We also already know that water absorbs bodily magnetism to a great degree. I therefore directed a magnetic current into water. I then gave this water to the patient with the instruction to drink it when thirsty, for it would strengthen her nervous system inwardly and she would lean mentally upon my healthy mind. I instructed her parents and those close to her who had come to see her to banish the thought of her illness and believe firmly with me that she was already recovering, and to dynamize this thought strongly in the patient’s surroundings.

(598) On the second day I found the patient already almost halfway recovered. A reaction of healthy reason had occurred, its emergence from the lower-order subconscious into conscious activity. With my help, the patient was already able to correct some of her delusions. I repeated everything I had done before, and aroused in the patient absolute faith and an ideoplastic mental image of recovery. The illness receded rapidly from day to day. Only on the evening of the third day was there a hitch. For a certain reason I myself was upset and did not fall asleep until after midnight. The following day I was told that the patient had been very agitated in the evening and had fallen asleep only after midnight. I explained the cause to her family, while the patient and her friends marveled at the influence of the magnetic connection. On the fifth day I found the patient completely well. I instructed her and assured her that the illness would not return. I also pointed out that if any aftereffects of the illness appeared, such as fear, anxiety or terrifying mental images, she must not give in to them or fear them; on the contrary, she must greet them cheerfully with the thought: “Friends, as you have come, so depart! I wish it and I believe it!”

What matters greatly is precisely that the patient should pay no attention to these terrifying thoughts, should not fear them, as is usual with all the mentally ill, and should face them with a cheerful and clear mind as harmless, nonexistent ghosts that at most only children fear. They no longer have any power, and a reasonable person will laugh at them. I further told the patient: “If you feel weak in resistance and faith, come to me and I shall link myself with you magnetically again. I shall influence you telepathically, from a distance, and together we shall drive away those diseased mental images and thoughts. As we do so, you will certainly observe that you are mentally stronger and the torments disappear. They disappear because I myself am mentally healthy. Just as I have a healthy mental constitution, so will you; my health will pass to you.”

(599) In this way I cured several patients whose illness was still in its beginnings. In Mrs. S.’s case, the therapeutic success was so rapid because the illness had erupted suddenly, though naturally from causes that had laid the foundation for it. During the magnetic connection, healthy mental images were placed alongside the diseased ones and neutralized them. At their parents’ request I also took mentally ill people out of asylums and cured them. This method also cured Miss M., whose mental torments I described and whose condition I analyzed in the preceding chapter.

I observe in my subject K. how powerful an influence magnetic connection and the formation of mental images have on another person. Because he remains constantly in close magnetic connection with me, he is subject to all the physical and psychic changes that manifest themselves in me. Once I went for a walk with him. Suddenly my head began to hurt, with two sharp twinges on the left side. I said nothing. At that moment the subject put his hand to the left side of his head and complained, “I felt two stabs in my head!” On another occasion my appendicitis returned. I spent a week lying down much of the time. Simultaneously the subject, although he did not know what was wrong with me, complained of pain in the lower abdomen near the right hip. I ate nothing; neither did he. I had pain in the right iliac fossa; so did he, and he constantly felt the spot. My health improved; his did too. I began to eat, and he remarked on how good his appetite now was. I gained five kilograms, he four. If I am mentally overworked, he feels the same. If I am cheerful, healthy and contented, so is he. Evidence of the astonishing influence a magnetic connection has upon another person.

Another proof:

(600) I enter my ground-floor apartment and greet a visitor, the clerk Mr. Augustin Keyzlar. To his question as to where I have been, I reply, “You will be surprised. I have just been magnetizing Mrs. M., who has a nervous illness, upstairs, and without her knowledge I put her to sleep by telepathic means, with the thought that in half an hour she would wake by herself and come to my room with the blanket I covered her with in the cold room.” At this the gentleman said, “I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Could you delay her coming by half an hour?” In this way A. K. wanted to establish whether I was really capable of delaying Mrs. M.’s arrival without leaving the room.

I obliged him. I immediately exerted mental influence so that Mrs. M. would sleep until precisely two o’clock, then come to us with the blanket.

We waited with interest for the appointed time. At precisely two o’clock the woman came to us with the blanket and described how she had suddenly awakened with the feeling that she must go downstairs immediately, and how, although she did not want to, something strongly compelled her to go at once.

In some cases, after identifying a mental illness, I brought it to its highest degree with the aid of suggestion. Then, during a magnetic connection, through my own absolute faith and suggestion, I successfully removed it.

(601) Almost every mental illness, except severe cases, can easily be cured in its beginnings by my method. Not all deeply rooted illnesses can be cured.

(602) With this method, the physician-magnetizer must not take several people under his magnetic influence simultaneously, but only one. Once he has completely cured that person, he may proceed to treat another, because in the simultaneous treatment of several people, diseased states would be transmitted between the patients through their mutual magnetic connection, and treatment would be ineffective. If treatment proceeds without magnetic connection, however, solely by psychoanalytical means, suggestion and hypnosis, it is possible to treat several people at once.

It is utterly harmful to treat the mentally ill by placing them in institutions for the mentally ill when an illness erupts violently and suddenly. In states in which mental balance is disturbed, in a sudden outbreak of frenzy, let us not immediately put patients into an environment of mentally ill people.

Their awakened lower-order subconscious is very receptive and willing to accept impressions from its surroundings, for their conscious activity is impaired, and thus lower-order subconscious activity, which readily succumbs to the influence of the environment, comes to the fore and asserts itself.

In what does the success of this method consist? I answer:

(603) In magnetic connection and absolute faith in the physician, in psychoanalytical treatment, in arousing the patient’s confidence that through the therapeutic influence of suggestion it is possible to release repressed, diseased mental images, impressions and experiences, detach and liberate them, make them conscious with the conviction that they were diseased, and create healthy mental images. The conscious SELF is thereby made whole and strengthened again.

From the preceding experiments we know that by thought alone it is possible to put a person to sleep, awaken him, at a distance that is immaterial, summon distant people to oneself, make them ill, and so forth. If mere thought has such power here, why should it not have that power when I wish a particular person to recover, especially when magnetic connection makes everything easier?

A physician need not be distressed if he happens not to be endowed with magnetism. We know that through the power of the will it is possible to give a thought a certain direction so that it acts where we wish. A physician who is not magnetic influences the patient through his will, in which a strong, living mental image is reflected: “From today you are getting well!” The subconscious SELF takes the command as its own and is an obedient receiver and executor of everything suggested to it. Because the subconscious SELF has the means and knows the paths leading to recovery, it awakens them and sets them in motion to heal the diseased body.

With magnetic connection, of course, recovery proceeds more easily and rapidly, because the patient is constantly supported and his nerves are strengthened by healthy magnetism from another person; in fact, he almost takes over that other person’s health.

The soul is constantly active, far more in the subconscious state than in the waking state. In magnetic connection I stimulate the sensitive oduší of the other person. The stimulation is transmitted to the center. This center of the conscious SELF is the neurons of the gray cortex; the center of the subconscious SELF is the oduší permeating the gray cortex. In mutual magnetic connection, the subconscious SELF, endowed with great faculties, becomes a puppet, an instrument of another spirit. The magnetizer’s psychic and physical state is reflected in the other person’s subconscious SELF; it receives that state, takes it upon itself and manifests itself in it.

(604) It could happen that the physician himself is a sensitive, and thus has the ability to fall into the third degree of hypnosis. In that case, through prolonged practice he must acquire a strong will and a vivid mental image, but above all he must have the ability to control himself.

Some mentally ill people suffer from an illness of spontaneous release of the oduší; others are sensitive, still others magnetic.

If the physician treats mentally ill people who are sensitive or suffer from spontaneous release of the oduší, he is in danger, if he himself is a sensitive and does not possess a stronger will, of being overcome by them and drawn into a diseased state.

For instruction, I state the following: a subject is a person who is very psychically sensitive. This sensitivity, however, must not be understood in the usual sense. A subject is sensitive in the sense that he has a special natural ability, with the aid of the exposed oduší, to receive another person’s commands immediately and easily, remain under his influence, and carry out the instructions given by the hypnologist.

(605) If he knows beforehand, however, that influence will be exerted upon him, he may resist the hypnologist’s influence, though not always; he must, of course, remain very vigilant and attentive and arouse strong resistance. People who are not endowed with this sensitivity and special capacity will not succumb to the hypnologist’s influence, however great the effort. A physician who has the ability to be a subject and has acquired a strong will can exert a very beneficial influence upon a mentally ill person: he has the possibility of connecting himself directly with that person’s oduší to form a common body.

We can establish this mutual connection of the oduší only if we consciously wish it.

I mention this in order to answer at once the question of why treating physicians remain spared the influence of the mentally ill. It happens because the method in which the physician connects himself with the patient through fluid is not yet used. Although treatment in this way offers promising hopes of success, I do not recommend practicing it without training a strong will, because it is quite dangerous. I state again that this concerns only those physicians who are sensitives.

(606) If I were to fall ill during a connection through the fluid of the oduší or through magnetic fluid, my patient would fall ill too, as we learned in a similar way in the chapter on treatment during hypnotic sleep. So take care! In such a case it is necessary to break both the direct magnetic connection and the connection through the fluid of the oduší! Otherwise we would do the patient more harm than good!

The magnetic connection between the sick and the healthy must be renewed daily. At first the patient almost devours the vital energy of magnetism that the healthy person transmits to him. Although he is unaware of it, the nerve cells themselves absorb this nutritive substance.

The radiant energy of the oduší, electrism, and above all magnetism, these forces of the smallest particles, are released and stream from our body. These particles are important carriers of life and intermediaries, acting upon the cells in our body and stimulating them toward growth and restoration of health. When this radiation is deficient, dying off begins.

At the same time it is necessary to send the patient a vivid suggestion of his health, with commands: “From this moment you are getting well! Let the illness disappear! You are healthier and healthier every day! You are mentally contented and cheerful!” The physician must see the patient healthy in his mind and must not even entertain a doubt about his recovery! For the patient’s subconscious SELF would receive that thought too. If you are not master of your thoughts, it will be better for you to abandon treating others entirely and not attempt it, because you would do them more harm than good. In this way we almost compel the subconscious SELF to cure the illness we have in mind. If we have not recognized the illness, whether psychic or physiological, it does not matter. Let us simply believe firmly and unshakably in recovery and continually send forth the thought with a mental image of health. The subconscious SELF itself heals only where there is illness.

(607) If I take the patient into my apartment, success is all the greater. The room is literally charged with my magnetism, and the thought of his recovery is materialized in it, exerting a constant beneficial influence upon his sensitive subconscious SELF, which is thus continually encouraged to activity. In this case a nonmagnetic physician may dynamize the thought of recovery into the fluid of protonace. From the preceding experiments we know what such a strong, living thought impressed into protonace can achieve, and what influence and power it has over another person. Almost everyone becomes a sensitive in illness, especially when he does not awaken magnetic energy within himself. Then a thought impressed into protonace has an unsuspected influence upon him, particularly during natural sleep.

Let us therefore also make use of the opportunity when the patient goes to bed and falls asleep. I do so myself. Let us approach him quietly, knowing that only the body and its consciousness are resting, while the subconscious is awake. Let us then speak to him by thought alone and form a plastic mental image of how he is gradually ridding his body of the illness. The subconscious SELF is compelled to receive what we tell it and arrives at what we wish. The subconscious SELF is our helper in harmoniously attuning the integral system called the SELF.

(608) Parents can make beneficial use of this means with their children for good upbringing and the removal of bad habits. The mother can achieve more than the father, because by nature she remains connected with the child through fluid for the longest time, as my sensitives have always confirmed. We already know from the previously described experiments conducted during natural sleep what a powerful influence such a thought has upon a sleeping person.

To achieve more rapid success, I assist the process by bringing the patient into hypnotic sleep. In treatment I must take care to awaken the soul’s potential state, diminished by illness, toward determination through suitable suggestions, that is, to bring its cognitive power and faculty into arousal and attention. During this heightened internal activity, the patient must repeat every suggestion to me several times.

By repeating the health suggestions with me, the patient anchors them much more securely in his esplana.

(609) If the physician does not succeed in bringing the patient into hypnotic sleep the first time, he may use light anesthesia or inject him with the chemical compound called “Pentonal,” and bring him into artificial sleep. The subconscious SELF can then be evoked easily by speaking to the patient. For the following day we secure the result with this suggestion: “Tomorrow you will fall asleep before I count to five!” We have the patient repeat this suggestion so that it may be better impressed upon his esplana. On the second day he will fulfill the command: he will fall asleep. Before he falls asleep, the physician seats the patient on a chair and, during his sleep, secures the result again for the next day with the above suggestion to fall asleep. [Translator’s note: “Pentonal” is the drug name as printed in the source.]

Therapeutic suggestions in hypnotic sleep must be given daily until recovery.

Let us not leave the patient in therapeutic hypnotic sleep for long. Twenty minutes, including the therapeutic suggestions, is quite sufficient. When awakening him, do not forget to add suggestions for acquiring a good and cheerful mood.

(610) In schizophrenics, materialized formations of diseased thoughts and mental images that have developed into complexes can be destroyed in hypnotic sleep by blows of suggestion. A complex is a system, an affect and mental images, a diseased esplano, that has been repressed. Isolated affects disrupt logical thinking. Polemics and treatises written in a state of affect cannot be objective and logical.

I call the diseased complex into activity. The lower-order SELF begins to assert itself. The patient expresses himself and repeats the confused material the complex contains. Now I evoke his healthy individual SELF. I acquaint this unburdened SELF with the diseased complex, so that it is fully aware of its content and suffers from it. I command this healthy SELF to pay attention to how, through suggestion, I destroy the other, intrusive and troublesome SELF, together with all its thoughts and mental images. I command suggestively: “Pay attention! Everything is disappearing already; you see nothing; you are aware of nothing; everything is gone! You are alone, liberated, free! You are wise in reason and strong in will! You are cheerful and healthy! In this freedom and liberty I shall awaken you before I count to three! Pay attention! One: heaviness and fatigue are disappearing! Two: your good mood is returning! Three: you are healthy, cheerful and normal, reasonable, nothing is wrong with you!” I then continue speaking with the patient as with a completely healthy person.

(611) Every following day until recovery, I evoke the diseased complex again in hypnotic sleep and attack the system of diseased esplana with a blow of suggestion.

The strength and aggressiveness of the complex diminish daily. The patient observes all this in hypnosis and frees himself from the second SELF, while becoming mentally unified and independent, becoming individual and self-contained: he is recovering.

If there are several complexes, I separate them and always attack each individually on a different day, never all on the same day.

With the complete destruction of the esplana, no mental image or memory can be aroused and restored again. But let us remember that only fresh complexes, not yet rooted, can be destroyed by suggestion!

Otherwise I treat the patient and educate his personality according to the instructions given in the chapter “How Will You Restore a Mentally Ill Person to Health?”

(612) When subject K. observed my suggestive intervention in breaking up esplana, he reported how the content of images, concepts, mental representations and thoughts became clouded, dissolved and shattered, and how fresh esplana disintegrated and disappeared together with their entire content. By contrast, esplana more than a year old merely trembled, darkened and cleared again, even when attacked for several months.

If I use this method to treat a person who is otherwise mentally healthy, I must acquaint him with the method and tell him why I am doing all this, so that he does not think I am perhaps practicing magic upon him. In this process it often happens that the patient is somewhat confused by my explanations. As soon as light dawns in his mind, he understands and believes me, recovery is already half assured.

This treatment requires practice. One cannot embark upon it immediately. First I must know how to control myself, must train a strong will, must know how to form clear ideoplastic mental images, and above all must have absolute faith, living and immediately ready; and all this is not easy. A physician who believes in God will therefore find it easier to work and treat according to my method than an unbeliever. Both will of course have success, for mysterious forces are within and around us. I say only that a believing physician will work and treat more easily and surely, because just as the patient must find support in the physician, the physician must seek it in God, knowing that it was precisely God who endowed the human individual with great natural, extranatural and supernatural gifts of which we can make use.

(613) An alert psychologist will take account of the fact that mental illnesses are not always psychic in character, in a disturbance of the esplana, but may be physiological, or nervous, in nature.

What we usually call a nervous disorder is often psychically conditioned, and, insofar as it manifests itself bodily, rests upon the interplay of the so-called vital nerves, or vegetative nervous system. This system is largely independent of the motor and sensory nerves. It works independently of our consciousness and promotes or inhibits certain vital processes in our body. It controls the tension of the blood-vessel system and gives the impulse for relaxation or contraction of smooth muscles. In this process spasms may arise that cause not only difficulties but functional disturbances as well. These nerves, represented by the sympathetic system and the wandering nerve, the “vagus,” form cords and plexuses at certain points, such as the solar plexus. Their fibers are in every part of our body. They have variable relationships to hormones, and we can influence them through psychic feelings as well as medicines. In psychotherapy we must never overlook these functions. Insofar as they are associated with certain primitive feelings of the human soul, such as fear, mental low spirits and various forms of emotional impulse, the patient’s state can be assessed only in very general terms. More severe cases require deeper investigation of these questions and confront physiologists and psychologists with new, difficult tasks. It is necessary to go directly to the goal and find the underlying illness. We must attend to stimulating metabolism, purifying and regenerating the blood through proper nourishment, correcting disturbances of the endocrine glands, and ensuring that everything is brought onto the right track. Prophylaxis also includes properly conducted hardening of the body and various physical exercises, walks, deep breathing and sleep.

(614) Light massage helps with various nerve and muscle pains that have the same manifestations as rheumatism. Usually these are spasmodic contractions of individual muscle fibers. Relaxation leads to a reduction of the difficulties. The vessels serving nourishment are also often spasmodically constricted and can be dilated through exercise and mechanical stimulation, with warm, wet compresses, so that the blood supply improves and muscular activity is restored. The sensation of pain is conducted to the brain not only by sensory nerves but also by fibers of the vegetative nervous system, of whose existence we are unaware.

In treating patients we must not overlook the beneficial and healing effects provided by music, which can be used with great success in certain cases of mental illness.

A pronounced rhythm in particular evokes motor reactions in people and thus encourages the entire nervous system toward healthy activity. A harmonious chord evokes an impression of calm. A discordant one arouses a certain tension that calls for release.

In emotionally disturbed people, music is effectively calming, and its stimulating effect acts through reactions of the branches of the vagus nerve to regulate mental states. It makes one forget grief, anger and worries.

(615) The nervus vagus, or wandering nerve, is an important cranial nerve supplying the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines and so on. It is connected several times with the sympathetic system and other important nerves. Its functions are both motor and sensory, subject to the person’s will and outside it. Artificial stimulation of the auditory nerve evokes strong reflexes of the vagus nerve and acts curatively upon the person’s entire vegetative and animal life. For this reason music calms and releases spasms and corrects digestion.

Music rouses and heals people who are apathetic, dejected, melancholic, withdrawn and feeble-minded. Their condition often improves to the point of complete recovery.

Music heals backward children who, for whatever reason, do not develop mentally or whose mental level does not correspond to their age.

The healing effect of music can also be observed in the feeble-minded who show strong catatonia, a mental inhibition of movement in which the brain’s commands to the muscles are inhibited somewhere along the way. After several weeks of listening to music, through the aid of motor reflexes and the repetition of auditory perceptions and pleasant stimuli, the brain’s impulses are arranged and improved and brought into harmony with the muscular movements that depend on the brain, so that they can move freely according to the rhythm and level of the sound vibrations.

All this can be achieved through treatment with music: music therapy.

(616) In conclusion to this chapter, I give the opinion of the renowned Karlovy Vary physician Dr. Lorand. In his book “Aging,” in the section “The Hygienic Significance of Religion,” he wrote: “One of my patients lost, within a short time, her husband, with whom she had lived for twenty years, and her only son. She loved both dearly. Everyone thought she would be destroyed by these blows of fate, but the opposite happened. Of all the members of the family she bore her misfortune most bravely, for she was very devout. Such people bear the blows of fate best, because they regard them as expressions of God’s will and find consolation in religion. The priest can support the physician in this respect, for he himself is a physician of the soul.

“Suicide is a rare act among devout people, especially Catholics. Whatever your views on religion may be, it is certain that faith is a psychological medicine of the first order for millions of people. Many an illness also takes a better course because the devout patient is mentally calmer and trusts in God’s help. Physicians observe that devout patients tolerate anesthesia better than the godless. Their heart function is more regular. Feeling influences processes in the body, and because religion governs feeling, it also influences the body. Even hysteria can be cured by firm faith. Devout people are therefore to be envied, for they have mental equilibrium and better prospects of recovery if they fall ill.”

66. Treating Certain Mental Illnesses Oneself

Editorial safety note: historical material, not treatment advice

This chapter preserves the author’s historical claims and instructions, including dangerous remedies and prejudices. They are not endorsed by this translation and must not be followed as medical guidance. In particular, never hit a child or an unconscious person as a treatment for a seizure. Protect the person from injury, cushion the head, time the seizure, and stay with them; put them on their side after convulsions stop. Give nothing by mouth until they have fully recovered. Seek emergency help for a first seizure, a seizure lasting more than five minutes when its usual duration is unknown, repeated seizures without recovery, serious injury, or breathing difficulty. See NHS seizure first aid.

The herbal mixtures below include poisonous plants, including lily of the valley and mistletoe. Do not prepare or take these historical remedies or use the book’s dosages. If a potentially poisonous plant has been swallowed, contact a poison center promptly for expert advice. See Poison Control’s poisonous-plant guide. Medical care, prescribed treatments, and emergency first aid should not be replaced by the author’s claims about willpower, magnetism, fasting, bathing, or hypnosis.

The historical source text begins below.

(617) In cerebral neurasthenia, many regions of the gray cortex are generally irritated and exhausted. This illness arises from overwork, hereditary burden, weakness of the nerves, anemia, insufficient nourishment of the neuronal cells in the gray cortex, poor blood, and so on.

It is best to bring the patient into the third or fourth degree of hypnosis, so that the conscious SELF retreats as far as possible, and leave him asleep for four to six days. I have already explained how to proceed in the chapter “Treatment by Hypnotic Sleep.” The blood is purified, and the gray cortex is strengthened and calmed. I have convinced myself of this more than once through my experiments. Where there is no knowledgeable physician-hypnologist, I advise the patient to go to bed for three days, eat nothing during that time, and, if possible, think of nothing, dismiss all worries from his mind, and fix his thoughts on some innocent thing, such as a flower, so that the enlarged esplana can contract and settle. It is precisely a complete fast that strengthens and calms the cerebellum and cerebrum. Let us try this every ten days until we have cured the patient. After the period of treatment, let the patient begin by eating little, so as not to harm himself, attend to proper nourishment, and remember the vitamins, which I have also already discussed in detail.

Let us proceed similarly with the illness of weakened will and mental faculties.

(618) Experimental psychology must be able to explain mental manifestations as actual daily life presents them. If a person suffers from a particular set of psychophysiological disturbances, they have their foundation in his mental life. A distinctive analyzing psychology penetrates to the hidden foundations of the human being. A person’s mental energy has a tendency outward, toward the world, so that mental contents emerge on the surface and establish complex and significant relationships with external objects. This process is objective. We recognize such a person by the fact that he makes acquaintances easily, adapts quickly, is everywhere at once, and can keep little to himself.

The opposite, subjective case is intensely occupied with inner life, with his ideas, thoughts and feelings, and is full of subjective reflections and fantasies, for these inward reactions are the most significant things for his soul. This type of person is outwardly inconspicuous.

Both types have processes in common that concern all four fundamental functions: perception, thinking, feeling and intuition. In the subjective person the thinking function predominates, in the objective person the feeling function.

Both types may suffer from a certain disturbance of personality, a lack of self-confidence. The subjective type should use an individual method of treatment, developing a relationship to his surroundings and the rest of society. For the objective type it is more advantageous to use the psychoanalytical method, which explores possibilities for further development, uncovers hidden faculties, and deepens, corrects and expands results achieved so far through a constructive and prospective method. It does not concern itself only with what has been, but searches for possibilities for further development.

Each individual’s psychic component is shaped by hereditary influences, transmitted by colored corpuscles, and influences acquired during life, such as illness, alcoholism and upbringing, with the cooperation of the body’s juices, the hormones, whose production and function depend both on heredity and on the influence of the environment and way of life.

Among frequent and common mental illnesses we distinguish circular insanity and splitting of the mind, or schizophrenia. The first group is characterized by alternating moods and states ranging from merriment to melancholia. The second group is typical in its sudden changes and reactions.

In general we divide patients into three groups:

(619) Group 1: Slender, lanky people with delicately built bodies; we call them leptosomes. This group includes asthenics, who are even more sensitive and morbidly receptive.

Group 2: Muscular, angular, strong people, the so-called athletic type.

Group 3: Plump, rounded people, whom we call pyknics.

Of every hundred patients with schizophrenia, there are usually 73 leptosomes, 25 athletic types and 2 pyknics. Among people suffering from circular insanity there are usually 7 leptosomes, 5 athletic types and 88 pyknics.

Circular insanity passes both suddenly and gradually from frenzy into melancholia and depression. These opposing states may also last a longer time. The wave marking one of these states has higher and longer excursions, or conversely lower and shorter ones, or higher and shorter ones, according to the patient’s constitution. There are many patients among us who pass through only one wave during their entire lives; they are depressed and sad and can force themselves into a better mood only slowly.

(620) Schizophrenia, as we have already learned, is a divided, disordered and unsatisfied mind: the disintegration of the personality. The patient has the impression that several different souls speak from within him, living side by side and having no contact with one another. Logical association of thoughts and the evocation of certain feelings by certain mental images are disturbed. Unfounded ideas of persecution and threats, hearing voices, seeing the most varied colors, regarding oneself as an outstanding personality, various eccentricities, and especially inappropriate emotional reactions are important signs in all schizophrenics. Often the patient does not react to an external stimulus, or reacts in a completely opposite way. He tends to be selfish, unfeeling and emotionally impoverished.

Schizophrenia often draws attention to itself even in youth, when parents and educators, through ignorance, pay it little attention. The pupil suddenly stops studying, is distracted and unable to concentrate his thoughts. At the same time moral weakening and a reduction of attention and judgment appear. Memory is usually unimpaired, but distraction, indecision, fatigue, moodiness and instability are the first signs of the hidden illness.

Later we observe empty phrases, a taste for exaggeration, delusions of grandeur and romanticism; he strives to penetrate the most varied branches of science, while pursuing only his own thoughts and interests, takes no interest in the surrounding world, closes himself off from friends and acquaintances, and is overstimulated and moody. If he is a laborer or clerk, he neglects his workshop or office and often abandons his occupation heedlessly. Toward his own family he is an indifferent egoist; a trivial incident often robs him of calm and deliberation. He becomes eccentric, is quickly agitated, is frenzied and dangerous, yet at the same time is mostly well aware of the changes in his moods and of his condition. If we do not pay attention to these symptoms in children right at the beginning, it is often already too late for treatment later.

(621) The leptosomic type is most susceptible to mental illness, the athletic type less so, and the pyknic least of all. The pure leptosome is regarded as a person governed by thought, the athletic type as a man of action, and the pyknic as a good-hearted worker. There are few completely pure types; types mostly intermix, with one predominating. Particular character and mental traits belong to each type.

The leptosome is cold in character, sometimes very hypersensitive, with an inclination toward sudden changes. He is disposed to move from one extreme to another. Unlike the pyknic, he does not know the proper middle path. He has imagination, which the athletic type lacks. The athletic type is the embodiment of movement and strength, is governed by reason, and is therefore a man of action. The leptosome lives only through his thoughts and interests; he is outside the world. He strives to penetrate the branches of science. The desire for “negation” sometimes culminates in the pathological phenomenon of “catatonia,” when he denies everything and opposes everything on principle. Because he encounters obstacles everywhere, he tends to be overstimulated. For a time he can control himself, but he bottles it up until one day he erupts and catastrophe occurs. His soul is split into a hypersensitive part and a selfish part. He lacks mental balance; the curve of his moods is abrupt, with sharp angles and reversals, unlike the pyknic, who is more balanced and likes to follow a calm middle path.

(622) The leptosome often likes tennis, the athletic type football. Although the leptosome is nervous, overstimulated and tired, he is stubbornly persistent in his interests. He has a sense for mathematics, philosophy and art, and no interest in everyday life. His remarks tend to be sarcastic and ironic; he is often a social climber, careerist and ill-tempered pedant. He is a fanatic, capable of sacrificing everything for his idea. He also often loves women passionately. He has inclinations toward poetry and art, and is a pioneer of new directions and paths. Yet he does not portray the world realistically, but rather embodies in his poems the images and struggles of his own soul. They often contain much pathological material, arising where bodily and moral balance is disturbed, as an attempt to restore that balance.

(623) The athletic type is a person of action, without scruples, always pressing forward. He is a person of cold and hard will with an instinct for activity. He is not well disposed toward women, is rather inconsiderate, loves demanding sports and records, and likes light but not sentimental music. He pursues his goal but is never satisfied with the result. He is an egoist, pushes to the front in everything, craves power, is cold, and calculates and exposes everything soberly. He overcomes obstacles and feels neither his own pain nor, still less, another’s. His soul expresses energy corresponding to his muscular figure.

The opposite of both the leptosome and the athletic type is the pyknic. His rounded, plump figure corresponds to his calm soul. He has no violent fluctuations, moves forward in everything deliberately and evenly, and does not waver. He is not overfilled with thoughts and does not founder prematurely; he remains balanced and deliberate, does not squander strength, and is calm and persistent in his conduct. He tends to be unassuming and good-hearted, respects the law and observes it. He does not occupy himself with thoughts of castles in the air or breaking records. He thinks of food often, enjoys it, and digests it at leisure. He does not hold anger within himself for long. The leptosome, by contrast, broods, is angry and thinks of revenge. The athletic type thinks his revenge through and carries it out ruthlessly as soon as possible. The pyknic forgives. In managing an enterprise he is a mild, well-liked and good organizer. He knows how to deal with people. He does not assert himself in art; in work he is calm and persistent. Toward women he is tender, friendly, gentle and indulgent.

(624) We must not demand of these people what does not correspond to their type, or we shall meet with failure. A marriage of two individuals of the leptosomic type is usually not harmonious, for they tend to be nonmagnetic, and where reason is not sufficiently developed and the will is not subject to reason, misunderstandings and quarrels arise. The leptosomic woman captivates and dazzles, is capricious, and often succumbs to hysteria. The pyknic woman is a good mother and a calm wife, and knows how to create a warm and contented home. The athletic type enslaves the partner, is a ruthless egoist and commander. In occupational life, the pyknic is not suited for physical work. The leptosome supplies ideas; the athletic type helps in a crisis. The pyknic always runs an enterprise or office calmly.

If we do not educate and develop reason and will, we are in our mental expression what we are through our ancestors in our inherited type. We live and behave according to the bodily and mental characteristics of our ancestors, which are stored in the chromosomes, the colored corpuscles of the germ cells. Every defect, but not injuries, acquired during life is transmitted to descendants. If we wish, we can intervene through our reason and will in our own type, in inherited inclinations, passions and vices. We can change, improve, even entirely transform ourselves by acquiring new qualities, which then become embodied in the chromosomes. We achieve this through self-education, learning, knowledge and self-criticism.

People with a hereditary burden should not enter into marriage. It is necessary to prevent the birth of undesirable offspring and thereby stop the spread of insanity, idiocy, criminality and epilepsy.

(625) There is great danger in marriage between schizophrenics, for a child born to such parents is a veritable scourge. Marriage between relatives likewise brings feeble-minded and burdened descendants into the world. Signs of feeble-mindedness are weakened perception, limited understanding, especially apparent at school, a slowed course of thought, and limited judgment. The feeble-minded person lacks initiative and cannot adapt to a new and unfamiliar environment and occupation. He tires mentally easily and lacks the ability to think, judge and act independently.

Let us therefore not permit the young to enter into marriage with people from hereditarily burdened families. These are in particular severe illnesses such as alcoholism, feeble-mindedness, insanity, criminality, prostitution, syphilis, beggary, paralysis and epilepsy, which bring society undesirable descendants and parents great suffering.

The healthy formation of a child’s personality is affected by the mother’s influences during pregnancy, upbringing at home, school results, the influences of employment, social contacts, relations with neighbors, a sporting disposition, and the like.

(626) Many mothers sleep with their children and do not know that they are the cause of frequent symptoms of neurosis and an undermined character in their grown child. The child’s sexual component awakens instinctually and prematurely and is marked by ardent love for the mother. The first erotic impressions form in the child’s soul and become embodied in the esplana, and at puberty become active again, coming into conflict with moral consciousness. If the child has been brought up incorrectly, with a weak will and without mental awakening, he succumbs to neurosis and self-disrespect. Therefore, mothers, beware, lest your child one day lament your animal love and misguided upbringing!

Without a hereditary burden there is virtually no mental illness, even when a person is crushed by suffering, worries, disappointment and overwork, or is struck by shock or injury. Only in traumatic neurosis is the cause often the affect of fright, being shouted down, fear, anxiety, inferiority, grief over loss, aversion and the like.

If these shocks evoke a mental disturbance, the primary cause is a hereditarily given lack of resistance and a lack of the spirit’s strength, of reason and will.

(627) Neurasthenics, hypochondriacs and others who are mentally ill! I must tell you that you watch yourselves too much and occupy yourselves only with your suffering. There are as many different kinds of complaints as there are of you. Through constant observation of yourselves, you alone cause the illness to worsen. You constantly complain: my legs tremble, I am always tired and absent-minded, I do not sleep, I have few dreams, I am losing my memory, my head constantly aches, I am afraid of a stroke, of going mad, everything irritates me greatly, I have a constant urge toward suicide, work is an effort for me, I have pains everywhere, my breathing and heart function seem irregular, I cannot bear any company, I am always afraid of something, I expect something dreadful to happen, that houses will collapse on me as I walk down the street, I constantly have terrible torments, in the dark I keep seeing someone but then establish that it was only a bush or a post, that someone is following me and wants to hurt me, and so on. Through such self-observation you only support and strengthen your illness and root it more and more deeply in the upper subconscious. But you cannot recover in this way.

I shall give a few examples from life:

(628) J. N., a cashier from H., states: “I am afraid to think, because I become very tired and then do not sleep at all; my sleep is regularly insufficient, my thoughts are clouded, everything irritates me greatly, every little thing causes me great worry and I cannot get rid of it.”

Mrs. R. from J. complains: “I have a weak will, I cannot think as I would like, I cannot remember what I was doing before, when I want to work I cannot remember what I should do, everything startles me, nothing gives me pleasure, I have such a strange fear that I might do something, thoughts of frenzy come over me. When I overcome this terrible state, I am very tired. I have children whom I now do not love, although I loved them very much before; thoughts come to me that they might get my illness; if you do not help me, I would rather take my own life.”

Mr. Š. from Z. suffers from deceptive preconceptions and complains that an inspection of work in his office, although lasting only half an hour, destroys him mentally for the entire day, leaving him incapable of further work. He fears that any physical exertion will rob him of sleep; he can no longer endure the mental torments, cannot overcome them by himself any longer, and something constantly urges him to put an end to this suffering.

Mr. Č. from R. suffers from diseased impressions that everyone knows of his illness, that he is not right in the head; when he sees people talking, he has the impression that they are discussing his illness. He feels as though his spirit were gripped in pincers, and yet something within him keeps thinking by itself, and he cannot defend himself against it.

(629) In the young clerk B. from K., diseased thoughts that he will lose his reason have become anchored in the esplana, and therefore he must work through every foolish thought mentally. If he did not, it would give him no peace and would torment him terribly until he did so. He therefore anxiously avoids environments where thoughts might be evoked that would give him work. He knows it is nonsense and also knows that one day he will work through them. To work through them soon, therefore, he does not go into company. He listens to no one and trusts no one, only me, believing that I understand it. He likes discussing his illness with me, but does not want to be treated; he says he has no time for it and will work through it himself. Naturally, he deceives himself.

Mrs. Č. from N., a factory worker, complains to me that she has enemies who harm her from a distance, who can secretly take her feathers, that her fuel disappears, that they bewitch her milk so that it curdles, and persuade her employer to dismiss her from work; she lies awake at night and suffers from it during the day.

The young wife of a saddler from N. says: “I suffer from dreadful mental images, I have oppressive dreams, and from them I get heart and nervous attacks heralded by a fever. I have already taken many medicines against this, but without result. Everything startles me, fear comes over me. A specialist prescribed bromide to help me sleep and a quinine injection against the attacks.”

(630) The merchant P. from M. complains of frequent changes of mood, great irritability and agitation, a decline in mental faculties, and numerous sensory delusions of various kinds. In addition he suffers from loss of appetite, poor digestion, frequent headaches, constant fatigue, sleeplessness, flatulence and palpitations.

The farmer V. from V. complains: “When the thought takes hold of me that my illness will return, I suffer so much that within an hour I become as weak as if I had not slept for a week. During the war I was operated on without anesthesia, but it was not as terrible as when this thought assails me.”

The student K. from R. laments: “I have a peculiar illness. Sometimes I cannot sleep, at other times I cannot hear; I have a roaring in my head; when I can hear, I cannot see well; my neck and shoulders often hurt, then it moves into my head and I feel great mental suffering. My stomach and heart do not behave well either; the worst thing is that when it comes to my brain it thinks by itself in my place; perhaps I shall go mad from it. I feel worst in the morning.”

A mentally ill young woman, a governess, visited me accompanied by her sisters. Her sisters complained that for a year the patient had suffered from the idea that she must rise above other women. She constantly talked about this state. They added: “When someone visits us, she suspects them of hostility. We are very unhappy because of her illness.”

I connected myself with the girl magnetically to raise her rational cognitive faculty and strengthen her weak will. The girl’s gaze cleared and she said that she was feeling better just then, so I drew attention to her mental state. She said that she understood me completely, that her thoughts and soul were now clear, that she knew she had done all this, and recognized rationally that it was great nonsense, but could not realize it herself in the weakness of her will and reason.

Her sisters could not recover from their amazement at the change that had come over her. By mastering this method of treatment, one can greatly benefit the mentally ill.

(631) I have given only a small sample of the mental state of patients who suffer in this way. I could give thousands, and it is interesting that these illnesses differ considerably from one another, although some symptoms are the same.

We must not suppose that all mentally ill people are truly mad. It is only a partial disturbance of the cerebral center on a psychological foundation, and thus arises from various causes.

Apart from the state from which they suffer, they are normal, know of their illnesses and strive to rid themselves of them, and regularly fulfill their daily duties.

(632) Such phenomena indicate a mental disturbance only when they are entirely alien to the patient’s previous views and habits, his thinking, feeling and acting. We call them obsessive mental images because they attack the patient irresistibly, and the patient himself recognizes them as nonsense. There is a retreat from the conscious SELF into lower-order subconscious activity, in which the activity of the soul participates at the expense of the activity of consciousness.

You who are mentally ill, who have preserved at least a spark of rational judgment so that you still have daylight, I call you: come to the healing light, lest night come and your spirit find itself in darkness!

Materialistic psychology does not recognize the soul as the principle of life. It therefore does not know the states of subconscious processes with their activities and disturbances. It merely suspects them but cannot explain them. The activity of the subconscious would have to be subjected to analysis through innumerable experiments in trance, so that its manifestations could be divided into correct and clearly definable degrees.

Materialistic psychology proclaims that abstraction is unclear and hazy. In that case, of course, we should all have to be mad, because our thinking is not only concrete but abstract as well. Abstract activity is the most perfect activity of thought, characterizing the rational human being.

(633) My research is not conjecture! Today you know the cause of the illness, the origin of your thoughts, impressions and mental images. From today you must deceive yourselves! What seems true to you is diseased; from today you no longer believe it! Instead you immediately imagine and become aware of the opposite! That is reasonable! For diseased thoughts, the cause of your illness, must be balanced by their opposites, good thoughts. Through this very means the old thoughts will weaken until they die, for they lived from your consciousness through your constantly dwelling upon them in your soul and being governed by them. Today you will be like that wife with whom her husband constantly liked to quarrel. Because she never answered him and paid him no attention, he quarreled less and less until he stopped entirely. Your new thoughts, healthy and reasonable ones of course, will take the places of the old, which will thereby be suppressed. Then a time will come when the old and new thoughts balance one another in strength. You will already be feeling better then. As the old thoughts continually weaken and the new ones strengthen, constantly supported by conscious autosuggestion, you will recover completely in body and soul.

(634) The most important and effective means of restoring health is to strengthen your own will, as I explain in the following paragraphs. Without exercising the will, you cannot do it!

The following beneficially assists this mental treatment, so that the diseased portions of the gray cortex with their esplana may become healthy:

First seek to remove the cause of the illness, if you know it. Place a healthy thought alongside the diseased thought.

The underlying illness should be discovered and treated. Metabolism, however, must be stimulated and brought onto the right track.

Take two spoonfuls of honey daily. A deficiency of sugar in the blood results in many mental disturbances and abnormalities. Likewise take sufficient vitamins A, B, C and D. Regulate internal secretion; a physician will advise you on hormonal treatment.

Beware of frequent direct exposure to the sun. The sun’s rays act harmfully upon the oduší and the magnetic fluid, weakening their substance and value.

Stay in places where the sun’s rays fall gently, in a sparse wood or partial shade. But avoid places where the sun has no access at all.

(635) You must stop observing yourself and dwelling on unhealthy thoughts. In doing so you would enlarge the neuronal cells of the corresponding region of the brain, burdening and enlarging individual esplana in that place. You would thereby cause overstimulation of the brain and constant automatic activity of unhealthy thoughts, images, impressions and the like. This weakens the mental capacity of the conscious SELF. It then lacks the strength to resist, reason becomes clouded, and unhealthy thoughts and impressions gain ascendancy.

Raise up your weakened psychic SELF! Gather and unite your scattered mental powers into one SELF!

(636) Observe that as a rule no scoundrel, vagabond or thief develops this mental illness. He is surely indifferent to every act, thought and impression, and therefore does not develop this illness. Why does an animal not suffer from mental illnesses? Because it does not have the ability to become aware of mental states by itself. Adapt yourself; be indifferent to diseased thoughts!

Do not worry about how you will be tomorrow, but believe and imagine that all this will soon pass, so that you will be healthy again.

Do not discuss your condition with anyone, lest you support and nourish your illness.

After lunch, allow yourself a rest. Either sleep or sit in a quiet room, undisturbed by anyone, and fix and concentrate your will on an insignificant object. Place a button, an apple or the like one or two meters in front of you and concentrate your entire thinking on this simple, insignificant object, or, for example, on your big toe, the tip of your shoe, and so forth. This will quiet your diseased thoughts. Always choose the simplest object, so that its complexity does not scatter your thoughts.

(637) So that exhausted parts of the brain can regenerate completely, go into nature after sleep or after the thought exercise. There you will bring the whole gray cortex into healthy thinking and suppress the unhealthy activity of individual parts of the brain. Take these walks in the company of a friend who is acquainted with my method. He will support you in your weak will. If you have no one, go walking alone. Walk at ease, occasionally breathe deeply with full lungs, and stay in healthy air as long as you can. Hold your head high, look around you, and rejoice in the beauties of nature. Nature will stimulate your senses, and new, healthy thought formations will develop in your esplana. Join your entire thinking with them, rejoice, reflect, converse with a flower, a bird, a mighty oak or a slender fir, observe the diligence of ants, bees, little beetles, and so on.

If you become tired, allow yourself a rest. The tension of the nerves absolutely requires it.

For the spinal cord and nerve ganglia, mere rest from bodily labor is sufficient. After strenuous physical and mental work, the cerebellum and cerebrum require rest, that is, sleep. Much depends on sleep. Sometimes you rest better in light sleep than in deep sleep, especially if the latter is associated with oppressive dreams or even sleepwalking, in which the sleeper walks without knowing it and often performs even difficult tasks. In one-sided mental activity, certain convolutions of the brain become exhausted and pass into a diseased state, manifesting itself in constant automatic activity during waking and sleeping. Then, when we lie down in bed, the whole brain does not sleep, only a part of it. The diseased part remains awake and prematurely awakens the surrounding convolutions, thereby depriving us of necessary sleep and robbing us of the reserves of energy so necessary for work.

(638) Be mentally and physically active every day! Although the entire gray cortex is always active, if we vary its activities, individual regions of the brain work in alternation.

In this lies the secret of maintaining mental freshness and restoring oneself to health.

Find a little stream, take off your shoes, and wade cheerfully in it. You will thus draw blood from your head into your legs, thereby strengthening the brain; your spirit will revive. Do this several times daily, for five minutes each time.

Take morning walks in dew-covered grass, for dew contains various radiant energies released from earthy substances, such as potassium. This emanation penetrates the dew and possesses a healing power that refreshes the nerves. Remember that the nervous centers, the brain and spinal cord, are treated from their finest branches.

God’s nature will provide you with many opportunities to arrange your thoughts healthily and combat your diseased thoughts with healthy ones. In your own interest, use this effective medicine daily.

(639) You must not, however, exhaust yourself too much mentally or physically. Conserve energy, do not waste it, and keep it carefully in reserve for important moments!

For this very reason sexual stimulation is extremely harmful, and you must strictly avoid it.

If you suffer from loss of appetite, drink a decoction of plantain, wormwood, bogbean, centaury and St. John’s wort. Mix a pinch of each herb and boil for one or two minutes, leave to stand for ten minutes, strain, and take one or two spoonfuls every two hours.

Very sweet foods weaken the nerves, so sweeten with honey. Hot foods disturb the nerves. Beef soups also weaken the nerves, as do tea, cocoa, beer, coffee, liqueurs, white baked goods, confectionery, heavy meats and preserves, which form harmful acids.

(640) Remember that a one-sided diet conceals many dangers for the nervous system. Through metabolism, various harmful acids form in the body: sulfuric, uric, phosphoric, carbonic and others. Nature provides many substances that counteract and neutralize these acids. See that through food you supply the blood with alkalis, bases, and alkaline elements: potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sodium and magnesium. These are contained chiefly in vegetables and fruit. They are the elements of youth. Vitamins B and D treat inflammation of the nerves. The best of the alkaline salts, magnesium, which strengthens the nerves, is found in large quantities in wholemeal bread and gray salt.

Foods made from flour, coarsely ground flour, fruit, vegetables, legumes, milk and eggs strengthen the nerves, as do barley soups and porridges of oat groats and the like. Also figs, dates, nuts, apples, almonds, oranges, tomatoes, sour milk, thymus, and homemade bread from flour milled once. (Those who suffer from rheumatism and stones, beware of tomatoes!) Homemade bread with honey and milk is beneficial too. Twice daily take a knife-tip of bone meal and wash it down with water. Prepare it yourself: take a thick bone from healthy, freshly slaughtered cattle and roast it over a fire until it is like white burnt lime; then crush it into a fine powder, which strengthens the nerves.

(641) Another recipe: wash as many fresh eggs as will fit standing upright on the bottom of a glass vessel. Cover them with lemon juice. Put the vessel in a dry place. In fourteen days the shells will dissolve and the contents of the eggs will remain in their membranes. Stir thoroughly with a whisk, strain through a sieve, and add as much fresh honey as the contents weigh, and as many coffee-spoonfuls of cognac as there were eggs. Take two spoonfuls of this mixture daily. This accessible homemade preparation greatly strengthens the nerves.

From bones and eggshells we obtain animal lime. Various tablets supply us with inorganic lime. From milk, cheese, pears and cauliflower we supply the body with more readily accepted organic lime.

Among medicinal herbs, a decoction of the root of yellow gentian or valerian calms and strengthens the nerves. A decoction of lavender flowers, peppermint leaf, lemon balm, rue and centaury acts similarly. Put a pinch of each into a cup of water and boil for one or two minutes, leave to settle for five to ten minutes, strain, and take the decoction in small cupfuls three times daily.

(642) Every mental image vividly impressed upon the esplana acts through its reflection upon the soul’s feeling. If your digestive apparatus is out of order and you have no appetite, form a vivid, plastic mental image of appetizing food. Turn your entire mind toward it.

A stimulating reaction will arise in the digestive apparatus. The digestive organs will begin to secrete the corresponding juices, and a healthy appetite will gradually appear. Through practice you can regulate the activity of the digestive apparatus.

(643) Do not smoke!

Beware of spicy, sour and excessively salty foods, as well as smoked meats. Remember the vitamins!

Never eat after seven in the evening, and read nothing after four in the afternoon. In this way you will prepare the weakened nerves and gray cortex for peaceful sleep.

Read as little as possible, and only what does not upset you.

Avoid cinemas, theaters, public houses and all agitating amusements.

Avoid rooms that are overheated and poorly ventilated.

Before sleep, and especially in the morning, restore your health through conscious autosuggestion; see “Treatment by Autosuggestion.”

Believe and enliven the mental image that one day you will be healthy again! In this lies a sure guarantee of victory. And do not be like wet wood that nothing can set alight!

(644) Always be prepared beforehand to accept an event that might befall you, and you will not be too surprised or swept away by its effect. Psychic traumas will then never arise.

If you want to be healthy, mortify desire. Every passion weakens your will. Weakness of will facilitates the emergence of mental illness.

Do not enter into the thought that you are merely a piece of life separated from the rest.

Hardships are the salt of life. Wretched is the person who regards himself as lost.

Find a friend who will support you in your mental afflictions, but only one who has properly studied my method of treatment and made it his own.

Never leave mentally ill people alone. In doing so you strengthen their illness, because when they are alone they constantly dwell on their suffering.

(645) Go to sleep at precisely nine o’clock in the evening, and in the morning get up immediately upon awakening!

Let your bedding be aired every day. Have a bolster beneath your head. Sleep on a firm base, and avoid having feather bedding beneath you, lest your sleep suffer!

If you cannot fall asleep, drink a cup of valerian decoction and wash your entire arms and legs, including the soles of your feet, with pure alcohol. You can also warm milk and drink a glass of it. If you awaken and cannot fall asleep again, repeat the procedure described. Or place a cold compress on your stomach and wrap it warmly.

Sleep with the window open. In the morning drink a glass of water and go for a walk. Return in one or two hours for breakfast. Drink fresh water frequently during the day as well.

On your walks, devote plenty of time to deep, regular breathing. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.

(646) Learn to breathe correctly! Stand perfectly upright and let your arms hang freely down. Breathe in slowly and calmly through your nose, first filling the lower part of the lungs, not the rib cage, so that your abdomen expands. Then fill the middle part so that the lower ribs of the chest expand. Finally fill the upper part of the lungs so that the upper chest expands. Hold your breath for two or three seconds and breathe out through the nose. Repeat six to eight times in succession, at least eight times daily. This simple exercise will give you a clear idea of what a complete breath is. You will enable air to enter freely into the lower, middle and especially the small upper lobes of the lungs, where tuberculosis often has its breeding ground. You will thus prevent lung disease and improve the quality of your blood. (Caution: acquaint yourselves with present-day findings, which recommend not raising the shoulders during breathing exercises, to protect the cervical spine.)

See that you maintain a regular daily bowel movement, lest your blood be polluted by disease-producing substances, for many mental illnesses begin precisely in constipation!

(647) Do light gymnastics every day, or work in the garden!

Wear light, porous underclothing, preferably a linen shirt, so that your skin is stimulated to activity. Wear porous, light clothing with a loose collar, a light hat, and low shoes in summer.

In summer, take a light-and-air bath in a bathing suit in partial shade. You will thus stimulate the activity of the skin and achieve proper blood circulation. Gentle massage of the body is beneficial too.

To recover, you must work with every means of defense against mental illness and intrusive mental images. You must not neglect bodily and mental hygiene, practicing sports and physical exercises: strengthening self-confidence! For in treatment by autosuggestion these are often the first medicine.

Someone who is mentally soft cannot control himself inwardly and succumbs to a nervous crisis at every setback. Just as we harden ourselves physically, it is necessary to harden ourselves mentally as well. This can be achieved through a clear mind and a strong will. Only thus will mental balance prevail.

To know how to govern the nervous system with our consciousness, we must not pamper our SELF with wishes and moods. If it happens that something does not go our way, we shall then more easily ward off a nervous crisis that would arise from an insignificant cause from which we could not free ourselves. If we do not want to suffer from psychoses, but on the contrary wish to be mentally free, let us not forcibly repress any unpleasant experiences, fears, terrors or affects. Let us come to terms with them rationally and then ignore them. They will thereby be neutralized and will no longer have the strength to frighten us from the lower-order subconscious.

(648) For the patient’s sake, invite entertaining company. Let him have many opportunities for laughter and diversion. Laughter benefits him greatly. The following lines will convince us of this:

If we bring a person into hypnosis and the physician introduces a bile probe into the sleeper’s body, so that the flowing bile can be collected in a test tube, and if we suggest to him that he should be angry, afraid, furious and anxious, bile will not flow. If, however, we suggest joy, laughter, merriment and the like, a strong flow of bile begins.

From this we can recognize that agitation and a discontented mind, fear, anger and anxiety act harmfully upon bile and are the cause of many mental illnesses. The agitated soul has a strong influence on the secretion of bile: the gallbladder contracts, bile cannot flow into the intestines, the gallbladder becomes overfilled, and the bile finally flows into the liver and into the blood.

In angry, choleric and melancholic people, we can observe a more yellow coloring of the skin.

(649) Arouse cheerfulness, sing, seek out music! Song and music are creations of the subconscious, a psychic passion and joy.

Every agitation of the mind must be avoided. Occupy yourselves only with calm thoughts, seek out joy, laughter and contented company, so that the patient too has an opportunity to laugh.

To influence overall blood circulation and calm and strengthen your nerves, bathe your feet in lukewarm water every other day before sleep.

Every other day get up an hour earlier and wash the whole body, except the head, with a cold mixture of half water and half fruit vinegar. Wash gradually upward from the feet, do not dry yourself, put on your underclothing, and go back to bed for another hour. It is very beneficial to wash the whole body with cold water before sleep, then put your hands into dry salt and rub the entire body with it, starting at the feet. Do not dry yourself; put on your underclothing and lie down. The nerves will calm, and sleep will surely come soon.

Wash the face with a wet towel. Wetting the head is harmful.

Twice a week in the early evening, lie on a sheet folded four to six times, which you have previously soaked in cold water and wrung out thoroughly. It must reach from the neck to the thighs. Lie quietly on it for a whole hour, well covered with a feather quilt. You will strengthen the spinal cord and draw blood away from the brain.

(650) Beware of warm baths, cold showers on the head and poisonous medicines!

Among cold applications, if you wish and your condition permits, take a cold bath for six to eight seconds. Alternate once up to the waist and the next time up to the chin, only twice a week. Then dress immediately and move briskly, or go to a warm bed. Every other night, wrap your abdomen and calves in cold compresses for about two hours; in the morning pour cold water over your legs as far as the hips.

Editorial warning before paragraph 651

The following historical mixtures include poisonous plants and must not be prepared or taken as remedies. The source’s quantities are not safe dosing guidance. After suspected poisonous-plant ingestion, contact a poison center promptly for expert advice. See Poison Control’s poisonous-plant guide. The historical text is retained without endorsement.

(651) If your blood is polluted, drink a decoction of St. John’s wort, wormwood, plantain, young birch leaves and nettles, ripe rose hips or field pansy; once a week apply a whole-body wrap of a decoction of oat straw and senna pods. Put a handful of each into four liters of water and boil for half an hour. Pour off the hot water and put two linen sheets into it, wring them out, and have yourself wrapped completely in them; wrap warm blankets over them and lie motionless in the wrap beneath a feather quilt for two hours.

Or: once a week before sleep, steam the whole body for twenty-five minutes. For this purpose, fill a large vessel more than halfway with water and heat it to boiling. Then place it beneath a seat with openings, wrap yourself tightly in two blankets up to the neck, leaving the head free. Then slowly uncover the lid and let the steam act upon you. After the steam treatment, dry yourself and go to bed. In the morning, wash with cold water.

Otherwise too, I recommend inducing a sweat once every two weeks, provided, of course, the heart permits it. For a weak heart, take tea of juniper, lovage, European mistletoe, spring adonis and lily of the valley. For an irregular pulse, a decoction of horehound, broom and hawthorn blossom. For palpitations, a decoction of motherwort, lavender, speedwell, lovage, white dead-nettle and watercress. For pains in the heart and intercostal nerves, angina pectoris, take a decoction of broom, bittersweet, spring adonis and European mistletoe. For cardiac neurosis, a decoction of rue, valerian and speedwell. But remember: lily of the valley, adonis and broom are poisonous herbs, so only half a small spoonful in half a liter of water is sufficient.

(652) The gray cerebral matter with its esplana is the soul’s own workshop. The soul cannot become ill, but the instrument, the brain, is easily damaged, and therefore the soul cannot express itself healthily through it and suffers. The soul’s fundamental faculties, reason and will, sink to their lowest degree. This weakening of the conscious SELF produces mental emptiness. Connection with the esplana ceases, for the conscious SELF lacks the strength to set the gray cortex in motion so as to make the esplana vibrate. Anxieties, fears and terrors come, because the rational judgment available in the upper consciousness, in the esplana, is lacking. [Translator’s note: the source here says “upper consciousness,” rather than its usual “upper subconscious.”]

Through the weakening of the conscious SELF, the entry subconscious SELF awakens, for the soul is in its essence constantly active in thought. Later, a division of consciousness occurs. You force yourselves to think of your own affairs and wish to be cheerful, but at the same time someone else within you thinks at that very moment of opposite, sad things. It is therefore necessary to know how to put this instrument of the soul in order again. I have given tested instructions for how you can achieve this.

(653) To improve the capacity of the psychic conscious SELF and be able to resist diseased mental images and obsessive thoughts, you must exercise and strengthen your will, as I have already stated. The will weakens if I allow myself to be governed by obsessive thoughts, impressions and mental images and so on, but, conversely, it grows powerful when I think about what I myself wish! As soon as you begin to yield to involuntary thinking, your will weakens. Therefore awaken within yourself that hidden power, so that you will be master of your thinking! You will not achieve it immediately, but will it, and you will discover that through constant, short practice your conscious SELF will grow stronger. In nature you have the best opportunity to perform occasional exercises. For example, you see a stream winding its way through a valley; its rushing and murmuring affect you pleasantly, and you let yourself be carried freely along by thoughts arising from this stimulation. Such a therapeutic procedure is healthy only for calming diseased nerves, but does not strengthen the will. If you want to awaken it to the highest degree, you must yourself form suitable, creative thoughts, for example that you would lead this stream in a different direction to shorten its course, that you would build a mill there and make use of its energy, and so on. Through this your will will strengthen! Perform similar exercises briefly, so that they do not tire you too much, for ten minutes at most, two or three times daily. Always choose a different subject, a cause for reflection.

(654) Or: a desire of the body, the eyes, hearing or taste seeks some enjoyment. When I observe that I am already yielding and want to indulge myself, I rally my will and overcome the desire. Through this the will will strengthen. We should maintain constant psychic tension. As soon as we relax, gaps form and the automatisms of various repressed symptoms or intrusive mental images take over. So do not hesitate; systematically give your thinking a direction!

In a healthy and firm will lie strength and victory.

Mental illness is apt to return if strong and healthy thoughts have not been anchored in the upper subconscious to the effect: “The illness must never return, and will not return!” Therefore repeat and enliven this faith within yourself through imaginative autosuggestion.

The culmination of the most important advice given is this: the patient must build, create and establish in his thoughts a final goal, his ideal for achieving complete health. Although you are ill, you must constantly see yourself in your thoughts as completely healthy. This living, plastic image must become your beacon and goal, toward which the healthy subconscious will lead and bring you, so that you recover gradually.

Even other methods of treatment often have no other significance than to rouse and urge the subconscious toward achieving health.

(655) However beneficial and healing the method described above may be, it can become destructive for someone who forms and believes thoughts that he is ill or will die by a certain time. I give an account of the death of the renowned researcher de Rochas, who had his subject, Mrs. Lambert, look further into the future while asleep. The subject was then seeing the year 1917, while the experiments were being conducted as early as 1910. It occurred to de Rochas to ask the sleeper whether he would still be conducting experiments with her at that time. “With you? I don’t know you!” “You don’t know me? Come now!” “Oh yes, you look very much like someone I knew well, but I don’t know you. Who are you, then?” “Well now! You know very well that I am Colonel de Rochas!” She burst into boisterous laughter. “Oh no! The whole world already knows that de Rochas died three years ago.” With that the test ended for the day. De Rochas did indeed die in 1914, exactly as predicted.

Here we have evidence of the destructive effect upon de Rochas of believing his subject’s report, when the subject certainly had no foundation from which she could have drawn that report. Dr. Mesmer died in a similar way.

Both deaths occurred because the prediction formed its image, which the persons concerned believed, and the subconscious gradually completed the work, made easier by their failure to take a countermeasure in the form of creating a vivid image that they would not die and that those reports were false.

We have learned the importance of striving to create for ourselves a final goal, an ideal of health, a destination the person wishes to reach.

(656) A person is born into the world with a certain contribution from his ancestors; he brings certain dispositions with him. It follows that the development of both the bodily and the mental side of the child is in its essence determined by the laws of heredity. Natural development should be guided according to these dispositions. As already stated, descendants receive from their ancestors the seeds of aptitudes and faculties for their future development. Some manifest themselves immediately; others often appear only in distant descendants. Hereditary aptitudes are the nucleus of every characteristic, and hereditary inclinations are dispositions toward character traits and mental defects. Aptitudes and inclinations are mere possibilities, prerequisites, dormant, unawakened seeds of later characteristics and mental illnesses, stored in the genes of each individual cell, except the esplana, which have neither chromosomes nor genes. Aptitudes, inclinations and upbringing are therefore bound to one another; each needs the other.

During development, mental awakening and the acquisition of knowledge, that is, during upbringing and instruction, we must never underestimate the child. A feeling of inferiority produces consequences in a child that last throughout life. Every individual, even a burdened one, can be transformed through upbringing into a whole human being. If we neglect upbringing and do not guide him toward the faculties of reason, will and feeling alongside the growth of the vegetative and sensory faculties, the individual remains below normal, at a low level with animal inclinations and instincts, dependent upon experiences and inclinations transmitted from ancestors, which have the opportunity to awaken and assert themselves. If a feeling of inferiority takes root in the child’s mind, in the esplana, the child becomes difficult to reach and stubborn, and the prospects of success and happiness are nil.

(657) Children are also born in whom the emotional side predominates. These, however, are susceptible to mental illnesses even when a hereditary burden on the part of parents and ancestors is absent. By being shouted down, or through forcible suggestive repression of the emotional side, or the child’s own autosuggestive repression of it, the child’s balance is disturbed. The suggestive influence occupies his consciousness to such a degree that it completely controls it and reduces its scope in such a way that he cannot free himself from it even with the aid of other influences. An affect with a traumatic stimulus has arisen, taking part of the mental power with it. A narrowing of the field of consciousness has occurred; mental power and activity have divided, and conscious activity has weakened. The emotional stimulus separated from consciousness then lives on its own account and, disguised as various symptoms and neuroses, penetrates consciousness from the lower-order subconscious; the child grows into a neurotic personality. If an impression of inferiority arises, it manifests itself as an injury, a wound to the soul, for it has become embodied, impressed as a “psychic trauma” into the energetic matter of the brain and esplana, from which it acts reflexively and lowers psychic potentiality. The psychic trauma of inferiority makes itself felt at every attempt at independent action and public appearance, and, with life’s failures, in time grows into a mental illness. The human SELF is a synthetic system of affects, instincts, passions, aptitudes, faculties, reason and will. In the diseased SELF, under the circumstances described, groups of affects, and possibly individual instincts and affects, become independent. Such a SELF is unhealthy.

(658) An isolated affect is part of the human personality. We encounter it most closely in schizophrenia, which is a complex psychosis. An isolated affect with its repressed corresponding content forms a complex.

Every complex takes part of the mental energy from conscious activity, especially when there are several complexes; the faculty of reason and will weakens. The weak spirit then flounders and lives in inexpressible confusion.

(659) The psychoneurotic is endowed with imagination to a considerable degree. The diseased imagination of the mentally ill manifests itself as delusions and ideas of reference; pathological ideas of reference manifest themselves in the patient’s seeing a relation to his own person in other people’s behavior where none exists. He feels himself to be the person around whom the entire world revolves. Delusions are false thoughts, but for the patient they are unshakably convincing. All this is the result of the patient’s imagination, and he lives in this unreal world as if it were reality. In some cases hallucinations join it, so that he is still further removed from reality.

The psychoneurotic leads a way of life in which an inclination toward fantasy is apparent. He usually does not like real life. It is too unsatisfying for him, so that he must resort to fantasies to a greater degree than a healthy person. Fantasy revolves around what this person lacks. The treasure of consciousness is correct and logical thinking. This, of course, cannot be said of fantastic thinking. A certain part of its content falls within the content of consciousness, but the greater part remains unconscious and can be inferred only from hints and symbols. The psychoneurotic, the nervous person, wishes to live in an imaginary, imagined and pictorial world. From the real world he feels terror and fear, or mental pain. Fantasies may have a direct relationship to psychoneurotic symptoms.

The patient indulges in fantasy with masterly skill and firmly believes it himself. All psychoneurotics live partly in the world of their fantasies. Unlike psychotics, paraphrenics and paranoiacs, however, they are aware of this. Diseased fantasies are not useful for real life. We encounter them in mental disturbances. This is so above all in sexual perversions, which are always accompanied by luxuriant sexual fantasies and sometimes are realized as manifestations of perverted sexual feeling.

(660) Where should we seek the origin of hallucinations and diseased fantasy? To seek it in the essence of the soul is impossible, for the soul is the image of God. We must seek it in the genetic inheritance of the human body and its sensitive spirit. The activity of the spirit operates not only in conscious processes, but is also alternately exposed to the determining influences of the material interior, either as the automatic activity of overstimulated esplana, or as a phylogenetic deposit originating in the mental life of ancestors, which is the source of many hallucinations recalled incoherently, as fragments, from the prehistoric depths of genetic matter preserving human prehistory within itself. These fragments of the prehistoric activity of human life, mostly in infants and the mentally ill, are the cause of hallucinations passing into diseased fantasy. All this shows that the products of hallucination and diseased fantasy arise from the material embodiment of the genes, are directly connected with mythology, and come from ancestors. The customs, desires, cults, fantasies, symbols and myths of our remote ancestors awaken to activity through constant stimulation by the dynamic action of the human spirit, and impose themselves upon the conscious SELF. If the conscious SELF is weak and does not govern its feelings through reason, it falls into dreaming. The feeble-minded person suffers mentally. The creative spirit draws upon them, obtaining material for heroic stories, music, the visual arts and poetry.

We need not interpret every fantasy in relation to phylogeny. Sometimes an ontogenetic explanation, the history of the individual, of childhood sexual and affective experiences suffices. There is also normal fantasy, which often occurs in children at puberty. We must know how to distinguish diseased fantasy from healthy fantasy. Only the latter is the result of the creative power of the faculty of reason and will.

(661) There is a path back from fantasy to reality. It is art and science. The development of science culminates in philosophy, the development of art in drama. Fantasy is therefore not merely a fruitless consumption of time; it is also the foundation of all human progress. Every technical and intellectual advance requires creative imagination, which may have various origins. It is either the fruit of intuition, proceeds from reason, or is the product of a psychoneurotic who transforms his inner unrest into the creative process of giving fantasy form in material, in an idea or in a new discovery. The artist, however, is essentially an introverted person who is not far from neurosis. It is well known, after all, how often artists in particular suffer a partial inhibition of their powers of achievement. The artist does not derive from fantasy the pleasure that the dreamer does. He derives it only from a higher goal, from reproducing the mental image in his work. Various instinctual repressions and rational conflicts, not yet pathogenic in character but having become causes of neuroses, are an important need for artistic creation. The reverse is true of a strong spirit whose reason has developed and who, of his own will, forms mental images and realizes them. Through creating a work, the psychoneurotic does not wish to rid himself of the conflict, but only of distressing feelings, for he is constantly fleeing the conflict. The artist can do this. For the dreamer it happens by itself during sleep at night. A psychoneurotic lacking creative realization becomes unusable for life, and his normal fantasy may pass into a pathogenic form.

(662) Fantasy provides the psychoneurotic with a substitute for gratification unattainable in reality and thus creates a psychic reality replacing the objective one. Modern psychology emphasizes the creative aspect within itself. Recently psychoanalysis too has taken notice of fantasy. It regards it as conscious or unconscious mental activity in which a person comes to terms with reality, which is unpleasant to him in some way, by reshaping it in thought.

In fantasy, every striving easily attains an image of fulfillment. Dwelling upon longed-for wishes brings satisfaction in fantasy, although the awareness that it is not reality remains unimpaired. A person enjoys release from external necessity, although in reality he is not entirely free. Fantasy borders on the dream, with which it shares both mastery of unpleasant reality, an attempt at wish fulfillment, and a certain separation from real life and disregard for external stimuli. It differs from dreams, however, in not being accompanied by sleep. Yet it is often an introduction to sleep, or its continuation. The best-known creations of fantasy are so-called daydreams, satisfying ambitious, grandiose and erotic desires, which develop all the more the more reality compels modesty and forbearance. The basis of happiness in fantasy is the re-creation of pleasure’s independence from reality.

(663) The phylogenetic deposit influences the weak spirit through its hallucinatory and fantastic action. If the spirit has not developed in its rational faculty, it lives and acts under the influence of diseased fantasy and is inferior for society. We can convince ourselves sufficiently of this if we use hypnosis to put a person to sleep. The activity of his SELF retreats from conscious activity into the first, second or third degree of the entry subconscious. Depending on the depth of sleep, the rational faculty becomes more or less passive. Creative thinking ability is thereby made impossible. The psychic SELF has come under the influence of strongly activating esplana and the phylogenetic deposit, which are the source of hallucinations and luxuriant fantasy. The subject deceives us to a greater or lesser degree. Only in the fourth degree of hypnosis does the influence of both the phylogenetic deposit and the esplana cease, for the psychic SELF frees itself from the material body and finds itself in radiant energy released from the cell nuclei. A person living a righteous life, even if during earthly life he was intellectually backward and suffered inwardly from hallucinations and diseased fantasy, is freed from the determining influences his body caused him only through death.

(664) Reason guided by systematic education is the power through which we form sensations, concepts, judgments and conclusions. Healthy reason and strength are the sources of all inner activity and can combat and master diseased hallucinations, passions, anxieties, fears and apprehensions, for from reason come courage, daring, fearlessness, manliness, firmness, hardiness and indomitability.

A person thinking through rational reflection, the higher part of the spirit, distinguishes at first glance what in his thinking is healthy and what is diseased, and understands things and life. Through the rational vigilance of the spirit and free will, he is active in thought; from his own intuition and view he alters his imagination through the will. From given forms he composes new images and ingeniously leads them toward realization as new artistic creations, inventions, scientific truths, musical compositions and so forth, without himself needing to be bound to the phylogenetic deposit of prehistoric “culture.”

(665) Opposing thoughts exist constantly in mental processes. If some conflict predominates, severe nervous disturbances occur and neuroses arise. Only a small part of the entire upper subconscious emerges into consciousness. Everything else must wait until some external reality, chance association or the will recalls it and permits it to enter consciousness.

Each of us has certain mental conflicts repressed into the esplana, the so-called lower-order subconscious. They have thereby become unconscious, disconnected from association. In sensitive people these repressed conflicts have greater significance. They can then manifest themselves in dreams, slips of the tongue and the symptoms of many neuroses, especially if they have passed through strong emotional agitation. Hereditarily burdened people may, through the repression of conflicts, split their SELF into several subordinate persons, each capable of independent existence for a time.

Likewise, through various sufferings, longing, a lack of rational judgments and a weak will, healthy concepts in the esplana change into diseased ones. A gradual retreat of the conscious SELF into the entry subconscious takes place, and through the fault of diseased esplana and the formation of complexes, it is transformed into the diseased lower-order subconscious. This then becomes independent as a second SELF that pushes back the normal conscious SELF. Until the illness grows more extensive, the patient suffers from various symptoms of forced thoughts, mental images, voices and sounds. Later the lower-order subconscious becomes independent as a second SELF and pushes back the normal conscious SELF, so that two or more personalities alternate in one body. The healthy subconscious SELF often punishes the conscious SELF, whose irresponsible behavior it disapproves of. The awakened subconscious SELF will not tolerate it for long, and through its power brings the conscious SELF into misfortune, often even to death. Thus it destroys its opponent, for the subconscious SELF, the true image of God, cannot tolerate evil or sin.

The transition from normal mental characteristics to abnormal and pathological ones is often small and indistinct. It is marked by psychopathies, which intensify into psychoses and may further lead to mental illnesses.

(666) If the nerves, brain and spinal cord become ill, or if neurosis, neurasthenia or nervous weakness manifests itself, often no anatomical changes can be demonstrated. They are therefore called functional diseases, or neuroses. These also include those cases in which a disturbance of consciousness, thus a mental state, acts as a stimulus or obstacle, an inhibition, thereby producing a bodily disturbance.

Congenital weakness of the nervous system, a neuropathic disposition, is caused chiefly by a hereditary burden arising from perverted upbringing, malnutrition, tuberculosis, moral decline, drunkenness, syphilis, nicotine, prolonged severe illness, states of general weakness, unfavorable conditions during pregnancy, and so on. All this damages the nervous system of descendants, so that they lack immunity against disease-producing influences. It is otherwise with the descendants of healthy parents who are mindful of strengthening the body and steeling the will, so that a rational way of life erects effective barriers against the flood of harmful influences assailing the nerves of modern people.

(667) From a hereditary burden arise feeble-mindedness, idiocy, epilepsy, neurasthenia, hysteria and other cerebral and nervous disturbances. The brain of these people cannot tolerate mental exertion; immediately following exertion arise laziness, irritability, sleep disturbances, hypersensitivity of the sensory nerves, muscular twitching, palpitations, absent-mindedness, habitual lying, a lack of abilities, a decline in mental powers, blunting of moral inhibitions, and loss of will, from which pathological irritability comes. Hand in hand with this go brutality, quarrelsomeness, unreliability, a lack of self-control, and loss of the sense of honor and duty. Such a person is incapable of regular activity and cannot tolerate physical or mental exertion. Reduced capability results in difficulties in making a living, followed by worries, melancholy and despair, from which a mental disturbance suddenly erupts at the next opportunity.

When nerve cells become ill, through a lack of magnetic energy, no bodily organ or its activity is spared nervous weakness, which manifests itself in irritability, reduced performance, a lack of decisiveness and courage, dejection and mental depression. Knowing how to emerge from this illness corresponds more or less to a good “nature,” a strong will and vital force inherited from the parents, which in this case are inherent in the body concerned.

(668) First: the patient must have confidence in himself, strong faith in recovery, and above all attend to renewal of the blood and a change in his way of life. It is necessary to eat fruit, peaches, strawberries, grapes, nuts and figs; all root vegetables, pouring raspberry juice over two spoonfuls of grated vegetables daily; salads, green cucumbers, wholemeal bread, gray salt, sweet and sour milk, yogurt and kefir, which contain vitamins and abundant calcium, potassium, sodium and magnesium and ensure the blood’s alkalinity, or alkalescence, that is, its ability to neutralize sulfuric, hydrochloric, uric, phosphoric and other acids. At the same time one must treat oneself with light, air, water, movement, hardening, air baths, breathing exercises, song, music and a cheerful mood, and sleep at least eight hours daily. Give up smoking, cocoa, heavy meats, smoked meats, beef soups, tea, coffee, white baked goods and spices; use little salt and limit sexual intercourse. Eat only poultry and rabbit meat, fish and thymus. Also one raw egg daily, rice, potatoes, cabbage, curd cheese, butter, rolled oats, and foods made from wheat flour and milk. All this forms the foundation for a cure.

For a simpler foundation of life can greatly increase true joy in living and strengthen the nerves.

(669) For sleeplessness, one may drink before bed a decoction of speedwell, cloves and valerian, sweetened with honey, or of flowering heather, valerian and wormwood, alternating on other days with a glass of honey water or cream, sour milk, grated apples or twenty-five drops of orange tincture.

Likewise, an air bath before sleep, deep breathing or a hot compress placed on the nape of the neck, renewed every ten minutes two or three times in succession, or a cold compress placed on the abdomen for five minutes, are all very stimulating.

One must attend to regular bowel movements, fresh air, proper airing of bedding and the proper temperature of the feet.

With weakness of memory, let us seek to acquire healthy, clean blood and attend to its proper circulation. Let us eat natural food and move about a great deal outdoors. Let us practice gymnastics and enjoy air baths. Every day before sleep, let us alternate a cold bath of the lower part of the body, for ten seconds, with a light washing of it.

(670) The treatment of dejection and mental depression succeeds excellently through magnetic connection with a healthy and cheerful person who would support the patient by sending imaginative suggestions of his health during the day and during sleep; see “The Treatment of Mental Illnesses.”

I also treated masturbators in a similar way. During the day I suggested to them an insurmountable aversion to this vice. Above all, however, during sleep I influenced them by telepathic means toward their moral education, with success throughout. In this case, however, the physician must constantly nourish the above-mentioned aversion within himself. He will then readily achieve success.

(671) There is a mental illness that manifests itself in the brain as inflammation of the nerve endings of the medulla oblongata, and outwardly as obstinacy, stubbornness, disobedience, lying and the like. It arises from congestion of the brain through overwork or from pathological rushes of blood to the nervous center. Drawing blood away from the brain through water applications to the lower part of the body then acts successfully. It is sufficient to wash with cold water before sleep, then apply a cold bath to the lower part of the body for ten seconds, then tread with the feet in cold water for forty seconds, or take a lukewarm foot bath for about fourteen minutes. Pouring cold water over the hips is beneficial too, but the body must be warm. Afterward it is necessary to exercise the body during the day and lie down in a warm bed in the evening. One procedure daily is sufficient. Patients often will not do it of their own will. In such a case they should even be compelled forcefully if necessary.

(672) In one kind of this mental illness, the patient himself thinks about nothing and copies everything he sees in others. In such patients the fundamental faculties of the soul, reason and will, are reduced to the lowest degree. For example, the patient takes passionately to smoking; at another time he runs about constantly, abandons that and takes passionately to cycling, then begins bathing regardless of the weather. If he is a musician, he devotes himself passionately to music, without reflecting on why he does it. For such a person to recover, in addition to water massage he must undergo a magnetic fluid connection with a magnetizer, who must constantly stay at his heels and forbid what the patient himself would like to do, always leading him to the opposite and choosing something different. This irritates the patient and sometimes even enrages him. But the strong-willed physician-magnetizer, who can influence the patient’s pure subconscious, must not be frightened by this; on the contrary, he easily subdues him with a mere calm, direct look. The patient recognizes that he will get nowhere and falls silent. After such frenzy, the activity of the lower-order subconscious SELF begins in the patient, as in all the mentally ill. The physician then calmly exerts telepathic influence toward his recovery. After several failures, the patient begins to reflect on why he was opposed, and the arrested activity of the conscious SELF thereby begins to awaken. In such patients, clairvoyant subjects established slow activity of the cerebral cortex as a consequence of inflammation of the nerve ending of the medulla oblongata, sometimes, conversely, heightened activity. Through this the rational cognitive, volitional and memory faculties declined.

If the cultivation of reason declines, the will must decline too. Cultivation of the will without a cultivated reason is impossible, and vice versa. One does not prosper without the other. The will is the faculty of choosing between good and evil. Such an unfortunate person lacks all this. Therefore, as soon as he begins to think for himself, we must make use of it and awaken everything anew in him. The esplana in which all the soul’s faculties assert themselves for life are very dim, though not completely extinguished, and can be awakened to life again. We must teach the patient everything anew, especially why we work and sleep, what trees, water, fruit, birds, animals and so on are for. But the patient must not be told why he is being treated this way! In all other mental illnesses too, let us first strive to remove every external cause that supports the illness. Let us watch the patient closely, lest he succumb to inferiority. Such people then constantly gratify their instinct without reason and thereby destroy their nerves.

(673) If we wish to calm a nervously agitated person and give him relief, a prolonged warm bath works well.

Sleep is a blessed medicine for him. During it, anxious mental images that otherwise readily flare up from the dark depths of the soul die down for hours at a time. Thus he can more readily rally himself and gain an opportunity to deal rationally with and balance the senseless mental activities of his illness.

In comprehensive treatment of the patient with the aid of another person, it is necessary to develop trained thinking, so that mental powers become driving levers in his soul. It is also necessary to lead him toward suitable employment, an activity the patient can still perform without the illness hindering him. The patient is occupied, and thus the remainder of self-confidence still within him is strengthened. Good and suitably chosen activity provides the patient with advantages and small reliefs, and often removes even agitation and mad delusions that may suddenly surprise him. Through pleasant, light work and entertainment we attempt to overcome the soul’s wandering in emptiness, and thereby suppress the illness and diseased imagination.

(674) In treating feeble-mindedness and idiocy, let us proceed as follows: we have learned that the illness proceeds from the diseased structure of the cerebral cortex. Mental capacity differs according to the state of the brain. Through the deficiency and weakness of the esplana, sensory impressions cannot remain fixed in them permanently; this explains the lack of mental images. For their combination into impressions succeeds very imperfectly. Through a disturbance of the gray cortex, of the neuronal cells, overall mental capacity is at a low level, the will is weak and reason limited. Their statements cannot be relied upon, for they readily succumb to deceptions of memory.

Where congenital feeble-mindedness and idiocy are involved through insufficient development or destruction of the cerebral cortex, it is best to place these patients in institutions.

Where hope of a cure exists, treatment must begin very early, starting in the third year of life. Great patience and training are required for treatment and education to be purposeful. Short lessons must alternate with play and frequent movement in the fresh air. Let us attend to proper nourishment and good blood circulation, as stated at the beginning of the book. It is particularly necessary to avoid meat dishes, beef soups, smoked meats, tea, cocoa, coffee, beer, wine, liqueurs, confectionery and white baked goods.

(675) Air baths, whole-body massage and cold-water baths up to the chin for five minutes are beneficial.

Immediately after the bath, lie down in a warm bed, or dress quickly and exercise for fifteen minutes.

Once a week a whole-body wrap in salt water at 20°C is useful, for two hours. For this purpose a linen sheet is soaked, wrung out and wrapped tightly around the body, with a blanket wrapped and fastened over it. Then lie down on a bed and cover yourself thoroughly. For adults, use two sheets and two blankets. The patient must lie quietly; this is very important for the result.

Walking barefoot in wet grass or on wet stones for five to fifteen minutes is incredibly beneficial; afterward it is necessary to put on shoes quickly. As soon as you get up in the morning, wash the whole body in cold water, preferably half water and half fruit vinegar, then lie down again without drying yourself.

The treatment procedure described is used until a result appears.

Sensitive people must not forcibly repress into the unconscious thoughts, mental images, feelings and wishes that may have wounded their soul or conflict with their religious and aesthetic views. If we do not deal with them rationally, they often do not enter consciousness in their original form, but introduce into consciousness only a distorted substitute, symptoms, leading to neurotic illness.

(676) We divide hereditary mental illnesses roughly into three groups. The first is characterized by schizophrenia, the second by manic-depressive symptoms, and the third by epilepsy. In both other cases, both schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychosis may erupt in individuals who are outstanding in many qualities. [Translator’s note: the source’s “both other cases” is unclear in relation to the three groups just listed.]

Epilepsy can be cured if the epileptic seizures have not yet completely destroyed the gray cerebral cortex by tearing the connecting fibers between neurons.

Almost every epileptic who came to me, when I asked, could not say that he knew when his seizure was coming. Epilepsy is a higher degree of clouded consciousness. With the aid of a subject, I reached the conclusion that many epileptics have in their upper subconscious a mental image of a seizure, either inherited from their parents, brought about by a fright, or perhaps even created and awakened by bad upbringing, and that it is fixed by a powerful little knot in a single esplano.

(677) In patients of this kind, the gray cortex is mechanically brought into a state of rigidity from the place mentioned. The seizure resembles convulsions. At first seizures are infrequent, but after each one, much as in suggestion, the unhealthy power of the knot of the esplano is reinforced, and it continually grows more powerful in its nucleus. The seizures become more frequent and stronger.

You who read these lines and suffer from this illness, hear and believe what I say! Now you know the cause of your illness. It is an unhealthy esplano in the upper subconscious, inherited or arising from various other causes, of which your consciousness had no inkling.

(678) Arouse within yourselves the faith that you will destroy this unhealthy esplano within you! It will happen in the following way: through conscious autosuggestion you will create within yourselves a new, healthy counter-esplano, which will balance the diseased one. Every hour during the day and before sleep, vividly imagine and believe at least ten times that you will sense the moment before a seizure, thus the exact time at which the seizure is to occur! You firmly will it, and therefore it will happen! Through this sustained conscious autosuggestion of your own, create a powerful counter-esplano that will stand guard against a new seizure. As soon as the seizure attempts to arise, the counter-esplano will inform you of it! You will notice in yourselves a peculiar feeling resembling anxiety, as patients whom I restored to health by my method told me. Immediately sit down, wherever you may be, gather and exert your will toward not allowing yourselves to lose awareness and succumb to the seizure. You will overcome it easily, for as a rule it lasts only a few seconds. In this case the seizure will take place only in that diseased esplano. If one of you becomes somewhat downcast in the process, although he has overcome the seizure, it will be because it has run its course through a cataleptic state in some single, immediately adjacent cerebral region, while consciousness remained intact elsewhere.

(679) With every single seizure overcome, the corresponding diseased esplano weakens, just as previously it was strengthened by every seizure. In time it will become so weak that it will no longer have the strength to evoke a seizure.

At the same time continually attend to proper bowel movements, see that clean blood is formed, and consume food from which carbonic acid, uric acid and so on do not form. Eat plenty of fruit, figs, dates, apples, nuts, vegetables, carrots, salads, radishes, wholemeal bread, raw sour milk, fresh cheese and the like. Wash your feet before sleep!

This illness often arises from anemia, in which the brain develops insufficiently and disturbances occur in its gray cortex. The number of neurons declines, many develop imperfectly, the processes are small and the connecting fibers altered. A seizure is then easily evoked by insufficient blood circulation, as I observed in numerous patients brought to me.

(680) Mr. and Mrs. H. brought their three children, aged eight to sixteen, to me. In all of them epileptic seizures had appeared after the age of seven. The unfortunate parents tried various remedies, but without result. Because the seizures occurred in my presence too, I was able to observe slow blood circulation and, as a consequence, cold limbs and dullness of the eyes. Through movement, rubbing the limbs and suggestion, I prevented the recurrence of seizures.

As soon as we notice that a child ceases to take an interest in his surroundings, we immediately undress him and rub his whole body dry, especially the arms and legs, and speak to him continually. Even if no seizure occurs, let us rub, tap and massage his body twice a day. Once a week let us put him in a wrap for two hours; see “Wrapping the Mentally Ill.” Let us also allow the child free play with other healthy children. It is very beneficial to let the child go barefoot, although lately not many children are seen without shoes. Follow this advice, parents. Your child will recover in this way.

(681) You who have a weak will and perhaps also fear that you cannot resist and withstand a seizure, exercise your will: at home or in nature, find some point, the top of a tree, the tip of a fence picket, the center of a clock face, the center of a large circle drawn on paper, and so on. Then concentrate your will from a distance upon the chosen point, admitting no other thought than that you see only that point. The next time you will concentrate on another thought, for example: I control myself; I am persistent; I am energetic; my thinking is calm; I will overcome the seizure, and so forth. Always choose only one thought! When you concentrate upon the chosen point, you must call up before your mind’s eye a thought, for example, “I am healthy.” At the same time you must create a mental image of firm health, see a healthy person, see yourself healthy, experience that health within yourself, be immersed in inward vision, seeing how completely healthy you are. Thoughtless, dull and empty staring at the chosen point, however, will bring you no result.

(682) The first time you will last barely a few seconds, become tired and lose concentration; other thoughts will intrude and sweep you away. By this you will recognize that you have a weak will, and therefore you will willingly exercise it constantly, so that it becomes strong and persistent. The second time you will already be able to concentrate longer and will have a vivid mental image of the chosen thought. Day by day you will add a little time until you can concentrate on a single thought for fifteen minutes or more. By then your conscious SELF will be strong enough to resist a seizure easily, not only for ten seconds but for four or five minutes.

In this way your character will change completely, for you have suppressed all defects within yourself and implanted in their place new, healthy things that have taken root in your esplana and will guide you through life.

Editorial warning before paragraph 683

The following historical passage advocates physical abuse as a response to a child’s loss of consciousness. Never hit a child or an unconscious person as seizure treatment. Follow appropriate first aid and seek medical help. See NHS seizure first aid. The author’s wording is retained below for faithful documentation, not endorsement.

(683) Contemporary medicine distinguishes several kinds of epilepsy. There is neither space nor need for me to list them. I shall instead draw mothers’ attention to an important matter that influences the development of this illness. Many children, if their wishes are not immediately granted, begin to misbehave, scream, stamp their feet and faint. This escalates until later they lose their breath, turn blue and become rigid, and something like convulsions can be observed in them. If you do not drive out the bad habit at the beginning, it is often too late afterward. The illness takes root and the seizures come of their own accord. Mothers have brought many such children to me and thought the illness was probably hereditary. They did not know that they themselves had caused their children’s illness through their unreasonable love. Medicines do not help here; on the contrary, they weaken and dull the nerves.

You already know how I view this illness. Simply: an outburst of anger has taken root in an esplano in the upper subconscious as a powerful knot, and that is the cause of further seizures. This cause must therefore be removed from the upper subconscious. Medicine cannot yet do it, and the child himself cannot yet arouse his faith. The children of all the mothers to whom I gave advice recovered. Yours will recover too if you do the following: as soon as your child falls unconscious, use the household remedy, namely the rod, and strike the bare little legs thoroughly, so that it hurts, for as long as it takes the child to revive. What will be happening in the child’s soul at that moment? During the seizure, subconscious activity takes over and receives your thought that you wish to remove the seizure in the manner described. Through the beating you stimulate the nerves in the legs so strongly that they themselves release the gray cerebral cortex from catalepsy; its motor activity begins, the child comes to, his little reason starts to work, he feels pain and hears from his mother: “There, so you won’t faint next time!” In the process the child realizes why he was beaten. Of course, this is so with a child whose reason has already partially awakened. From fear of pain, he will remember not to faint again and not to be beaten. Thus a new concept forms in an empty esplano, a counter-esplano, which then becomes the vigilant guardian of the diseased esplano. Try it and convince yourselves!

(684) Sometimes your child is frightened by something, starts screaming and runs to you in alarm. If you want no aftereffects to arise, you must not reassure the little one: “It’s nothing, don’t be afraid, come, I’ll give you some water to drink…” Take him, go with him to the place where he was frightened, and rationally convince him before his own eyes that the dog, cat and so forth will do nothing, that they are good and will not hurt him. Cuddle and stroke them; the child must first watch you from a distance. It is not enough merely to pull out bad nails; they must be replaced with new, good ones.

Convulsions in early childhood, often evoked by teething, the presence of worms, parasitic worms, a lack of calcium in the blood and of vitamin D, more severe digestive disturbances, nervousness in which children reach aimlessly for every object or drop it from their hands, or when they sit rigidly without moving their eyes, may indicate infantile convulsions, called psotník or božec, but also a susceptibility from which epilepsy later develops.

Epilepsy has its seat in the brain. If it arises in childhood, it leads rapidly and almost always to mental weakening and feeble-mindedness.

(685) The principal cause of epilepsy must be regarded as a hereditary burden arising from serious disturbances of the nerves, sexual excesses, excessive masturbation, syphilis, and alcoholism in parents or ancestors. Alcohol in particular is a special poison that evokes epilepsy in descendants. Even when consumed moderately, it acts poisonously upon the protoplasm of cells. Nerve and germ cells suffer most. Their damage results in inferior, degenerate offspring. Persistent constipation is likewise a cause of poisoning of one’s own organism by putrefactive substances from the intestines, thus contributing to the emergence of epilepsy. Head injuries, severe febrile illnesses, hardening of the arteries, impaired blood circulation, higher blood pressure in the head, fright, sudden worry, grief, overfilling the stomach and the like are also frequent causes of epilepsy. To evoke a seizure, fright, fear, surges of passion, mental and physical overwork, excessive games, exercises and sports, fatigue, lack of sleep, jolts to the body, head injuries, sexual excitement and the like are then sufficient. A patient with epilepsy must therefore avoid these causes of seizures.

During treatment it is necessary to eat nonirritating food, if possible without uric acid. Do not drink spirits or smoke, and maintain regular bowel movements. For new, healthy blood to form, it is necessary to follow the instructions given for nervous weakness and neurasthenia. One must avoid mental and physical exertion, maintain frequent movement in healthy air, and strengthen the nervous system with air baths. Once or twice daily, walk barefoot in dew or in cold water for two or three minutes; before sleep wash the entire legs up to the hips, and in the morning the whole body in cold water, then return to bed without drying yourself for about an hour. Twice weekly, always at noon, bathe the whole lower half of the body, for only about five seconds, then dress and move about. Once weekly, take a complete cold bath, for only three seconds. Once every fourteen days put on a wet shirt soaked in a decoction of senna pods, wrap yourself in warm blankets, and remain in this wrap beneath a feather quilt in bed for two hours so that the body is thoroughly steamed.

Editorial warning before paragraph 686

The following historical recipe includes poisonous plants and must not be used. Its quantities are not safe dosing guidance. Seek qualified medical care for seizures and contact a poison center promptly after a suspected poisonous-plant ingestion. See Poison Control’s poisonous-plant guide. The source text is preserved below without endorsement.

(686) It is possible to use the hormone “parathormone” from the parathyroid gland, which treats epileptic convulsions. Among medicinal herbs, the following are suitable: common yarrow, half a lily-of-the-valley leaf, common bedstraw, black hellebore, motherwort (leonus cardiaca), lemon balm, peony, valerian, biting stonecrop (sedum arca), groundsel, tansy, bitter almond, European mistletoe, speedwell, wormwood, rue and rosemary. A decoction of two or three herbs is taken twice daily. These kinds of herbs must be alternated after three days so that the organism does not become accustomed to them. The decoction must be prepared by boiling a tablespoon of herbs in one-third of a liter of water for five minutes, then removing it from the heat and straining after ten minutes. Divide the contents into two portions, drinking one in the morning and the other in the evening before sleep. I note that valerian root should be dug up before it sends up a stalk, dried and ground to a powder, mixed with motherwort herb and yarrow, rubbed together with a spoonful of wine, and only then put on to boil. [Translator’s note: the botanical forms “leonus cardiaca” and “sedum arca” are reproduced as printed in the source.]

One must attend to bodily temperature and never become chilled. These rules are the best foundation for a cure.

(687) There is still another group of unfortunates. It is you, hysterics, especially of the female sex! I have left you until last. You are a real cross to bear unless treated at the very beginning of your illness. It is not easy to understand you. I must first tell you what I have observed in you that is diseased and unseemly. I shall describe your illness only briefly.

Hysteria, I would say, is the sister of neurasthenia, an inexhaustible variety of diseased manifestations.

The mental course of hysterical delusion differs from the expression of a healthy person in being much stronger and more violent, charged with powerful affects, tempestuous and dramatic. The affected person believes all of it and acts accordingly. He experiences anxiety, despair, anger and love, all the powerful mental states that govern a person, acts according to them and gives his thoughts dramatic expression, so that his state of delusion presents a living picture, a dramatic scene in which he displays his resulting experiences as in a cinema.

A person so afflicted is an unfortunate. His inner mental life is torn apart, confused by some shock from outside. He has lost command over the processes taking place within him.

(688) My sensitives have observed your state many times, and have often found an evoked lower consciousness, occasional spontaneous activity of the gray cortex, or a hereditary burden, elsewhere poor blood from a poor way of life, nervous weakness, but above all weakness of the neurons and excessive delicacy of the entire gray cerebral cortex. That is why you feel everything with heightened intensity. From this arises diseased hypersensitivity, with an exaggerated effect apparent in everything. Consequently diseased esplana form, unless hereditary esplana susceptible to illness already exist. These esplana increase the illness still further, as my subjects confirmed. The principal blame, however, lies with you yourselves: neglect of your intelligence, reason and will. [Translator’s note: the source here says “lower consciousness,” rather than “lower subconscious.”]

That is why you incline toward all sorts of vices. Your mood fluctuates, and you have a heightened feeling of self. Anyone who believed you would be disappointed.

You are inconstant and excessively proud, then suddenly deeply depressed again. You are immensely capricious and seek to attract general attention to yourselves. To that end you devise the strangest intrigues. You are extraordinarily receptive to another’s influence. Rarely do you master your first impulses. You are by turns good-hearted, then suddenly cruel. You go like beggars to your neighbors’ doors, trying in every possible way to insinuate yourselves into their favor and weep your way into their sympathy in order to slander or destroy a person you hate, merely to attain pleasure. You are masters in your deceptions and inscrutable in your actions. You are clean only on the surface, but dirty in your souls. When you speak, you do not even know that you usually lie a great deal, and think you speak only the pure truth. You are delicate, ill-tempered, distrustful and tearful. You have every possible reversal of mood and feeling. At one moment you are cheerful, even frolicsome, and shower everyone with warmth and love. Yet in a moment you are seized by anger over some trivial thing, everything is overturned, and you are immediately deeply offended and can tolerate no one, although before you charmed them with your warmth. In addition you are obstinate, sulky and defiant, full of whims, eccentric ideas and perverse, senseless appetites, and can dissemble and simulate splendidly. It pleases you when you can humiliate another, and at other times when the most prominent person concerns himself only with you, and so on and so on.

(689) In longstanding and neglected cases of hysteria I have found that the underlying illness is already unconscious. Compelled, intrusive actions and mental images that culminate in deeds originate in your lower-order subconscious. This is evoked mental activity that disrupts the psyche. The healthy psychic SELF, with its content in the esplana, is not receptive to accepting intrusive behavior and the mental images of the lower-order subconscious. The latter then works on its own account, whereby functional continuity is lost and a mental disturbance arises. Its cause lies in those areas outside consciousness of the mental apparatus and its processes that have departed from normal bounds and thus disturbed conscious psychic organization.

(690) I repeat: the constant, tireless subconscious activity proceeding from the soul’s immense source of energy never stops. It is, indeed, independent and separate from conscious activity, we might say autonomous, but if conscious activity weakens through disease of the gray cerebral cortex, the activity of the lower-order subconscious intervenes, invades and intrudes into our conduct. This lower-order SELF leaves various mental images, impressions and experiences in the prepared, empty esplana, which become alien, unconscious and unassimilable to our conduct because they did not originate in the conscious SELF. This often causes a disturbance.

If it is not an illness of the gray cortex, then it is an illness of the will. It is necessary for the physician always to arrive at an exact recognition of these repressed mental images and neutralize them by the correct kind of treatment. People with a diseased will have weakened mental function, making it difficult for them to maintain balance amid constant changes of environment. They must exercise the will daily and submit to the order of society, in which they can fully develop their spirit to form a personality. This applies to both bodily and mental individuality, so that ennobled mental images become a factor of intelligence in recognizing truth and in knowledge, will and deeds. [Translator’s note: the concluding coordination is syntactically unclear in the source.]

If the physician-hypnologist performs psychoanalytical treatment, arouses the patient’s confidence, can release repressed mental images, impressions and psychic traumas through his suggestive healing influence, and detaches them, that is, makes them conscious for our waking activity, the consequences disappear by themselves.

(691) The foundation of psychotherapy is to perform a mental analysis, possibly with the aid of a clairvoyant or telepath, make the patient aware of the overcoming of intruders, and fulfill what has already been forgotten.

I assure you that painstaking psychoanalysis of the soul, removing buried, repressed thoughts, will not be needed. Let us realize how many terrifying, vivid dreams and horrifying events leave unhealthy impressions on the threshold of consciousness. [Translator’s note: the relationship of dreams, events and impressions is grammatically confused in the source.]

Poor families often lack the means for treatment by another person. I therefore consider it beneficial to name and describe the above-mentioned faults and vices of hysterics. It is necessary to realize that these are distressing states. With goodwill and according to my advice, you can easily rid yourselves of them. You will awaken your weakened will through diligent practice, as I have already stated at the beginning of this book. Turn your strengthened will toward your vices! Will it from today, and therefore it will happen! Balance every bad act with its exact opposite, a good deed! Be magnanimous, for only a small spirit is suspicious!

You will ask those around you, family members and friends, to draw your attention to all your vices and deviations from proper behavior. Through this help you will become aware of your faults, which originated in the lower-order subconscious. You will neutralize them by creating through the will new, healthy ideoplastic images, leading to reflection, with which you will balance those vices and abnormalities.

Through its own exercise of reason and will, the conscious SELF can become so strong that it balances, masters and restores to health, to the point of complete eradication, all the unconscious impressions, acts and images that have themselves crossed onto the threshold of your consciousness through their invasion from the lower-order subconscious.

(692) In discussing mental illnesses I have already set out how the organism and the will can be strengthened. But remember that just as physical exercise strengthens the arm so that the hand can remain under tension longer, psychic exercise strengthens the cerebral cortex, which in turn enables the expression of the conscious SELF to grow more powerful. A strong conscious SELF and a strong will rest on healthy gray matter, which through exercise gains flexibility and strength in brisk rhythmic undulation, rippling and flow.

If I will it, I must be able to stop at once the activity of the gray matter, physically manifesting itself in that undulation and movement, and halt upon, become aware of, a single thought for five to thirty minutes, knowing how to hold it in a pure, clear and unique mental image as a muscle does when lifting a burden. [Translator’s note: the source’s wording around “halt upon” is damaged or ungrammatical.]

A healthy brain, keen reason and a strong will ensure victory.

(693) In hysterics, however, more serious disturbances occur as well. If sensory performance is disturbed, the person suddenly cannot feel, loses taste, cannot hear or cannot see. This is hysterical blindness, deafness, muteness and the like, although the sensory organs remain physically intact. With their great sensitivity and receptiveness, hysterics readily accept other people’s thoughts and mental images as their own and then speak and act according to them. This is then hysterical suggestibility and autosuggestibility. Sometimes insensibility appears, meaning that the person is unaware of sensations, anesthesia; at other times, conversely, hypersensitivity to every sensory impression, hyperesthesia. Through this, visual and auditory capacity in hysterics may suddenly be diminished, even to complete blindness or deafness, or conversely greatly heightened. Some suffer from intermittent muscular paralysis, convulsions, fainting, dizziness and attacks resembling epileptic seizures but of a milder character. Others suffer from hallucinations and sensory deceptions, illusions, from which varied diseased judgments form that then govern all the patient’s conduct as a fixed idea. The outward manifestation of these fixed ideas is very varied. It happens, for example, that the patient is convinced another person, or several people, is lodged within him and then acts in his place; he is their slave, although as a rule it is his own subconscious SELF. These manifestations are often outwardly so terrifying as to make one’s hair stand on end. An evil spirit may then take the position of the other person. In that case it is demonomania or demonopathy.

(694) We already know the causes of the illness. Through a weak will and a lack of clear rational judgments, the conscious SELF begins to retreat into the entry subconscious, which gradually, through the fault of diseased esplana, is transformed into the diseased lower-order subconscious. Diseased esplana arise from repressed, mistaken and unclarified mental images. Where a hereditary burden is involved, let us attend above all to rational education and a proper way of life, so that the organism and especially the patient’s nervous center are strengthened. This must be attended to in other cases as well.

The illness cannot be cured completely by suggestion alone; rather by autosuggestion. In severe cases, however, autosuggestion is impossible because the capacity of the conscious SELF does not awaken rationally. Treatment by telepathic means and magnetic connection is lengthy, arduous and exhausting. It must be borne in mind that even if we removed all unhealthy thoughts and fixed ideas in this way, the illness would erupt again if we neglected to guide the subconscious SELF to carry out rejuvenation and regeneration of the entire organism. So take care in mental treatment! Let us rather attend above all to a proper and substantial daily bowel movement, lest substances putrefy in the intestines, pass into the blood, and destroy the nerves with their carbonic, hydrochloric, uric and other acids.

Let us attend to walks in healthy air, breathe out with full lungs at least six times every hour, practice light gymnastics, and allow ourselves at least an hour’s air bath daily with the body bare, outdoors or in a ventilated room. Twice weekly let us wash the whole body except the head with cool water, and always wash our feet before sleep as well, to draw the blood downward from the brain. This relieves the brain, for every mentally ill person has a greater flow of blood to the brain. It is natural: his irritated nerves and esplana in abnormally heightened activity need more nourishment. We ourselves observe that the patient’s head is often hot. Let us go to bed early, not read before sleep, and sleep with the window open. When we get up in the morning, let us walk barefoot on wet grass or wet paving. If that is impossible, let us tread water for about a minute. Let us not heat the room in which we sleep, but air it thoroughly!

Editorial warning before paragraphs 695–697

Do not attempt bloodletting, insulin injections, induced seizures, electrical shocks or other invasive procedures on the basis of this book. Insulin can cause dangerously low blood sugar, including seizures and unconsciousness. See NHS guidance on hypoglycaemia. These historical descriptions are not instructions for self-treatment or treating another person; medical procedures require qualified clinical care.

(695) On the basis of deeper knowledge, in cases of frenzy, and also when purification and the formation of new, healthy blood are necessary, bloodletting can be used, removing some of the blood. Sometimes this is the only way to achieve purification and the formation of new, healthy blood.

Let us choose food rich in nutritive salts, for the nerves’ sake. Let us eat plenty of fruit, raw apples, dates, figs, raisins, nuts and oranges, vegetables, especially raw carrots and radishes, raw sour milk, wholemeal bread, also flour-based foods, milk dishes, potatoes, rice, barley, oat groats, dried fruit and gray salt. We must not consume tea, coffee, cocoa, wine, beer, liqueurs, chocolate, boiled or roasted meat, smoked meats, stewed fruit, white baked goods or confectionery; let us beware of vinegar, spices and salt. Let us eat legumes sparingly! It is precisely neurasthenics, hypochondriacs and hysterics who suffer from a lack of vital magnetic energy. The permitted products listed contain the necessary radiant energy to a considerable degree.

In mental illnesses it is also beneficial to inject insulin. Bean pods, pea pods, poppy-seed oil and bilberry leaves also contain it, so we can add them to the diet. Poppy-seed oil is suitable in a dose of one spoonful daily. We should eat the pods and boil the leaves for tea.

We must not neglect the education of reason and cultivation of a strong will, so that we can put delusions and mistaken thoughts into proper perspective.

Let us add mental treatment. The human soul has the gift of animating and healing matter, especially when two people unite in faith into one body with the aid of magnetism.

(696) Where incurable cerebral paralysis is involved, it can often be treated and improved successfully by interrupting the diseased process through artificially evoking another, treatable illness, the so-called fever cure.

Progressive paralysis is a subsequent disease of syphilis. It is not hereditary, so with more effective treatment it will become rarer. Physical examination shows pupils that do not react to light, changes in tendon reflexes, and a typical blood finding.

(697) In certain forms of expression of schizophrenia, when it has been established that they originate in heredity, it is possible to try to evoke strong bodily reactions in the patient through convulsions. This is the artificial induction of a powerful shock to the entire organism. It manifests itself in weakness; the patient loses consciousness and develops convulsions: shock. This circulatory collapse, or impact upon the system, can often be credited with curing hereditary mental illness.

Shock can be induced in various ways: with insulin, the heart medicine Cardiazol, or high-frequency electrical shocks. A therapeutic effect appears only at the beginning of the illness. More effective, but associated with greater risk, is surgical intervention, lobotomy. In it the connection between the diencephalon and the frontal lobe is partially severed.

Good results have appeared in prolonged depressions and obsessive syndromes in which the patient is persecuted by intrusive thoughts. Psychoanalytical treatment, awakening the faculty of reason and will with the formation of healthy mental images, is without aftereffects.

Electric shock sometimes causes muscle bruising, dislocations and, exceptionally, fractures. After a lobotomy operation, a complete change of personality occurs in some people. Essentially there is a kind of regression to childhood. Reeducation, learning and acquiring knowledge are then necessary.

(698) The origin of these varied and insidious mental illnesses is either inherited or caused by one’s own passions, carelessness, excessive consumption of alcohol or infection with syphilis. In addition, other, apparently less serious illnesses, but equally destructive in their consequences, may also cause mental illnesses. They require painstaking attention.

In girls this may be, in particular, delayed, neglected and irregular menstruation.

It may also be a consequence of influenza, especially when untreated; the cerebral center is then invaded by poisonous substances, often with very dangerous consequences.

Influenza leaves diseases of the lungs, heart, liver and kidneys, is a source of painful ulcers, and so on. It also becomes a cause of mental illness, and this is surely the most serious consequence, for there is a danger that the illness, if not treated carefully and vigorously, will become incurable.

We shall achieve a complete cure of influenza if we observe the following instructions:

Editorial warning before paragraphs 699–702

Do not follow these historical fever regimens: do not restrict fluids, overheat a patient, or use cold wrapping or sponging to treat fever, especially in children. Current NHS advice is to offer plenty of fluids, avoid excessive bedding, and not sponge children down to cool them. See NHS fever guidance for children and North Tees and Hartlepool NHS guidance. Obtain medical advice for concerning symptoms rather than relying on these remedies.

(699) If headache, malaise and such weakness that we can scarcely walk appear, let us lie down immediately and drink hot milk boiled with fennel or caraway, as hot as we can bear. When we have warmed up in bed, let us get up and quickly wash the whole body except the head with cold water prepared beforehand; then immediately, without drying ourselves and wrapped in a sheet or blanket, let us return to bed and cover ourselves well.

After an hour, let us wash again. We must repeat this every hour four to seven times, until heavy sweating appears. If it is slight, it is good to continue washing. Once we feel that we have sweated heavily even on the forehead, let us remain lying quietly for two or three hours, so that the infection is expelled from the body. After three hours we must wash once more and change into dry clothing. Heavy sweating will continue, and the illness will break down and be eliminated. Let parents carry out this form of treatment for their children.

(700) Another method: mix one liter of water and one liter of vinegar and boil the mixture. Let us lie naked in bed and drink a cup of hot tea made from elderflowers and lime blossoms, heavily sweetened. The caregiver takes a sheet, folds it into a rectangle measuring 100 by 40 centimeters, soaks it in the hot vinegar water, as hot as we can bear, and lays it upon the patient from the chest down to the knees. A warm blanket is placed over the sheet, and over it a feather quilt covering the whole body. Sweating begins within an hour; after an hour the procedure with the wrap is repeated. This may be performed a third time as well.

If we want to ensure that all poisons are expelled from the body, we repeat the same course of treatment on the second day.

We must not use this method, however, if signs of scarlet fever are present. In that case, particularly in children, when great fatigue throughout the body appears, followed by a high fever and a very rapid pulse, and the patient complains of headache and loss of appetite, let us soak a sheet in cold water, wring it out and wrap it around the patient’s body, then wrap him in a warm blanket as well.

Let us leave the patient lying in this wrap for a full hour. The wrap is then quickly removed and the patient put back to bed. Every two hours he must be washed quickly with cold water, and after each washing immediately laid in bed and well covered. This method is continued until the fever passes. When we have a fever, we must not eat, only occasionally relieve thirst with spoonfuls of water.

(701) It often happens that the patient is seized with shivering. In that case it is necessary to take a decoction of senna pods, putting two handfuls of pods into four liters of boiling water and boiling for half an hour, soak a sheet or shirt in it, wring out the excess water, and quickly wrap it, still warm, around the patient’s body, or put the shirt on him. Over this compress we again wrap a warm blanket. The patient may remain in this wrap for two hours. After one hour of rest, washing with cold water follows every two hours, with a handful of salt or one-third vinegar mixed into it. After each washing, we cover the patient well.

After about two days of these water applications, for three to five days we give the patient a warm, steaming compress of senna-pod decoction once daily for about two hours, and once daily, again at another time, wash him quickly with cold water.

Throughout this period the patient must remain in bed. The poisonous substances will be completely expelled from the body, so that they do not invade the nervous centers, the brain and spinal cord.

(702) We can also achieve a cure of influenza in an easy and simple way through fasting. With influenza, eat nothing but hard rolls for two or three days. Your body uses two or three liters of water daily for breathing, digestion and sweating. When there is a shortage, water is released first in the head, in the blood and in diseased cells, and is available for the bodily activities mentioned. Influenza is thereby quickly eliminated, without difficulties or aftereffects.

In sleeping influenza, let us alternate two or three remedies daily, as follows: [Translator’s note: “sleeping influenza” translates the historical designation spavá chřipka used in the source; it is not a clarified modern diagnosis.]

Prepare a cold half-bath in a tub. Seat the patient in water up to the waist and rub his body for forty seconds. Wrap the undried body in a dry linen sheet, wrap a warm blanket over it, and then put him to bed for three hours. Afterward wrap his legs, including the feet, in a wet, cool sheet previously soaked in a mixture of water and vinegar. Again wrap a warm blanket over the wrap and cover him with a feather quilt.

After three hours remove the compress, and two or three hours later put a warm compress of senna-pod decoction over the whole body for two hours to induce steaming. At night wash the whole body once with a mixture of water and vinegar with a spoonful of salt, and cover well. Continue in this manner until recovery.

(703) In every case, once we have overcome the fever, let us give the patient simple food: milk, hard rolls, soups of barley, rice, bread, milk and rolled oats, also porridges, soft-boiled eggs, figs, dates, oranges and the like.

Delayed menstruation may arise from the most varied causes: anemia, heart defects, after typhus, insufficient development of the uterus, obesity, after injuries from falls or blows, but also after great anxiety, grief, soaking by rain or becoming chilled. At other times, through impaired blood circulation, the eggs do not mature in time; thousands of them have been prepared as germs in the ovaries since the child’s birth.

The principal cause, however, is the accumulation of fluids in the abdomen, which causes an insufficient flow of blood to the sexual organs. The nourishment and function of the organs concerned then suffer. This accumulation is caused by frequent, prolonged sitting, insufficient bodily movement, overly refined food and fine underclothing.

(704) Let us avoid occupations that require too much sitting. Young girls suffer greatly from prolonged sitting, especially at a younger age, at school. Let us therefore strive to lead them toward bodily movement in healthy air, exercise, skating, rowing, excursions into nature, gardening, and particularly regular breathing exercises.

If they do not have sufficient bodily movement, let us drive them away from the sewing machine, knitting and other sedentary activities! Let us preserve them for a healthy and happy future family life.

Let us be careful with nourishment too! Everywhere today preference is given to smoked meats, meat, ham, eggs, white baked goods, delicate pastries, coffee, tea, cocoa, confectionery and preserves. Away with this disease-producing diet! Let us prefer natural food, as I have already stated several times.

(705) The patients described generally have cold hands and feet and suffer from low bodily temperature, while their heads are often hot. Let us therefore attend to proper blood circulation and stimulate skin activity. In summer let us allow bathing in a river or pond, even several times daily, always for about ten minutes. To achieve regular menstruation we must attend to all the means mentioned above.

Washing the lower part of the body before sleep, every other day, also serves this purpose. If a cold bath is not used, a warm foot bath before sleep, about fifteen minutes, is useful. It is suitable to get up an hour earlier every other day and take a cold bath in the tub for five seconds. The whole lower part of the body up to the waist must be submerged. Afterward immediately lie down in bed without drying yourself for one hour and cover yourself well.

This bath acts beneficially upon the blood supply and strengthening of the abdominal organs. Occasionally let us replace one of the remedies with a steam treatment of the lower body.

Delayed or arrested menstruation often results in rushes of blood to the head, which may also cause mental illness.

(706) Let us attend to regular bowel movements, lest the bodily fluids and blood be spoiled. We achieve a substantial bowel movement through sufficient fruit and salads in the diet, but also by drinking a decoction of rose hips, blackthorn blossom, alder buckthorn bark and fennel. A spoonful of honey to which we have added a knife-tip of powdered aloe resin also works well. It is also possible to soak figs in edible oil and take one daily. Try too a spoonful of flaxseed with about twenty plantain seeds added, washing this mixture down with water.

Editorial warning before paragraph 707

Persistent heavy bleeding needs medical assessment. The historical hot-water douching, herbal mixtures and compresses below are unsafe guidance and must not substitute for care. See NHS guidance on heavy periods for assessment and treatment options. The source’s directions are preserved only as historical material.

(707) If menstruation does not occur, wet, cold wraps of the thighs at night also prove useful, warm foot baths with added wood ash and salt or vinegar, warm baths of the lower abdomen for about 120 minutes, or drinking a decoction of centaury, speedwell and mugwort.

Violent and persistent bleeding requires bed rest and douching with hot water at 38–42°C. Let us take a decoction of horsetail and mistletoe, or of shepherd’s purse and tormentil root, once every hour. It is possible to add cold compresses every ninety minutes, made from a mixture of two parts vinegar and one part water, placing them on the abdomen over the uterus. As soon as the compress warms, it must be renewed by dipping it into the cold mixture. At the same time let us wash the arms, chest and back with cold water.

For children who, through ignorance of remedies, have succumbed to the first symptoms of mental illness, parents must exert every effort in treatment to save them. It often happens that parents, caregivers and educators pay no attention at all to the slight manifestations of this serious illness.

(708) Many parents have brought their children to me in whom I found that they themselves had caused the illness. They did not speak to the child, and when they did, their speech was curt; sometimes they even beat him, suggested to him that he was stupid, frightened him with the asylum, and so forth. The siblings then shunned such a child, were ashamed of him and avoided him, so that even neighbors and visitors recognized his suffering.

In such an environment the illness only becomes entrenched. I repeat again that irritability, dejection, constant fatigue, especially toward morning, crying, obstinacy, running away from home, unwillingness to work, changing mental moods, threats of suicide and so forth are the first serious signs of mental illness. So beware! Let us begin radical treatment in time. Let us strive for genuine love for the patient. Remember that when consciousness weakens, the lower-order subconscious awakens. The soul does not limit its activity, and in this state easily senses whether it should trust us or not.

Only love and faith, with the use of rational means, restore the mentally ill to health!

Now that we know which way the wind blows, we also know how to confront them rationally. A recognized danger ceases to be a danger.

67. How Will You Restore a Mentally Ill Person to Health?

Editorial note: historical treatment claims

The following is a faithful translation of the author’s historical account, not endorsed medical guidance. Do not use its instructions to treat psychosis or replace professional care. The author’s claims about magnetism, telepathy, willpower and recovery are preserved as claims of the source.

(709) More severe cases of mental illness afflict patients who constantly complain that they hear voices and sounds and see various apparitions and visions. They often maintain that these come from certain beings that continually harass them and inflict various torments upon them.

These cases of paraphrenic and schizophrenic illness too can be treated successfully at the beginning.

We can best clarify such a nervous disturbance through an actual case. Mr. P., about forty years old, outwardly a robust, cheerful and lively merchant of healthy appearance, began to avoid people and seek solitude. Later he assured those around him that Dr. R., who had visited their family several times, was taking revenge upon him for a lack of attention and was seeking his life. He asserted that the doctor had great power and worked with black magic, so that he constantly released himself from a distance in order that the patient might see him more clearly than we see anyone else. He came to him almost every hour and tortured him with indescribable pain by thrusting a blunt object into his side, cutting his finger, and so forth. He laughed at his suffering, went away, then returned, bringing a nail. Then he seized him firmly so that he could not defend himself and, with a powerful swing, drove the nail into his head. The patient lamented and showed the blood pouring from his mouth. He explained that his tormentor had just mocked him, struck him hard and disappeared. After more hours he came again to split his lungs in two, so that he suffocated, could not breathe and thought he must die of pain. Before the tormentor was due to come, a black star appeared to the patient. At other times a bright star appeared, after which another apparition came, a lady who promised to help the patient if he followed her advice, so that the power of the evil man would pass. At other times, he said, he was carried away to distant lands among strangers or people he knew, saw everything clearly and distinguished the actions being performed at that moment.

I conducted an investigation that showed the correctness of the patient’s statements insofar as they concerned the actions of known people at a distance.

The patient underwent various treatments without result. After six months he was placed in an institution. He did, however, also have moments so lucid that he could describe to another person in detail all his visions and apparent sufferings. He expressed a desire to recover, maintaining that there must be someone more powerful who could limit the power of that villain and defeat him.

(710) Mental illnesses most frequently afflict sensitive, nonmagnetic and weak-willed people. The patient described above belonged among them. No hereditary burden was involved, nor was he afflicted by progressive paralysis or by tabes dorsalis, disease of the spinal cord in the third stage of syphilis. In mental illness arising from heredity, a cure is unattainable. This patient, however, came from a healthy family. Formerly he had been well and had traded successfully. His wife, a lawyer, obtained an excellent position with a large enterprise, so he gave up his business and lived in comfort.

The soul, however, wishes to be healthily and pleasantly occupied, for it is itself constant motive activity and cannot enter a state of inactivity. In this earthly life it is stimulated by our senses, which are excited by activity in the external world. Thought formations arise in the brain, sensations, impressions and mental images, which are captured upon the rays of the esplana. The senses are intermediaries of the soul through which it manifests itself consciously, and everything it sees, hears, feels, perceives, experiences and acquires through diligence by means of them, it preserves and impresses into the esplana, from which it obtains everything for the mental scope of wider knowledge and understanding. For these conscious mental processes it is endowed with inner power, willing, free will and reason. For various reasons it often happens that the soul is not stimulated to activity and does not make sufficient use of all its sensory faculties and healthy esplana. Emptiness therefore arises for the soul in conscious processes. Its activity retreats into the entry subconscious, in which reason and will are obscured and assert themselves with insufficient freedom. This is the beginning of a mental disturbance. Through a lack of stimulation and occupation, the soul retreats from conscious activity into the first and second degrees of disturbed, so-called lower-order subconscious processes, where lower mental mechanisms of repressed experiences of psychic traumas operate, excluded from the association of healthy esplana.

(711) In this state we observe that the patient avoids company, seeks solitude, often stares motionlessly at one place, is easily startled, anxious and tearful, and afflicted by constant fear. This is because reason, the highest human faculty, which recognizes reality and should dispense healthy judgments, conclusions and concepts, is not asserting itself in the proper place of conscious activity designated for that purpose in healthy esplana. The soul is driven inward. In these lower mental processes, reason and will are obscured, and the soul loses the sound judgment by which it could recognize reality. It is not healthily active in giving forth, creating and distinguishing, but only passively receives and allows itself to be governed by the automatisms of diseased esplana. Then a stronger, unnecessary esplano not balanced by reason, constantly sending forth the thought “Why did my child die?” or “Why did I lose my property, my love?” and the like, is often enough to evoke illness.

Diseased esplana weaken the mental capacity of the conscious SELF. At this degree of conscious processes, if no diseased esplano occupies the soul in its emptiness by constantly bombarding it and thus fully engaging it, it retreats into a still lower-order subconscious situated in the oduší, while the gray cerebral cortex is insufficiently used. This is a state akin to the third degree of hypnotic sleep.

(712) This spontaneously evoked psychopathological state is very unhealthy, because no one directs it rationally, except when a hypnotizer evokes it.

The evocation of this last, lower degree of subconscious processes brings about for the soul a division of consciousness and will into two SELVES. One for consciousness, the other for the lower-order subconscious. In these lower processes of the third degree, the soul in time becomes independent and takes possession of empty, continually forming esplana. In them it stores its diseased thoughts and complexes, diseased because at these degrees of lower-order subconscious processes, reason and will are greatly weakened and cannot assert themselves. Natural lawfulness is disturbed.

The soul lives in a split personality, in a divided mind, now in the lower-order subconscious, when it speaks nonsense, at other times in consciousness, when we say that the patient has lucid moments and speaks reasonably.

If both activities think simultaneously, conflict arises because two kinds of esplana are at work: one arising from the activity of the lower processes, the other from conscious processes. If the conscious SELF judges that something is so, the lower-order SELF asserts the opposite of the preceding judgment. From the conflict come torment and suffering.

(713) The patient hears voices and sounds. He sees various apparitions and speaks to them. An inability to distinguish, confusion and inclinations toward committing bad acts arise in him. Later the lower-order SELF gains ascendancy. Then the most nonsensical mental images, visions and events combine. As many patients, so many different, distinct, nonsensical thoughts and mental images. Mostly the lower-order subconscious SELF, not recognizing itself, takes from the esplana the likenesses of people who once attracted its attention and assumes one or more different, alien individuals, inwardly joining with them, as we see in the patient. In short, the soul wishes and must be occupied and active in some way.

If healthy conscious activity is lacking, chaos arises and diseased, lower-order subconscious activity asserts itself, where there is no rational judgment. The oppressed conscious SELF, however, fears and defends itself against the appearance of beings that harm and torment it, although it is one and the same soul, but divided in two.

One of the soul’s properties and faculties is spatial omnipresence, which, as we know from experiments, is limited.

Because the patient is a nonmagnetic person, that is, his oduší is exposed and not protected by denser magnetic radiation, he becomes sensitive and receptive, especially in awakened lower-order subconscious processes, to the reception of all harmful thoughts and influences from coarse people who spread them around themselves. At the same time the unprotected oduší, impelled by mental interest, expands spatially and is released. The soul, joined with it into one body, sees spatially distant things, acts, events and beings in these awakened lower processes.

The patient has feelings that his actual body is alien to him, as though not his own, and that he is therefore living outside his body and perhaps must die. He therefore often tests by pinching whether he feels anything at all. These feelings and states are caused by the lower-order SELF’s living in psychic awareness especially in the released oduší, thus close to its visible body. These feelings are very unpleasant and stimulate consciousness toward fear and concern as to whether it really has any physical body.

(714) Those various psychophysiological diseased mental states, which we also call hallucinations, arise when the soul retreats from conscious activity into lower, subconscious activity, where the mediating instrument of the soul’s expression is no longer the senses with their healthy esplana, governed by reason and will, but the oduší with diseased esplana.

So that it may be possible to understand the method of treating these mentally ill people and put it into practice through a physician or layperson in similar cases, I shall explain how to treat them.

It is no obstacle for the healer if he is not sufficiently magnetic. But it is necessary to arouse a strong will and the faith that magnetism will awaken. After all, we obtain magnetism through the constant disintegration of atomic nuclei released from the megatron particles of molecules, the protoplasm, in all the body’s cells. The molecules are in turn renewed through the intake of good, nourishing food. From earlier experiments we learned that the oduší forms and is released through the disintegration of cell nuclei. If I will it, I can control both fluids, magnetism and the oduší, with the aid of the will and subject them to myself. You must be able to do this too.

(715) You must awaken within yourself faith in a cure, but also love, trust and sincerity to encourage the patient. Arm yourself with a strong will for perseverance. Acquaint yourself with all the rules and knowledge for conducting a mental analysis. Remind the patient of buried, alien mental images and impressions through your suggestive therapeutic influence. Do this through daily conversations and explanations, release and detach them from diseased esplana disconnected from association, and make them conscious for waking action. First we seek out the repression, then remove the psychic resistance that maintains it. Overcome resistance, remove repression and change the unconscious into the conscious: thereby we transform a pathogenic conflict into a normal state. We place lower-order subconscious powers in the service of the conscious SELF. By bringing both SELVES together, we create mental unity. The patient’s reason and will will awaken to conscious activity.

(716) Take the patient, dressed as little as possible, and magnetize him with ten to fifteen passes, as explained earlier. By magnetizing two or three times daily, you will achieve closure of the escaping, exposed oduší. At the same time you will establish a direct fluid connection with the patient. He will be under your direct influence and form one body with you, with your mental power and faith in recovery predominating.

Healthy mental manifestations will awaken in the patient as this happens. During magnetizing, the patient must wish to receive the magnetism. At the same time give him loud suggestions: “You are receiving my magnetism, for it strengthens the nerves and the whole body! You feel pleasant, you are calm and contented! You look forward to being magnetized, because it heals and strengthens you!” and so on.

After magnetizing, the patient dresses and sits on a chair opposite you. You, also seated, look pleasantly into the patient’s eyes and explain his mental state so that he understands the cause of his visions, fears, feelings, anxieties and torments. I repeat again: “Thoroughly master all knowledge of mental illnesses through frequent study of this entire book, so that you can always answer the patient’s questions correctly.”

Answer and explain to the patient clearly and distinctly. There must be no doubt here, because it would be transmitted to the patient. The questions with which the patient will shower you, and for which you find no explanation in the book, you will explain by saying that in the lower-order subconscious, especially in the third degree, the soul has an inexhaustible source of every possible kind of feeling, vision, mental image and thought, and also a connection with the excluded esplana of diseased mental images. By these it is occupied and stimulated in its activity, for it cannot enter a state of inactivity. In the fourth degree of the deepest subconscious, the soul no longer has a connection with the esplana, except at the hypnologist’s command.

(717) After explaining the mental disturbances, perform autosuggestive treatment with the patient, holding his hand while doing so. Go before a mirror, and let the patient, looking at himself, repeat with you a different sentence each day, ten to twenty times:

Today I got up much healthier.

My condition is better day by day.

I have a strong will to overcome alien influences.

My will grows firmer day by day; it leads and directs everything.

With the aid of a strong will I shall prevail.

I have joy and take an interest in life and the public world.

I do not believe deceptions; I believe only in the reality I see before me.

I must recover; I long for company.

My mind is clearing; it recognizes and understands everything.

(718) I humble and lower my diseased thoughts and mental images; I take an interest in things real and true.

With the aid of a strong will I always quickly regain my composure.

A diseased thought belongs to the low subconscious; I am not afraid of it.

I discount diseased thoughts; I hate them because they are low and foolish; away with them, I do not want them!

I like going among people. I am self-confident, I conquer myself, and I will recover.

I am cheerful and contented.

I have a strong will to form healthy thoughts for myself.

I will use my senses for constant activity and work.

I do not accept alien, unhealthy thoughts into myself. I have an aversion to them and hate them.

My will is a source of energy; it directs and leads my thoughts. I can therefore rely upon it fully.

I dynamize around myself the mental image of resistance to the influences of evil thoughts.

I will sleep calmly and healthily.

(719) I have given a few examples of autosuggestions for repeated treatment. Create and adapt further ones yourself according to the needs of your case. Remember that every diseased thought must be balanced and combated by a healthy thought and mental image. You must reeducate the patient, awaken his dimmed conscious activity and senses. You must teach him to recognize everything anew, as when bringing up a child.

You must awaken and strengthen his consciousness, dimmed in reason and will. So that the patient is not terrified and can protect himself from the influence of evil, aggressive and deceptive mental images, he protects himself by dynamizing around himself the thought in words spoken aloud: I close myself magnetically; alien influences do not touch me! Before sleep he will repeat: I do not want to see anything, I want calm and peace, I will sleep calmly and healthily so that I awaken healthier in the morning!

Apart from walks in nature, during which the patient remains constantly under your magnetic and verbal influence, let him at home in his free time copy suitably composed suggestive sentences for therapeutic purposes. Let him write in larger, conspicuous lettering, so that they are better impressed upon his esplana and awaken and educate the soul for new, healthy activity. To make this clear, I give several such tasks; compose further ones yourself according to your needs:

(720) First day: I discount all unhealthy and intrusive thoughts; I am apathetic and indifferent toward them! I must and want to be healthy! Whoever wills and believes will recover! For this I have support in my strong will, and therefore I will not yield but prevail! I will not succumb to tears; I have within me the power and strength to overcome myself. I occupy myself only with healthy and cheerful thoughts. Through this my mind clears and I feel contented and cheerful. Everything I look at brings me joy, cheerfulness and contentment. I declare war on my illness. I resolve and command myself: be healthy!

Second day: I know that moments of mental depression will come, but they will be further and further apart, weaker and weaker. Therefore I am not afraid and will not give in, but will persevere. I will not complain, because I know that I will surely recover. Therefore I will be calm, cheerful and contented. My joy depends on the certainty that I will be healthy and will feel well again as before. Therefore I fear nothing and am not afraid. I will take an interest in everything. Those who are broadly informed about everything do not become ill!

Third day: Whoever has a firm will is not disheartened by the obstacles of his illness, but can overcome his mental state and recover! How happy, calm and contented I am to know the means of my recovery! So why be afraid, grieve or have any apprehension? I must and want to arrange my horizon of thought for everything victorious, healthy and beautiful, so that I have a clear view of everything. The more vividly, clearly and firmly I believe in my recovery, the sooner I will be healthy. Recovery depends on my absolute faith and patience, above all on me myself, on my persevering. It is a rule that all mental processes tend toward preserving and perfecting life! Therefore I too will soon recover!

(721) Fourth day: My illness is not bad; it needs only time and a cheerful spirit to heal! Health is not a matter of chance; one must fight for it! I must discipline my life and adapt it to the needs of the organism. Life is varied and many-sided, demanding the full development of all bodily and mental powers. I must constantly remain awake and vigilant and not succumb to fatigue of thought. I no longer lose heart, for I recognize that my health is improving, growing firmer and deeper. I will gain an interest in recovery through faith and confidence in myself, and therefore I believe that I will surely recover. There is no reason why I should not believe. From today I am not afraid of intrusive and tormenting thoughts, because I know the means of recovery. I have confidence in myself and can always overcome myself. I will not give in to lamenting and crying, lest it drain my energy, for it arises only from fatigue of the nerves. I will resist it!

Fifth day: I am happy that I can prolong within myself the pleasurable moments and blissful feelings of health, which I will hold through the strength of my will and not surrender. My will, through its tension, longs for rapid health, which it must quickly master! Recovery signifies perfect fulfillment for the calming of the will; the will is a universal faculty and knows how to achieve it. A wise person holds to everything through which he can heal body and soul, so I will remain constantly vigilant lest I miss anything. I believe that positive thoughts lead a person to the heights of the spirit and to contentment. I want to think of nothing but joy, beauty and blissful contentment. Therefore I pay no attention to the unpleasant impressions that assail me together with visions, because I know that they proceed from the weakness of nerves and will, which will heal. Therefore I am not disheartened by the obstacles of my illness, but have a great appetite for life and firmly expect recovery!

Sixth day: I have an assertive, strong character and will, which, if necessary, I will turn and employ against unhealthy thoughts, impressions and mental images! I do not wish to be troubled by diseased mental images and unhealthy thoughts. They are repugnant to me, they disgust me, and therefore I hate them. I take an interest in everything beautiful, noble and pleasant. I will seek it out, for it brings me joy and contentment, and I am happy in it. I strive to love everything beautiful and useful, for it brings happiness to my soul. I strive to love life, merriment and laughter, because they provide me with inner peace. I strive to come to love pleasant and useful things that lead and help me toward lasting health. I strive to love autosuggestive treatment, for it elevates the spirit and broadens the horizon of thought. I want to love only healthy thoughts, control my thinking, and root out from the esplana everything that torments my soul!

(722) Seventh day: My unhealthy mental images, impressions and thoughts, of which I am not afraid, are: “I cannot become aware of myself in my SELF; my head is empty. I see and hear deceptive voices and images of figures. I will not get out of this illness. It will last a long time. I am greatly afraid of something. I expect something bad. Someone is hurting me very much. I do not recognize my body.” Because today I already know that all these are only deceptive mental images and thoughts, unsupported by reality, I will always form healthy, positive thoughts: firmness of will, certainty, constancy, resolve, courage, stout-heartedness, fearlessness, alertness of mind, cheerfulness and contentment. Through this I will defeat all the earlier unhealthy thoughts and images, which already today make me laugh and which I despise! I have no fear, I am no longer afraid, but believe in a new life that will give me contentment and joy. I am no longer afraid, but believe that my firm, strong and determined will will break everything unpleasant and rise toward health of soul and body. I am no longer afraid, for I have a victorious thought of certainty in firm health, and therefore look forward to feeling as I did before. Thus I want to be and will be healthy. I have no fear, because I know that patience and courage are powers of the soul and will give me everything I need for recovery!

Eighth day: A strong will is a hidden power that slumbers in every person! It must be recognized and awakened to activity. A person endowed with a strong, ready will overcomes every obstacle and reaches his goal. An awakened, strong will is an astonishing power with which I defeat everything unhealthy and unpleasant. A strong will is a dynamic force that is not exhausted by mental activity; on the contrary, through its use it strengthens, becomes more powerful and grows. A person becomes a ruler, master over himself and over others. My will necessarily wishes that I should not cease to believe I will soon be healthy. The wish to recover motivates me; it is the goal I must reach. All my mental processes are permeated and saturated by a single thought: to be healthy soon. My reason clearly recognizes that within me myself there is the power and strength to recover quickly!

(723) Ninth day: I have my mental images in my power and take pleasure in them in conversation at will! Mental images associate and are recalled according to the law of simultaneity. Perceptions and mental images that met simultaneously in consciousness form groups, and if one member of a group is recalled from the esplana, the others associated with it are recalled too. My will will strengthen if I intervene in this law of simultaneity by not allowing, of my own will, any association of mental images, but holding in consciousness a pure, detached mental image: the sky is clear, the tabletop empty, I will soon be healthy, and the like. I will no longer let anything restrict me; I will turn all my attention toward the true wealth of the soul, so that I may be healthy, so that I may live rightly and joyfully. My mental powers have been released to such a degree that they have resolved upon a great battle for life, in which I will prevail by destroying within myself all deceptive images and voices, impressions and thoughts, and elevating healthy mental images and thoughts. What serves a person only for comfort then loses in perfection and completeness. Therefore I declare war on mental emptiness. Of my own will I awaken mental power within myself to create new images and thoughts!

Tenth day: My spirit develops through spiritual effort, through the faculty of reason and will. In this way I establish a clear inner order of thought. All new thoughts will have a deep influence throughout life on the formation and development of my personality. Noble thoughts help balance and lead toward a more perfect harmony of all mental and bodily energies. I strive and wish to reach a higher degree of the mental level of a healthy person! My happiness lies in the firm hope that I will surely recover. Sensory enjoyment lies in my firm conviction of recovery, which forms the nucleus of my inner happiness. My mental state no longer casts me into emptiness, for I feel in my soul a wealth of new thoughts, feelings and moods. I feel within myself the driving force of my unbreakable will, which leads me toward ever-cheerful thinking. I want to be filled with healthy life, and therefore turn my entire attention toward health, happiness and contentment!

Eleventh day: I have the energy to secure, refresh and strengthen my health! I will overcome every obstacle placed in my way and therefore reach my goal! My soul is guided toward a powerful vital force that can heal my body and refresh my spirit. My energy helps my mental acts to be intense in striving to achieve the goal, which is my health. I have a vivid mental image and a passionate striving, as well as the spiritual capacity, to lead my thoughts in a healthy direction. My soul has higher feelings and affects, so I do not occupy myself with low thoughts. My soul fights against the inclination toward a lower tension of will, but has a striving and passionate capacity for everything victorious and healthy. My will is capable of higher feelings and, according to rational judgment, can lead itself out of unhealthy mental images, impressions and perceptions!

(724) Twelfth day: I have a firm foundation in spiritual thinking; nothing can divert me from clear thoughts! I will no longer allow myself to be governed by spontaneous thoughts and will always stand guard over the keenness of the spirit. A human being is not merely an object of natural processes, instincts, mental images and spontaneous thoughts, but a being who is aware of himself. He uses what is good, repels everything faulty, and transforms it according to free will toward the beautiful and noble construction of his spiritual personality. My spirit is becoming active, receiving healthy knowledge of all mental powers. I realize my power: if I believe, I will be healthy. I must regain my health quickly. I call all powers to help: striving, desire, hope, faith, inspiration, will and love; I must prevail. If I master my health, my desire will then be completed, fulfilled and attained. Through this I will reach the highest satisfaction and calm!

Thirteenth day: If evil befalls someone and he does not succumb to it, that is victory! If he succumbs, it is sad. Therefore I will never succumb. I will always assess my condition logically, through sound rational analysis. I will create energy and will, so that I may master my health. I have a great desire that urges and drives me toward firm, lasting recovery. My illness is subject to my reason and will. I know the means, the path and the direction for easily ridding myself of illness, so I am calm and unafraid. Life is activity. Everyone is most active in what he loves most. It is health, happiness and contentment for which I want to live. I am aware of my soul’s greatest faculties, reason and will, which will help me toward firm and early health!

(725) Fourteenth day: There are many different human goals! I know only one goal: to recover as soon as possible! This single goal is the object of my desire and fills my whole being. My entire organism works toward this single goal, healthily occupies all my thinking and leaves a blissful peace in my soul. My soul has no other possession than the sensory delight of soon recovering. I gladly immerse myself in this mental happiness and pleasant enjoyment, which I make my own and command. My spirit develops through excitement when I think that I will already be healthy. My soul is filled with new thoughts; it no longer drives me into emptiness, but seethes with the power of healthy thoughts that permeate, enliven and nourish its whole being!

Fifteenth day: A human being is not created for inactivity; everything around him works toward a particular goal! A person, as a whole of soul and body, tends toward a single goal: absolute well-being, toward which he is led by healthy reason and will. I cannot achieve recovery through mental inactivity, which destroys itself. I must awaken mental activity, rouse, create and acquire all beautiful and noble thoughts, and thus enrich my soul. Then I will not suffer from emptiness of spirit, poverty of thought, anxiety and fear. I will be rich in spirit. I am no longer closed within myself; my nature requires that I be in touch with reality and look at everything with a direct and fearless gaze. Through exercising healthy thoughts, I guide my imagination toward integration into real life. It protects me from wasting vital energy in imagined feelings, moods and pleasures.

Sixteenth day: I must have a natural environment for work and recreation suited to my degree of development, for nobility of spirit cannot develop and grow firm where all moral values are distorted. My mental life will now be subject to the guidance of reason and will toward acquiring mental material of beauty and goodness. Through this I will push back unnameable mental images, impressions, moods, emptiness and dissatisfaction. From the intervention of healthy reason and will, from knowledge of real, healthy values of thought, I receive a direction toward the fulfillment of life, and thus acquire my mental beauty. I must become aware of the independence of my spiritual stratum, which shapes and governs the course of thoughts. Activity proceeds from reason insofar as reason is the governing factor. It proceeds from the will insofar as the will freely carries it out and realizes it. Now I will and release mental power that enlivens my body and spirit and leads toward recovery!

(726) Seventeenth day: Everyone pursues what is best for human life! My will is directed toward a single goal: to be healthy quickly. I pursue the best, thus the noblest goal, which I must achieve through the strength of my own spirit: I experience feelings that I am healthy. This brings me sensory pleasure and delight. I want to remain as long as possible in these feelings of my own health. In recovery lies my happiness, signifying a supreme state beyond which one cannot go. This single goal signifies perfect fulfillment for my entire life. Satisfaction of everything I desire. Faith in recovery brings me enjoyment and is a direct help to me throughout life. A practical person uses the most precious and best thoughts, which lead toward recovery!

Eighteenth day: Through awareness of myself, control of thoughts, overcoming unpleasantness and self-denial, I raise my spirit toward contentment and cheerfulness; I acquire a strong will. This is a source of energy that strengthens and encourages me, leads me toward good, and heals my body and spirit. In a strong will I am always ready, fearless, courageous, cheerful and contented. With the aid of a strong will I always conquer myself and believe that I will attain everything I need for life. I no longer fear anything. Today I know that a person achieves his greatness only through self-denial, responsibility and suffering. My illness is therefore only a sign of life, an impulse toward its reconstruction. Life is intended not for happiness but for achievement! Dull contentment is unworthy of a human being. The struggle with evil is a degree of the fulfillment of good, so I fear nothing!

(727) Nineteenth day: Life does not consist only in striving to enjoy everything, but develops in the interplay of natural forces! I must erase unhealthy thoughts from consciousness and inscribe healthy thoughts in their place. I must become a strong personality and a creative mental and physical agent. I must use free time to enrich my spirit. I am embodied will, and I will assert it healthily and rationally against anyone, but above all for firm health. Each time I awaken I will become aware of my firm will and enliven my spirit and body through it. I will preserve a cheerful mood, which will sustain me throughout the day!

Twentieth day: A person endowed with a strong will is master over himself, is not disheartened by obstacles, easily wins what he needs for life, and has the power to subject his surroundings to himself. A strong will is a miraculous power for a person, mysteriously attracting, with the aid of reason, everything good, beneficial, useful, healthy and wise, recognizing and rejecting in good time everything bad, harmful and unhealthy. The will itself must command me to strengthen my muscles, heart and lungs through reasonable hardening, physical exercise, sport and play, to prevent monotony, for alternation of bodily functions is the best guarantee of health, because neglected muscles and neglected mental areas know how to exact their toll. I must therefore examine and shape my physical and mental life!

Twenty-first day: Through constant concentration and practice of all thoughts into one, to be healthy, this thought grows, becomes more powerful and embodied within me, and approaches full realization! I must know how to come to terms with myself. I must be able to defeat unhealthy thoughts with new, healthy ones. If I think of my health, I will be healthy. If I think of cheerfulness and joy, I will be cheerful and experience joy within myself. If I think of success, I will attain it. I like speaking of success and achievement; through this I pour strength into the spirit. Now I know that a complaining spirit is harmful, whereas a cheerful mind prolongs my life and makes it an unbroken chain of constant joys and successes!

(728) Twenty-second day: A person who does not lose heart can say of himself that he will reach his goal! A person who perseveres in practice always achieves success. Therefore, whoever thinks about health will live in health, and whoever lives in it will make it his own. My faith is so strong, powerful and possessed by will that it itself compels an early recovery. My health has arrived! It had to come, had to return, because I wanted it and firmly believed in it with the indomitable strength of my spirit. Today my spirit is no longer humbled, no longer sees only darkness, but moves toward the light in its thoughts. I must and want to have light and clarity in everything within my soul. Only in clear awareness do I feel better and feel healthy. Through the activity of my spirit and its strength, my overall condition has already improved so much that I will go to work cheerfully and eagerly. Work will give me new life and a cheerful mind. I already look forward to it, for I will be able to equal everyone else. I have within me the faith and certainty that I will persevere in work and activity. Work strengthens body and spirit, and therefore I will remain healthy!

(729) After copying the thoughts above, the patient will emphatically repeat each written sentence with you ten to fifteen times, making himself aware of its content as he does so. To the thoughts of each day you will always add one of the preceding days, thereby reviewing everything at the same time.

During these exercises you must sit beside the patient. Hold his hand so that he is strengthened by your magnetism.

At other times, if he is not tired, review the thoughts written on all the preceding days.

(730) In this way I cured a mentally ill girl who became ill after severe bodily injuries and nervous shocks, and many other patients. What is involved is a comprehensive therapeutic intervention that chiefly awakens the soul’s consciousness and gradually brings all the senses and the faculties of reason and will into play.

The activity of the lower-order subconscious, with its unhealthy, diseased and deceptive esplana and complexes of forces, will wither until it fades completely. As soon as the patient becomes somewhat independent, compel him to give himself health suggestions, preferably watching himself in a mirror as he commands himself. When he performs autosuggestions, it is beneficial for him to do so aloud and rapidly, so that the idea of illness is isolated and other thoughts have no possibility of entry.

(731) We know neurasthenic, hysterical, sexual, obsessive and anxiety neuroses. Pure cases of individual kinds of neurosis, however, are rare. They are usually combined with anxiety neurosis. Hysteria in particular appears mostly as a component of a mixed neurosis. In acute neurosis there is a danger of falling into psychosis, sometimes even permanent derangement. It is not easy to change the constitution of a person susceptible to neurosis. The physician will be glad if he succeeds in removing the suffering and content if the patient’s capacity for work returns. His task will be, alongside psychoanalytical treatment, to strengthen the physical resistance of the patient’s nervous system as well, for every manifestation of neurosis weakens the nervous system’s resistance.

(732) In analysis we recall pathogenic, forgotten mental images that have fallen outside consciousness. The mental image became pathogenic, under the influence of a diseased symptom, as a result of expulsion from conscious activity into the realm of the lower-order subconscious. We recognize a pathogenic memory by the fact that the patient sometimes describes it as unimportant, yet nevertheless voices it with aversion. It is necessary to open a path, to wish to penetrate inward, directly to the original nucleus of the pathogenic organization. If this does not succeed, it is sufficient to penetrate at least some layer of the pathogenic experience. Usually there are layers of related material around the original nucleus, and during analysis they enter consciousness individually, piece by piece. Various parts of mental images come, are recalled from the greatest depth, which forms the nucleus. Patients recognize their memories. If we encounter resistance, we stand before a new layer, which we strive to penetrate. It is best for the patient to lie down and close his eyes to increase concentration; by pressing a hand to his forehead, we assure him that the image will easily emerge, complete with details. With renewed pressure upon the forehead we can evoke a new image. If the image remains obstinately fixed, it is a sign that the patient can say something important about the image’s subject. Once this is spoken, it disappears.

The patient rids himself of symptoms only by recalling the pathogenic impressions that cause the symptom and expressing them in a state of affect. The therapeutic task consists solely in inducing him to do this. We perform psychoanalysis daily until the patient is completely free of symptoms.

(733) In analysis we first ask what provided the first stimulus for the symptom concerned. We strive to divert the patient’s attention from his conscious searching and thinking, thus from everything in which his will can manifest itself. We assure the patient that under the pressure of our hand upon his forehead, some image, a recollection of a repressed event, will always emerge. In every complicated analysis we repeatedly perform the procedure of pressing the hand upon the forehead. This enables memories to be recalled easily and clarified. We assure him that he will see something directly connected with the cause of his diseased state. It often happens that we must overcome the mental force opposing awareness of pathogenic mental images. It is the same mental force that helped produce the symptom and prevented awareness of the pathogenic mental image. To overcome resistance it is good to use hypnosis, with the assurance that memory will expand, so that the images and thoughts will always be recalled easily upon renewed application and pressure of the hand on the forehead.

I have given several methods of psychoanalytical treatment because patients react differently to the individual methods.

(734) From the biological and physiological standpoint, do not forget to treat the body too, although it became ill through the awakening of the activity of the lower-order subconscious.

The soul, dwelling predominantly in the oduší and diseased esplana, has a lesser connection with the body. This reduces internal secretion; juices are insufficiently released into the blood, and the patient wastes away physically because of impaired blood circulation. Since the brain with its irritated esplana needs more nourishment from the blood, during treatment we achieve a reduction of blood in the nervous centers by drawing it away through various water applications to the legs and arms, thereby limiting the flow of fuel to the cerebral center. These applications calm the diseased, irritated esplana and gray cortex. The patient also usually suffers from constipation, anemia and general bodily weakness. To remove all this and restore it to its proper level, in summer it is good to let the patient walk in the dew every morning for five to ten minutes, and tread cold water three times daily for one or two minutes. Then dry the feet quickly, put on shoes and run until the feet are warm.

In the morning the patient gets up an hour earlier and immerses his whole body in cold water for one or two seconds. Without drying himself, he wraps himself in a bath towel and immediately lies down in a warm bed, where he remains well covered for about ninety minutes to warm up. Every third day he omits immersion in the water.

The patient must go for walks in healthy air every day. A period of four to six hours can be divided into several walks. He should eat the nourishing soup whose recipe I give in the next chapter.

(735) So that nutrients reach the blood, the patient must eat plenty of fruit, vegetables, potatoes, rice, wholemeal bread and dairy products, and use only gray salt for seasoning. This removes an excess of poisonous bacteria in the intestines, which, if they enter the body, evoke irritability, anxiety, neurosis, fatigue and inflammation of the nerves as well. Yogurt, onions and raw garlic also destroy bacteria.

I recommend that the patient drink a suitable herbal tea in small quantities. In some cases it will be necessary to undergo hormonal treatment; a physician will give the best advice.

An important component of therapy is laughter and cheerfulness. Cheerfulness is a heaven beneath which everything flourishes. The patient must be entertained, constantly spoken with, and never left alone. When his condition improves, he must be occupied in such a way that he is in frequent contact with people, at first only a few hours daily, and gradually allowed to become accustomed to the workload by extending the work.

Through all this the upper consciousness will be roused and urged toward complete awakening, toward the formation of new esplana and mastery of the senses for healthy conscious activity, in which healthy reason and a firm will again assert themselves. [Translator’s note: the source here says “upper consciousness.”]

(736) To improve his overall mental state, the patient must become aware of the strength, faculty and activity of his soul. This is an inexhaustible source of energy that never ceases in its activity. What matters is how we occupy the soul.

It is necessary to know that conscious and healthily guided activity costs the soul effort, because it passes through the material senses, the gray cortex with its esplana. Therefore beware of becoming lazy and overly comfortable, lest the path of the activity of the entry, and later also the lower-order, subconscious be blocked; this activity is initially pleasant for the soul because it works with the aid of protosplana and the oduší, and afterward unhealthy esplana, where the soul only receives but creates and gives forth nothing from reason and will. [Translator’s note: the source says “lest … be blocked”; this appears to conflict with the warning against retreating into subconscious activity, but has not been silently reversed.]

(737) It is further necessary to know that people differ greatly in their aptitudes and characteristics. The mental apparatus of each of us works differently and manifests itself through different signs. A person who practices is endowed with above-average strength of will and spirit, overcomes prejudices and knows no obstacles. Such a person will not become mentally ill. He must, however, constantly cultivate positive thoughts, determination, perseverance, firmness, fearlessness, certainty and courage, and have clear judgment. These are the principal components of that many-sided secret of success. The acquisition of mental faculties and of higher, hidden gifts from the subconscious comes about through strenuous will. At the same time we must constantly attend to mental strength; otherwise delay arises, so that the goal and success are never attained.

If we wish, we can achieve above-average mental energy and remain constantly mentally healthy. We must not, however, overstrain the nerves, lest we burn up prematurely in an inner blaze. We must know how to direct the above-average power of the intellect; the human body cannot endure permanent tension. For its bearer soon succumbs and collapses prematurely. Because the invisible force of mental energy slumbers within each of us, we must create an above-average strong will; we can achieve this only through daily practice and constant deepening of our own will.

For the clarification and understanding of mental illnesses I state:

(738) In those with nervous illnesses there are, deep within, mental distrust, doubt, fear, conflicts, struggles, tension of thoughts, various hallucinations, fantasies and depression, which are destructive forces; it is the disintegration of the personality into parts alongside and against one another, intersecting with the central nucleus of the conscious SELF. Groups of independent complexes and new mental images form senseless associations and leaps of thought that separate it from reality. This diseased state arises from mental images detached from consciousness and passed into the entry subconscious from repressed instincts, affects or feelings, and mental conflicts. Although these mental phenomena have vanished from the patient’s memory, they announce themselves from the lower-order subconscious through some diseased phenomenon in various forms of psychosis, because the buried, diseased thoughts and images work independently. They are very effective and are not conscious, because a splitting of the personality into several psychic SELVES has occurred.

The cause is evidently that the educator, or the patient himself, was responsible for failing to attach them to the central conscious SELF through appropriate explanation, but forcibly, from shame or aversion, violently repressed them. Thus they split off, passed into the entry subconscious, and formed there new systems of various complexes in which the soul becomes independent as individual SELVES. Through this splitting of the personality, the central conscious SELF suffers greatly from the lower-order SELVES, which at first manifest themselves through nervous disorder, forced mental images, various attacks, anxieties, fears, palpitations, digestive difficulties and the like. Later various hallucinations form, diseased images of visions, sounds, voices and even living beings that quarrel and torment the person.

(739) When I speak of a splitting of the personality or a disintegration of the soul, of a secondary soul, this does not mean that it divides in its spiritual essence, for that is indivisible and unified. It manifests itself in a divided way only in individual mental images and pictures in the esplana detached from consciousness, whereby it has the ability to assert its SELF in several places simultaneously and independently.

Forcibly repressed mental images that have passed into the entry subconscious change consciousness into the diseased lower-order subconscious. Then the same forces that conceal repugnant experiences and act covertly make themselves heard in the life of conscious processes in various states of psychosis, through hints, compulsive movements and acts in another, distorted or exaggerated form, but also symbolically, in dreams.

The repressed mental image is mostly transformed and displaced onto another as a compulsion, for example an anxious mental image.

(740) From these repressed impressions and mental images, neurosis is a compromise form, a symbolic expression, an external projection of repressed affectivity, or feelings, displaced onto other bodily or mental fields.

The physician may choose psychoanalytical treatment, or through logical and critical analysis explain the cause of why emotional affects have such power; the patient himself may possibly do this too, if capable. Reason will then advise: because rational guidance and logic are absent in the lower-order subconscious, affects and mental images there, being detached from consciousness, have a stronger emotional charge. Through understanding, the patient will no longer struggle with himself, but will behave indifferently toward the mental images and affects and attach them to reason and will. By bringing them into association for conscious activity, he will experience clarity and relief, especially if the physician assists him.

He will begin to cultivate courage, self-trust and strong self-confidence, for whoever trusts himself sufficiently can achieve much. He will illuminate through reason all the repressed desires that oppress him, for he knows that what is involved is a disturbance of inner mental balance, of reason, feeling and will. It is therefore necessary to reflect, recognize causes and seek reasons; then everything will become clear. The spirit must not sink, for everything would collapse. This tactic is the best in treatment!

(741) It is necessary to awaken an appetite for life and change it into joy. Although the principal causes of neuroses are emotional influences that cannot be seen, let the patient have himself examined by a physician, for every bodily illness is accompanied by a response in the nervous system, a change of moods, irritability and discontent, sometimes even dejection and depression. Once the cause is removed, the functional bodily changes disappear too. The physician will also examine whether the nervous disturbance originates in internal secretion or hormone production, in the sexual glands, ovaries and testes. Substances produced by the thyroid gland, adrenal glands and pituitary also influence changes in mental activity. The thymus, pancreas, liver and spleen act similarly, as do, finally, constipation and inflammation of the nerves, brain or spinal cord.

Many cannot afford psychoanalytical treatment for financial reasons. It does not matter. We already know that mental depression, sad moods, fear, distress and inner suffering are often consequences of a mental injury or some illness. We must not cultivate them, however, remain in darkness and merely complain. Everyone who is ill in this way will recognize that neuroses from repressed mental images are substitute strivings and self-defenses, in which the soul in the lower-order SELF defends itself in various ways without rational guidance and, in the struggle of the lower-order SELF against the conscious SELF, succumbs and exaggerates. In this way it evokes diseased phenomena.

(742) Realize that all repressed, defiant and compulsive mental images are strengthened from the lower-order subconscious by instinctual fear and have driving forces on their side. The conscious psychic SELF suffers from this, and a misty veil forms over the light of reason. Its influence is weakened and excluded to the point at which the conscious SELF splits, whereupon the lower-order SELF has a free field and does as it wishes.

As soon as you analyze your own condition and way of life, recognize the causes, and through rational knowledge understand the origin of the illness, treatment will be easy. It is not symptoms that are treated, but the whole person, his views and character, reason and will.

The lower-order subconscious works through its own power; therefore all this energy of the lower-order subconscious SELF must be harnessed and employed for another activity, feelings transformed and redirected elsewhere, and the soul given a valuable substitute that supplies a sufficient impulse to positive passions, for example fine art, the sciences, hiking, the beauty of nature, poetry, music and song, and sports; all this elevates and strengthens the spirit.

(743) The soul of a person who reads foolishness suffers want! For life you must have a certain system, a program, know what you actually want: no nebulous notions, but definite ideals, concrete things and proper mental nourishment, so that the soul’s life is elevated and enlivened by cheerfulness and contentment. So laugh, sing and rejoice in your interests and hobbies, whatever you wish! Only let your heart leap and your spirit brighten! Through all this you will create a different world for yourself, healthy ideas will arise in you, courage will come and mental tension will ease. Keep company with cheerful and good-hearted people!

In autosuggestive treatment you will place alongside the system of complexes of diseased thoughts complexes of greater emotional and rational value, and these will then defend themselves!

As soon as you understand what is involved and gain a rational understanding of the matter, you have achieved clarification and satisfaction for your suffering. Relief will come; the affect is thereby abreacted.

Through rational knowledge of things, you will abandon the struggle and find new values. You will become aware of your mental power and release the lower mental tension in which reason and will are bound.

(744) Only healthy rational knowledge of things has a therapeutic influence upon the soul.

You will therefore want to know your enemy, drag that ghost out by the hair and look at it. You will see that it is trivial, and through this discovery and dismantling you will cleanse the lower-order subconscious and give the soul new, more valuable thoughts. You will look at your character, emotionality, tendency to self-pity, concern and excessive conscientiousness, subject them to the control of reason, and no longer analyze everything or brood over everything, but attend to educating reason, will and feeling. You will strengthen courage and self-confidence within yourself, go into company and to work. A new world will thereby open to you, and you will find new values.

Such reconstruction of the personality is necessary. It does require work, but self-confidence and reason will be capable helpers. New, healthy mental images and new realities form new associations and new values, giving better nourishment to the soul. It is therefore necessary to think oneself into a new situation beforehand.

Do everything with interest, warm striving, attention, love and feeling. Through firm confidence and consistent patience, associative connections are strengthened and success is attained.

(745) If you suffer from hysteria, which occurs rarely in men and predominantly afflicts women, realize that it is a mixture of subjective, bizarre and changeable unpleasant bodily and mental phenomena caused by excessively heightened suggestibility, emotional instability and inability to control oneself.

Hysteria is a reactive manifestation of primitive instincts of the lower-order subconscious, in which, under some threat, the instinct of self-preservation asserts itself without rational deliberation. In predisposed people a splitting of the personality then occurs in the lower-order subconscious. It is the unconscious rule of certain mental images, conflicts of repressed instincts that discharge and transform themselves in bodily phenomena.

In hysteria, suggestion passes from the lower-order subconscious into acts, a diseased state, without the resistance of criticism. With great suggestibility and sensitivity, even a small stimulus evokes a great emotional storm that pours into the motor areas as convulsions, rigidity, loss of speech, hearing, sight or feeling, paralysis of certain muscles, decreased or increased sensitivity, and the like. Their variety and changeability, appearance and disappearance, are unpredictable. It is necessary to cultivate rational self-mastery and treat and strengthen the whole body as described for neurasthenia.

(746) If you suffer from great depression, states of oppression, apathy, sadness, heavy moods, aversion to work, suicidal strivings and a lack of energy, it means that you are too sensitive, prone to pity, concerned, conscientious and good-natured, analyze everything too much, brood over everything, blame yourself and others, have changeable moods, turn too far inward and flee the world.

The causes are the same as in all neuroses: the foundation is neurasthenia and psychopathy. Some pain gnaws in the depths of the soul. In depression, confidence in recovery and help is reduced, so there is frequent crying, lamentation and complaint that all treatment is futile and that we are merely consoling the patient.

Depressive moods are both mild and serious, growing to despair and suicidal inclinations; the patients would rather die. These moods are periodic and changeable; eccentric excitement and merriment alternate with periods of depressive dejection. These may then already be cyclical psychoses.

(747) Psychoses, however, need not always be cyclical in character. In one person only the depressive syndrome may recur, in another only the manic syndrome. We then speak of reactive depression. Both syndromes may also arise in the course of other illnesses: schizophrenia, progressive paralysis, arteriosclerosis and so forth. Through worries about making a living, humanity becomes sadder; the brain’s reactivity inclines toward depression.

It is a great art to engage such a person and show him the proper way out, so that he emerges from uncertainty, anxiety and lamentation.

(748) Physician and patient must remove all causes and put circumstances in order. Overcoming distressing moods will then be simple. Discontent, the anticipation of quarrels arising from domestic circumstances, and malnutrition must be removed; bodily ailments cured; it must be established whether the cause lies in internal secretion or nervous weakness; hardening, movement and regular gymnastics in the fresh air must be arranged. Among rapid movements in the fresh air, give preference to jumping, throwing a ball, running uphill, longer walks, cycling and riding, deep breathing, rowing and cheerful company. When anxiety comes, it is necessary immediately to set the whole body in motion, attain mental peace through cheerfulness, cultivate positive thoughts, know how to acquire calm and self-mastery, arrange suitable work, and compel oneself toward an appetite for life and joyful expectation of recovery. Do not remain in the mire and darkness or complain, but proceed as described in detail for neuroses and neurasthenia. Neuroses come from the depths of the soul, and it is therefore necessary to care for mental hygiene.

The depressive syndrome is predominantly of diencephalic origin. Sometimes it can be removed in a few sessions through the intervention of electric current in the diencephalon, electric shock, at the cost only of memory loss lasting a few days.

(749) The task of psychic treatment is to cultivate reason and will. Higher spiritual reason rules lower reason, sensory and sensual, reflects upon human activity, combats cowardice and resignation, and awakens and gives self-trust, self-confidence and independence. It awakens mental powers, does not underestimate itself, provides balance, patience and tenacity, breaks down passing moods, and gives courage, strength of will, manliness, heroism, decisiveness and bravery. I will! I can! Forward! Through every obstacle to the goal of my health! It is a driving force of a spiritual character, proceeding from the soul’s constant movement, its dynamics, and awakening great interest in and love of life.

A person, as a member of two worlds, the sensory and the spiritual, is aware that higher reason is pure, free and practical in its own right, giving him clear knowledge in everything for the care of his own good.

Today’s hurried and nervous humanity is entirely unaware of the higher stratum of spiritual reason, which is more valuable and more practical, so that through its faculty, clear perception and intuition it might watch over and control the actions of lower reason. Today almost everyone lives only for lower reason, which proceeds from sensuality and its experiences, from the senses and their sensations, perceptions, impressions and mental images. It is indeed concrete reason, but more animal in character, so that if a mental disturbance arises, it is insufficient for the patient. Higher, spiritual reason is needed, which we acquire through education and awareness of the spiritual stratum.

Practical reason is reason that guides correctly, expressing clearly what is and what should be carried out and accomplished in treatment. This proceeds from an existing pattern in the mind. It is a leading rational factor that uses knowledge of what to carry out and what to remove, goes toward reality and leads to action.

(750) Educated reason determines movement through the will; the will itself, according to its natural dependence, follows exactly after reason’s knowledge. The will is a blind faculty; reason must dictate its direction. The will can move reason to activity so that it thinks, but cannot compel it to assent to something contrary to its natural vision and knowledge. Reason itself can reflect upon itself and its activity, and thus can arrange and determine its own activity. Reason can know the character and value of a thing, a defect and the cause of an illness more deeply than sense perceives them. Sensory perception is therefore subject to the control of reason. What is involved is not merely knowledge in reason, but direction proceeding from reason. It is therefore a matter of practical reason, which in illness leads to action, and less of speculative reason, which indeed understands clearly but is satisfied with knowledge alone. Nothing must escape practical reason.

68. How You Can Treat Yourself Mentally

Editorial note: historical treatment claims

This chapter preserves the author’s historical assertions, including claims that blame patients for illness and recommend unverified treatments. These are not endorsed medical advice. Do not use them to replace professional care or prescribed treatment.

(751) Mental illnesses that have arisen from psychic shocks and develop gradually have causes that are fundamentally purely psychological, arising from various repressed mental images, disappointments, afflictions, failures, unhappy love, overwork and so on. By way of explanation, I give a case in which a mentally ill twenty-two-year-old woman writes to me:

“I am sure I shall trouble you. Help me with hypnosis, because when I was with you I came into a mood in which it seemed that I would no longer trouble you. But at home I cannot rid myself of being double, though not in such a way that I could fight against those principal mental images that would disturb my own thoughts. I no longer have thoughts of my own, only a feeling as though I had life in my head and feeling in my body, but as though my body did not belong to me. I know for certain that I am twofold. One part of the soul lies in wait like a guard; the other would like to form thoughts, but the first watches it, and so it retreats. It is impossible to think anything through. I really think only when those two parts of the soul join together. I have an unbelievable fear of letting go of the feeling of the conscious SELF; I have to think of myself constantly, constantly as if I were looking at myself. If I say something, the second consciousness repeats it to me. I would like to tear something out of myself, but I am terrified that the unpleasant feeling gives me relief. I need those two directions of thought to join within me, so that I can realize that I am I, but I cannot find the thread. I am duller from day to day; everyone around me regards me as deranged, and perhaps there is no longer any place for me except in an institution. I constantly want to flee from myself; I would like to wake up and begin again.”

I established the diagnosis: incipient paraphrenia, a hallucinatory neurosis with tendencies toward paraphrenia, which would in time develop from it.

(752) As long as the patient can still recognize his condition at least in the manner described, the path to recovery is fully open to him.

Recovery depends on reconstruction of the cerebral esplana of the lower-order subconscious, in which lies the cause of the second SELF. The entire apparatus of thought must be reshaped to a different course, rhythm and direction, in other words rewound and played as a different film. In this lies the secret of recovery.

Almost every mental illness of this kind can be treated successfully in its beginnings. You can achieve it yourself too, with the aid of the will, but above all through rational self-analysis.

Into the empty, newly forming esplana arising daily, you will plant, sow and implant new thought formations, healthy, beautiful, noble and educational thoughts, perceptions, views and mental images, by placing a healthy thought alongside every diseased one.

Through this regrafting and creation of the contents of new esplana, a different, healthy view of life will arise in you. You will thus drown out old, diseased thoughts with new, healthy ones. You will elevate your rational faculty of discrimination and strengthen the will.

(753) Several times every day you will practice and implant new thoughts in yourself. For example, the thought torments you: “My mental condition is worse from day to day!” But you will repeat eagerly: “My mental condition is better from day to day!” Or you are terrified by: “I must end in suicide!” But you command yourself: “I will never end in suicide; I must and will live!” Against other tormenting thoughts, set an opposing view: “My life gives me great pleasure; I am calm and determined and have no fear!” “My mental images are deceptive and I am not afraid of them; I want to live and work; I am cheerful and contented,” and so on.

In this way repeat positive autosuggestions in a low voice or whisper ten to twenty times in succession, several times daily, thereby planting in your esplana an entirely new direction of thought for a future healthy, happy and contented life. Against diseased complexes of thoughts, you will create valuable complexes that will then defend themselves.

(754) Diseased intrusive thoughts also arise when an ordinary thought has for some reason caused mental anxiety and agitation, from which arose fear that you flee. You are afraid, and thus succumb anew to anxiety, agitation, despondency and grief. Through these repeated unhealthy impressions, feelings and affects, you continually surround ordinary thoughts with unhealthy stimuli and thus yourself transform them into diseased ones that then torment you.

You must know how to free yourself from them and come to terms with them, for these feelings and emotions of released mental images, which struggle through their own power like intruders in your consciousness and cause you pain, must be subjected to analysis, directed and attached to the soul’s conscious activity. Realize that flight from them, fear and anxiety strengthen them and give them the power to launch independent attacks. Through flight, fear and anxiety you weaken the conscious SELF and strengthen the lower-order subconscious SELF.

(755) You must know how to clothe thoughts of this kind in new garments, in the form of new sensations, affects and mental images that will themselves permeate and penetrate the diseased images. How? From today, diseased thoughts and mental images will become your friends! You will no longer flee them or shut yourself away mentally! To every such importunate thought you will say: “I am no longer afraid of you, I have no fear of you! I do not flee from you and no longer have any anxiety; you will frighten me with nothing. On the contrary, today you are welcome to me, because I know how to fight you. But I have no interest in you, and therefore I discount you, despise you and am indifferent to you. Today I know you already, and therefore I do not believe you and will subject you to critical review. I have the strength, self-confidence, courage and fortitude to do so. I want and must be healthy!” With these and similar words you will address diseased thoughts whenever they appear.

Only thus will you clothe them in new, healthy garments, and they will again become normal, ordinary and insignificant, so that after a time their intrusive and aggressive power will cease.

An esplano that is mature in its mental images, old and at the same time diseased, cannot be reshaped into a healthy one; it cannot be destroyed by any means. It cannot be destroyed either by hypnotic suggestion or by shock, for it is too alive. For its gradual elimination, a counter-esplano with a healthy mental image must be established, the opposite of the image in the diseased esplano. This new image must be renewed and nourished daily by the will. The patient must constantly occupy himself with it in his thoughts; it must be his goal. This new esplano, nourished by the soul’s activity, will through its vitality and its own strength consume the diseased esplano until its complete destruction and death, destroying its activity.

(756) Anyone for whom concentration on the new restorative thoughts and imagination described is taxing can repeat these perceptions without mental effort, only with faith in success. Even so, they will be implanted in the esplana, for a thought grows, strengthens and is nourished even by mere frequent repetition.

Even when you are not tormented by diseased thoughts, it is good to occupy yourself with autosuggestion and restorative thoughts at least twice daily. Before practicing, sit down, close your eyes, evoke the mental emptiness of a thoughtless state by thinking of nothing, and then gradually form a view into a clear blue sky. Once you are calm, let a restorative thought prepared beforehand enter this view slowly, as though from a distance, and begin to repeat it freely, then more quickly, until it becomes clear in your consciousness. Then admit a second thought, a third, but no more! Restorative thoughts will become materialized in your brain.

(757) If you are tormented and very tired by strong intrusive thoughts, frequently create the thoughtless state described. You will thereby give your soul the rest it very urgently needs. Perform each exercise briefly, for ten to fifteen minutes. Better more often than longer! Do not monitor yourself or count how many times you repeat each thought; you would scatter your concentration too much!

To calm the soul, it is good afterward to turn to other things that you have never yet thought about or done.

Such practice is supported by an inner force proceeding from the soul, invisible to our ordinary senses, but very clearly apparent in its effects. Autosuggestion shows how important a factor in treating mental illnesses the soul itself is. The patient evokes a mental image of the opposite of his illness. By persuading himself and, if possible, recalling the mental image and picture “I will be healthy,” through constant self-encouragement in firm hope and through strengthening and enlivening the will, he achieves the penetration of his entire being by the thought of recovery. Thus a strong esplano forms that will itself assist in creating new, healthy thoughts; in bodily illnesses it will be transmitted to the cells, which will begin their healing activity.

(758) You have an evoked second SELF. That is why you feel you are double. The lower-order SELF watches you, disturbs you and interferes with your thoughts. During this shared, twofold thinking, your conscious SELF must not let itself be deprived of leadership. Realize that only conscious activity is endowed with reason, never the lower-order subconscious. Therefore you alone will decide, and you will pay no attention to the actions of the lower-order SELF; rather, discount them. By recognizing the primacy of the conscious SELF in complete decision-making, you will weaken and humble the lower-order SELF, so that you will soon awaken in the unity of full, undisturbed and clear consciousness.

Walk in nature! For mental balance, nature provides continually fresh, clear views and will give you foundations for new moods and thoughts with which you will occupy yourself with the aid of your will. In this way you will healthily occupy your soul, reason and intelligence will increase, you will know yourself, and you will become master of your thoughts and new mental processes. Do not let your soul, which is constant and uninterrupted thought activity and wishes to be pleasantly and healthily occupied, retreat into the lower-order subconscious, from which consciousness is oppressed by distorted mental images and thereby suffers various disturbances, sensory deceptions and feelings of fear and anxiety. For there is no room there for it to assert itself freely and independently in its reason, will and intelligence. There it is tormented, attacked and bombarded from diseased esplana by unhealthy, distorted and fixed images, perceptions and thoughts, and finally becomes independent as a second, often very obstinate SELF, creating its own unhealthy world. Mental processes thereby divide and split. The will has become a great difficulty for the weakened and dimmed conscious SELF through someone alien speaking within you, imaginatively affirming and distorting everything, wanting to decide everything, arguing with you and confusing your views, tiring and exhausting you.

(759) You alone have caused all this, by insufficiently occupying your soul in a healthy way and allowing it to drown in unhealthy, gloomy thoughts of the same sorrows again and again.

Do not fear this state any longer!

Calmly and self-confidently, with indifferent disregard, be apathetic toward all the various intrusive mental images and voices. You have learned that it was precisely through your conscious participation in them and your lending yourself to them in your SELF that they grew, strengthened and became more powerful. You have recognized the natural cause, and there is thus no further need to lament and grieve, because your higher cognitive reason can detach you from your delusions.

(760) So rally yourself and take courage! Be cheerful inwardly and look around. Now you have instructions and a clear direction, path and goal for how you can recover. The whole book is your helper and will answer questions you do not yet understand.

You suffer from hypersensitivity, anxiety and fear, all of which affect the heart and the nerves, whose energy is released and thus actually wastes bodily strength. It is possible to rid yourself of this too. Today you know that you have that hidden power within you and need only rally yourself! Be armed with a ready will and know yourself. In a strong will lies the power to recover. I repeat that in your thoughts you must build a mental image of complete health, and through higher reason you will control your mental activity. At present you are fixed upon mistaken thoughts that cause you torment, so from today you will practice selecting thoughts, that is, place a healthy thought alongside every unhealthy one. You will preserve, guard and occupy yourself with these thoughts. You will fix your attention on them, so that they become master of your brain, thoughts and feelings.

Make purposeful use of time and never overstrain yourself! Occasionally occupy your soul by spending time and conversing in pleasant company and through cheerful, innocent amusement.

(761) You must find suitable work that will fully engage you. As I have already emphasized, there are suitable occupations that bring you into constant contact with people!

You must have constant confidence in yourself, rely on your own powers, and put aside timidity and shyness.

A person without self-confidence constantly imagines that he cannot equal others and thus continually repeats his failures. This too is autohypnosis, but harmful and destructive! You must never tell yourself beforehand that this task is difficult for you, that it is beyond your strength; you would end in failure.

Through practice, take care to become capable of positive suggestion. Slowly accomplish everything you can, and avoid negative suggestion, which paralyzes the will and does not lead to health.

(762) If you are troubled by fear, you foresee evil. Fear, however, is an impulse toward foresight, caution and vigilance, not toward torment, which is actually a thought supported by an unpleasant feeling of anxiety that strengthens when prolonged. Therefore you will form only healthy thoughts, direct them through will and reason, allow them to come and go, but grant no place to a diseased thought. You will dismiss it with indifference.

A strong will is a source of energy. A person endowed with a strong and ready will has confidence in himself and is not disheartened by defeats. You will cultivate and exercise positive powers: trust in self-assurance, courage and resolve. Through this you will become a different person. At the same time health will increase in your body, blood circulation will improve, and healthy bodily nourishment will begin, through which you will support success.

To mental treatment and walks in nature add hydrotherapy too, for your body also ails through improper blood circulation, your head is often hot, your nerves and heart weakened, your fluids poor, and your sleep restless or scant, and so on.

(763) In the morning, while you are warm, get up an hour earlier and immerse yourself in cold water for three seconds. With your feet still in the tub, dry only your neck and palms with a towel; otherwise, while wet, wrap yourself in a bath towel and return to the warm bed. Remain there until the body warms up.

What will happen during this water application? Under the effect of cold water, the blood will begin flowing toward the center of the body. You will evoke moist warmth, and the blood will again begin flowing toward the skin. In doing so the blood will take deposited diseased substances with it, which will be washed and evaporated out of the body. Internal secretion will awaken, and the endocrine secretion of fluids will be brought to the proper level. After ninety minutes perform five minutes of health exercises. The next morning repeat the procedure, with the difference that you immerse yourself in water only up to the waist. After fourteen days, interrupt the alternate-day sequence for three days, then begin the water applications again. Often walk barefoot outdoors in the dew or in a little stream. Your bodily temperature will adjust, you will cease to be sensitive to cold, and you will not succumb to catarrhs, coughs and influenza.

(764) Bodily water, which makes up eighty percent of the body, is saturated with waste substances arising from the turnover of protoplasm. By not drying yourself after a bath, clean water penetrates the body’s pores, binds waste substances to itself, and these are then carried from the body through evaporation.

The matter of the universe is subject to the lawfulness of constant expansion and contraction. The human cell is subject to the same laws. By alternating cold and warm applications, we support the cell’s natural activity, so that diseased substances are released and washed out of the body.

(765) If you have no appetite, add to hydrotherapy an herbal tea of plantain, centaury, bogbean and St. John’s wort, taking it half an hour before each meal.

If your blood is polluted, a tea of plantain, knotweed, nettle, centaury, birch leaves, elder, burdock, dandelion root and cowslip, and field-pansy flowers will help, alternating three or four herbs every ten days and taking them three times daily.

(766) To strengthen the body and provide it with all necessary building materials, prepare a nourishing health soup in the morning and evening. Put all kinds of vegetables into water to boil with caraway and salt; for each serving add three spoonfuls of a dried, ground mixture of rye, wheat and rolled oats; boil for ninety minutes; after straining, add one egg and a little clarified butter, bring to the boil again, and it is ready. This soup is the healthiest and most nourishing food for your body and nerves.

In conclusion, I admonish and advise: persevere! Initial failures must not discourage you! Only the person who perseveres will recover.

(767) Everyone who has goodwill and wishes to be better and more contented can treat himself in the same manner and by the same procedure. He receives into his hands the key to reeducating himself with the aid of autosuggestion through forming moral thoughts and mental images.

69. Hereditary Burden: The Mystery of Heredity

Editorial note: historical heredity claims

This chapter preserves the author’s historical theories, including prejudiced and eugenic claims, and assertions about mothers’ thoughts determining children’s health and future experiences. These are claims of the source, not endorsed scientific or medical guidance, and should not be used to blame parents or make reproductive decisions.

(768) The title of this chapter has already appeared several times in the text of my book. Almost everyone fears those words. Mothers in particular have great worries and fears for their children, lest they come into the world with an unfavorable hereditary burden, a disposition toward mental illness or another disturbance inherited from father, mother and earlier ancestors.

We have already learned that biology is the science of life and is actually a connecting link to the spiritual sciences, to psychology. This circumstance has a direct relationship to the following part of the text.

First I shall briefly explain how aptitudes, characteristics and susceptibilities to various dispositions and diseases relate to heredity.

The germ cells, the female ovum and male sperm, through which life begins, conceal within themselves the mystery of heredity, from which follows the lawfulness of the transmission of the characteristics of parents and other ancestors to further descendants.

This is a phenomenon universal among all living creatures. It applies to both the plant and animal kingdoms. What, in fact, do people inherit? Among the most significant are characteristics of the following kinds:

Physiognomic: build, facial features, and color of the skin, hair and eyes.

Character: tolerance, goodness, malice, motor abilities, communication, passion, gentleness, hypocrisy, straightforwardness and the like.

Intelligence and aptitudes: talent and special dispositions.

All the selected characteristics listed are actually only dispositions contained in the hereditary germ units, but say nothing about their use. That depends on further factors, upbringing, education and the like.

In the nuclear chromosomes, the corpuscles, of both ovum and sperm are stored factors, genes, that predetermine future development.

(769) If we observe these germ cells through a subject, he informs us that the minute formation of the cell, especially the nucleus, is very complex. Within it are corpuscles of various shapes, properties, appearance and composition. It is some of these varied particles that are the mysterious transmitters of heredity, though only to a certain degree. These corpuscles, designated for heredity and highly subject to intervention by the parents, chiefly the mother during pregnancy, are absent nowhere in any germ; they are always present in the same number. During cell division these particles divide at the same time and are transmitted in the same number into the new cell. Thus the same number and character of aptitudes are preserved.

These corpuscles have their regions: some are empty, others already occupied and charged with individual hereditary characteristics attached to matter and the oduší. Every region already has its designated place for the given heredity.

In cell division it is not characteristics that are inherited, but only aptitudes and prerequisites for them; they develop under the influence of internal and external factors. Inherited aptitudes and faculties do not manifest themselves in every actual characteristic. It depends on upbringing, environment and, later, the will of each individual. If they do not manifest themselves, they remain mysteriously hidden in the corpuscles of the cells for further generations, and, if unused, vanish for a certain time. Frequently other related aptitudes then take the same places. Many aptitudes therefore become realized only in descendants through transmission to a further generation. Characteristics laboriously acquired through one’s own diligence and painstakingly learned are thus not inherited; we take them away with us from this world, and our children must learn them anew only for their own needs. Through our own diligence we have prepared further, unburdened, empty esplana for them.

The sex cells, however, have a peculiarity: during their maturation, the number of chromosomes is reduced by half. This prevents its doubling when two sex cells fuse.

(770) In the internal fields or regions of the chromosomes of cell nuclei, minute particles of living matter, the so-called genes, the bearers of heredity, are arranged one after another in a continuous sequence. In them slumber the creative forces of life that determine the form and characteristics of the entire organism. A person’s future is not predetermined in the genes by immutable foundations of naturally given prerequisites and faculties, because these are not given in a definite form of completed characteristics. They are only certain dispositions and aptitudes. Characteristics thus exist in a potential state and develop only under the action of external and internal factors.

The biological phenomenon of mutations occurring in the basic components of certain living cells results in hereditary organic changes.

When the sex chromosomes fuse, with half in the fertilized ovum from the mother and half from the father, the joining of pairs of genes, or related inclinations and aptitudes, gives rise, for example, to a disposition toward future genius. The joining of unlike pairs of genes produces a diversity of new individuals, in whom the influence of the environment brings about various modifications with new secondary characteristics, more or less resembling those of their ancestors.

A sudden mutation of genes that have departed from their order leads in subsequent generations to a disturbance of some organ and to various fatal illnesses. By God’s direction, the mutation of genes will probably be the cause of the appearance of further new species in the plant and animal kingdoms.

(771) Genes are very sensitive to the action of X-rays, especially during pregnancy, when the fetus may be damaged. This manifests itself only later during the child’s growth, sometimes even only in his descendants. For important genes in the chromosomes can change under the influence of X-rays, and those determining the properties of the retina of the eye, the ear, the gray cortex and so forth can be damaged. The consequence is then a poorly developed, damaged sense, and insufficient mental activity may arise from this. Through damage to several genes, the child may acquire an inclination toward severe mental and bodily illnesses that may later be transmitted to his descendants as well. In expectant mothers, X-rays may be permitted only in exceptional cases, and then only in very tiny doses.

Great mental shocks arising from excessive hardships also act to disturb the genes. The genes that determine the structure of the central nervous system and brain leave within them inclinations toward various nervous diseases for descendants.

A severe mental disturbance, a strong emotional affect, and domestic disagreements and conflicts burden the genes during pregnancy and damage the mother’s body. Such a mental disturbance then spreads through the placenta into the embryo’s body as well, and over the years various symptoms of mental unrest appear: fear, anxiety, inferiority, memory loss, functional disturbances and the like.

All bodily cells are subject to hereditary burden, including the neuronal cells of the gray cerebral cortex in which genes are situated. This does not, however, concern the cells of the esplana, which are exempt from hereditary influences because they consist of radiant matter as nearly immaterial as possible, incapable of retaining hereditary traits. If a man and woman whose parents are mentally ill marry, children are born burdened in their genes with strong stimuli toward an outbreak of mental illness or toward criminality. Inborn strong stimuli, though still latent, are destructive to the development of the child’s mental life, for they damage from the root the original foundation of his pure vitality and trust. In a body burdened in this way, a mental distortion of the human being occurs, and through bad upbringing, dangerous criminals, sadists and mentally ill individuals then develop.

(772) These invisible genes, the bearers of hereditary traits, lie within the chromosomes, where they are well protected. We imagine a gene as a protein cluster of atoms resembling a molecule. Changes in hereditary characteristics then occur through ionization, division, or stimulation, irritation, of a single atom in the gene.

In the genes, of which there are millions in the body, the primordial experiences and events of the human race are stored with virtuoso skill. These traces, inherited from the very first ancestors, influence the development of the personality. That hidden process awakens from one’s own life situation and activates the personality. It penetrates to the surface in the form of ideas, fantasies, dreams, visions and apparitions, which intrude into conscious continuity as alien and often hostile and threatening elements, and frequently influence disturbances in the development of personality, both in the individual and in families and nations.

Genes, joined into certain forms, are stored in the chromosomes on helically coiled threads. These complex forms of genes, unique to each person, determine heredity. Bodily traits are carried by the protoplasm.

(773) We can also observe in our children that hereditary inclinations, aptitudes and characteristics have not asserted themselves evenly, but disproportionately. Many have been put to sleep and suppressed. During division the genes did indeed split evenly, but those that had greater efficacy in the woman’s or man’s germ cell during procreation asserted themselves. Germ cells have unequal vitality. We therefore observe, for example, that one boy inherited from his father a susceptibility to veiny legs and tuberculosis, which did indeed manifest itself in later years, while the other boy has slender legs without prominent veins and healthy lungs. The same applies to girls.

The strengthening and preservation of aptitude-bearing genes occurs in children from marriages in which the man and woman have the same and related inherited characteristics.

Let us beware, however, of marrying within our own close relations. We would above all strengthen those regions of the corpuscles in which hereditary susceptibility to certain diseases is hidden.

The individual differences of races and nations rest upon this basic line.

(774) The cultured stratum of a nation, with outstanding abilities inherited from ancestors, does not remain at the same outstanding level, but declines. This regressive state simultaneously benefits the descendants of degenerate people in the sense that it offers them possibilities of not suffering the entire inborn burden of bad abilities and traits inherited from their parents.

If moral order is not observed in a nation for several generations and the education of reason is misguided, evil multiplies, then becomes embodied in the genes and continually strengthens through the crossing of pairs of genes. The multiplied power of the genes determines reason and will, which become obscured. The result is the release and unleashing of base passions, disintegration, discord in society, enmity, upheavals and wars, after which genetic influence rapidly declines. The genes return to their original state of a kind of innocence.

(775) The average state of descendants, if left to themselves, always returns within a few generations to the average state of the cultured stratum of their ancestors. If this carefully conceived lawfulness did not exist, inclinations and traits toward evil would predominate and humanity would become extinct. [Translator’s note: the source places a sentence break after “descendants”; the syntax has been connected here to convey the apparent sense.]

If we wish to preserve good faculties, aptitudes, characteristics and health in our descendants, we must strive for them and continually renew, improve and perfect them in every family and stratum of the nation.

Through the influence of good and outstanding families, within relatively few subsequent generations a suitable choice of marriages can create outstanding lineages, the foundations of a strong nation, just as degenerate individuals can produce lineages whose destructive characteristics and poor health directly threaten themselves and those around them.

Many nations degenerate despite preserving pure blood and a pure race. Organic exhaustion, disturbances and weaknesses with various susceptibilities to illnesses manifest themselves in them.

The physicochemical composition of molecules and cells becomes depleted and exhausted in many respects, for inborn hereditary causes are nothing other than particles of matter, a kind of living molecules and atoms, which deposit a certain part of themselves upon the protoplasm of the chromosomes of nuclei, the nuclear protein corpuscles.

All humanity benefits from interbreeding with healthy, cultured nations. New, healthy compounds of groups of genes thus arise for the founding of new kinds toward the regeneration of humanity. Interbreeding generally benefits the creation of a new bodily and mental culture of healthy individuals and entire nations.

(776) Let us be very careful in selecting future educators, especially teachers, priests and other pedagogues, so that they come from good, upright and moral families, healthy in body and spirit.

It depends on all of us! Therefore, in every case let us be guided by the following advice:

Environment and upbringing can raise an individual considerably above the inherited foundation, but on the other hand, one-sided upbringing or an unsuitable environment can create entirely different individuals from the same foundation.

We possess free will. Let us rally ourselves and apply our mental power and influence to our own matter in the sense of healthy imaginative autosuggestion. An autosuggestive intervention repeated daily will at the same time act beneficially upon our germ cells and their corpuscles designated for the storage of heredity.

Mothers can achieve much through the action of their will. Especially through the imaginative power of their mental images during pregnancy, when special cells have already developed in the fetus and the gray cerebral cortex with its esplana has been prepared.

(777) It is desirable, indeed directly your duty, that after the fifth month of pregnancy you should remain constantly cheerful in spirit and acquire all virtues, firmly believing that your child will be healthy, devout, keen-spirited, virtuous and so on. Such imaginative autosuggestion is actually a hereditary burden for the child, but in the very best sense of the word, because it has an astonishing positive influence upon the future family member. The mother is also the reason that noble gifts in the form of mental images, aptitudes and faculties have been placed into the empty esplana of the innocent child’s body, where they become anchored for his future life.

(778) I emphasize: during the last four or five months of pregnancy, daily and continually until birth, vividly believe and imagine that your child will have great aptitudes for a particular activity, as I have already described in greater detail, and it will surely be so. If, conversely, you believe and imagine, for example, that your child will break a leg at the age of twelve, it will surely happen, and then you will say that I was right.

Some will say it was chance or fate. We, however, after reading the introductory chapters of this book, know that an imaginative suggestive thought introduced into another person’s soul by any means and embodied in matter is powerful and acts more reliably than a machine. Such a thought lives continually and waits for the time when it is to carry out whatever evil it contains. Conversely, if good things are suggested by the mother to the child before birth, such an imaginative thought guides, shapes and prepares the child’s soul beforehand for good things and virtues. Let a woman carrying a fetus beneath her heart desire throughout pregnancy a beautiful, God-fearing, noble soul in a beautiful body, and believe that she will see her mental image fulfilled.

(779) Therefore let no mother have any further fear that her child will bring some defect into the world. If she firmly believes and, even before conception, imagines that her child will be completely healthy, it will surely be fulfilled for her! Through her own strong mental influence she herself will transform diseased hereditary corpuscles into healthy ones!

After the child’s birth, the mother remains magnetically connected with him for the first two or three years. This is most evident during breastfeeding, as my good clairvoyants established, for they saw a light-blue band, a connecting ray between mother and child. The mother therefore continues to have an astonishing influence on the healthy formation of the child’s soul. Let her therefore constantly influence the child during this time with a healthy thought and mental image.

The parents will wish the future family member to have certain aptitudes, but do not know what sex the new arrival will be. I therefore advise the mother to cultivate thoughts for both the male and female sex. After birth those thoughts that the newborn child can use for his development will assert themselves, and the other earlier thoughts will vanish; see the chapter “The Child and Upbringing.”

There are, of course, mothers who cannot arouse faith within themselves at any price. Let them exercise and awaken their will in the way I have already described.

What a powerful influence mental impulses and thoughts have upon human genes will be shown by the following example:

(780) A woman of about forty entered my office. She looked at me with a smile, and when I approached her and asked what she wanted, she did not answer. I led her into the adjoining room and asked again. The woman behaved as if awakening and asked, “Where am I?” “You are in Kostelec, at Kafka’s,” I replied. “And you yourself are Mr. Kafka?” “Yes, I am.” “But that is impossible; I was going to my brother in Česká Třebová. How could it have happened? All I know is that at the station in Sm. I was reading your book…” She searched and found it in her bag. I could see that she was very sensitive, suffered from something, and while reading the book her subconscious SELF had itself led her to me. The woman recounted: “When I was seventeen, I was seeing a young man whom I loved very much. We became engaged. At that time another young man pursued me, constantly saying that he liked me very much and had to have me as his wife. I hated him.

“One day I was coming from a friend’s house. It was toward evening. As I approached a pond, he suddenly sprang out from somewhere, seized me with all his strength and carried me into a rye field, where he stopped my mouth. I had no strength to defend myself; he raped me. It was a terrible and dishonorable humiliation; my blood seethed and my thoughts could not be restrained. I ran to the adjoining pond to drown myself. Once I was waist-deep in the water, I became terrified. I ran out of the water and discharged my terror by breaking branches from a nearby bush. I hated that man terribly. When, after some time, I noticed a change in my condition, I thought I would go mad. My mother noticed it too, so I told my parents everything. My father grew grave and pale, he was a strict Catholic, and after a while decreed: ‘You will marry that man!’ But I hated him terribly. My father answered, ‘You will get used to him.’ Shortly after the wedding a girl was born, and two years later a boy. Mr. Kafka, these two children hate us parents too! The girl is already eighteen and the boy sixteen. There is not a day without unpleasantness and quarrels in our house, and I suffer. My daughter is worse toward me than my son; he has already gone to drown himself several times, and people pulled him out twice. Both children showed hatred toward me from their very first year. My husband is kind to me, but I still hate him. He says the children take after me, that everything is my fault. He wants me to love him, saying everything in the family will change. I accepted that the children had brought this from me. So I tried and forced myself to love my husband, especially when we were expecting another child. And indeed, the little girl, who is now six, does love me…”

(781) From the unfortunate woman’s account it is clearly evident what a powerful influence a mother’s strong mental emotion has upon her genes and the genes of her future children.

70. Treatment by Autosuggestion

Editorial note: historical treatment claims

The author’s claims of cures, regeneration and paranormal effects are preserved as historical source material, not endorsed medical guidance. Autosuggestion should not replace professional diagnosis, prescribed treatment or emergency care.

(782) To those who suffer from mental or bodily illnesses and have no opportunity to be treated by a physician acquainted with my method, I give simple advice of great value and power. It consists in autosuggestion, which I have already mentioned in preceding chapters, but not in detail. I now wish to discuss this effective therapy more fully and explain it more closely.

We can convince ourselves through a simple experiment of our own that humanity is guided by thoughts without being sufficiently aware of it. For example, you want to get up at three in the morning to catch a train. You worry whether you will wake. This vivid thought becomes fixed in your upper subconscious and itself awakens you at the right time. It is more precise than the best machine. There are many people who command themselves: I will awaken at a particular hour! And it actually happens.

The principles of human acts are reason and will; from them proceeds all movement, mental and bodily processes, dynamics and vitality.

Conscious autosuggestion has the same power as the semi-hypnotic suggestion I give a subject as a hypnologist. At the appointed time he then carries out exactly everything I have suggested to him. The thought I “slipped into” him guided him without his awareness. A command, a vivid wish and well-considered words have a “soul,” a psychic effect.

(783) In life, good thoughts always lead us toward good, bad ones toward bad things and acts, healthy ones toward health, diseased ones toward illness. We do indeed have reason and free will, but they are subject to the thoughts we have stored in the upper subconscious. Good and healthy thoughts will strengthen both these mental faculties, while bad and diseased thoughts will destroy and crush them. If we constantly occupy ourselves with diseased thoughts, we become faint-hearted, and feeble-mindedness will come. If a person constantly occupies himself with bad thoughts, crimes, murders and suicide will come. Where, then, are reason and will? We are what we make ourselves, certainly not what fate makes us! All thoughts and mental images must therefore be under the control of reason and will.

(784) Our subconscious is faster than our consciousness! We can use this fact to cure illnesses. The subconscious commands great gifts and knows the path and means by which every illness can be cured. It is only necessary to set these hidden gifts in motion. This depends on awakening subconscious activity. Our consciousness can set the subconscious in motion. Therefore, if we are ill, let us practice conscious autosuggestion and enliven the ideoplastic mental image: “I am getting well!” or “Let the illness disappear!” We shall repeat this to ourselves every hour, and at least ten times before sleep. From the day we begin, a new thought will form and materialize in an esplano in our upper subconscious, creating the mental image: “I am getting well!” This new perception will continually disturb our subconscious until we accept it as our own. In this way we awaken the healing subconscious. As soon as the subconscious SELF accepts the thought “I am getting well!” or “Let the inflammation disappear!” and the like, it itself sets in motion the means and conditions under which the illness recedes, dies away, is absorbed and finally disappears.

The subconscious, the soul itself, first brings white blood cells to the diseased site, which break down and remove the illness. If this is no longer possible, the condition being very serious, it at least isolates it with calcareous substances so that it will not harm the organism. Matter behaves according to thought.

(785) In the subconscious the soul is free and unfettered, possessing a power with the ability to recognize natural laws through direct intuition, without the aid of the senses or ordinary scientific means.

Realize that within your body are powerful metaphysical and metapsychic forces, that the subconscious is the higher spirit and higher faculty of your soul, giving direction to everything. Its thoughts are constructive, and its intentions manifest themselves plastically in the body, biologically and materially.

Through psychic interventions, attacks upon the subconscious and suggestions, the higher will of the subconscious is also brought into active intervention in other ways. Regenerative processes awaken in the body and vital forces are set in motion. This means that unknown, original elements of all healing processes, hidden in the organism, are released and stimulated to new activity, to begin a regenerative process. In conscious autosuggestion too, excited states of consciousness increase our natural defensive forces and the healing, regenerative capacities given to the body by nature.

(786) Through suggestion and faith in oneself, various organs and those parts of the body in which, according to universally valid biological laws, all growth energy should long since have died out suddenly begin to regenerate.

We thereby regain strength and vital energy. In rejuvenation, human life is thus prolonged.

With the aid of suggestion and autosuggestion, a woman can regain fertility. She can be fertilized even in the years after menopause, give birth to and breastfeed healthy children. Cases are known in which women even in later years, in their desire for a child, unconsciously awakened the regenerative forces of dying ovarian follicles.

Nature itself placed rejuvenating powers in the human body, for where there is life there is also regeneration. Especially in old age, with the daily action of the will and repeated imaginative autosuggestion, “my body is rejuvenating and renewing itself,” these attributes of life in dormant intelligent forces awaken, aroused for new vital energy so as to unleash regenerative powers for the renewal of the cells’ protoplasmic substance, so that internal organs renew themselves, what is missing is replenished, and the internal secretion of glands is awakened to higher activity. Youthful freshness and strength then return.

(787) In treatment by autosuggestion, even greater intermittent failures, should they occur, must not discourage you. The thought that you cannot must not prevail! You must constantly remember that you can!

Fatigue must not overcome you. Again and again it is necessary to exert pressure, an attack upon the subconscious, so that the chosen goal is reached.

External influences must not affect you; you must maintain your own constant dynamics and follow your own direction.

During practice the will gives consent for something to happen and recovery to be realized. If you have even a little strength, concentrate all your effort and consciousness, evoke a state of attention and tense presence of mind so that you enter a state of heightened activity. Your spirit must concentrate as much as possible upon a single point. You are then able to fix upon the thought “I will recover,” which you pronounce aloud and bind to your consciousness for a longer time, pleasantly experiencing it, now without the intervention of the will. At the same time awaken a burning wish and desire, a vivid mental image and powerful faith, so that this thought becomes a living part of your consciousness. Without faith it is a dead mental image. The chosen imaginative representations of thoughts must be clear in your consciousness, not dim, so that they influence an early recovery.

Pronounce the thought aloud and then hold it in consciousness. Repeat it ten to fifteen times in succession, three times daily.

(788) The governing power of this therapy is the will. A thought supported by a mental image has high efficacy. The action of imagination in healing is more powerful than the will.

In this way you give therapeutic thoughts a definite mental image and conviction toward effective reality; all your mental processes will be saturated and permeated by a single imaginative thought of complete success and recovery. Repeating the thought makes the gathered power ever stronger, until it leads to a deed.

If you lack sufficient mental strength, say the suggestions to yourself in full confidence and imagination without the intervention of the will.

Within each of us is an infinite power: spirit. If we wish, it acts upon matter. Autosuggestion uttered by our lips is a command that our subconscious receives and carries out without our awareness.

To enter a state of effective suggestion, you must do so without effort. For effort already includes the use of will. Use the will only when you wish to treat yourself and concentrate, and strive to let nothing discourage you from it.

(789) You must learn to use your imagination and turn your entire mind only toward it. This is the true foundation of treatment. Once the imaginative state is formed, the will must no longer intervene. Imagination must always have ascendancy over the will if it comes into conflict with it. Instead, it is necessary to awaken faith, desire and wishing with a burning hope of recovery. If the thought appears that you will not recover, do not fear it. On the contrary, when it comes, say to yourself: “I am not afraid of you; I will recover!”

If you are nervous and suffer from sleeplessness, this is a sign of your weak nerves. You suffer from inner restlessness and irritability, a lack of self-mastery, low resistance of the mental organism; you succumb to all influences and an excessive number of impressions, reacting violently to every emotional stimulus. Incessant impulses stream through your nerves, which the brain cannot process fast enough.

(790) Every nervous person suffers from spasmodic tension, because the bodily organs cannot keep pace with the countless impulses toward movement evoked by every sensory perception and every thought. Spasmodic tension of the bodily system ultimately leads to reduced performance. A person remaining under high tension is incapable of clear thoughts at decisive moments, and his attention is paralyzed. Whoever overstrains muscles and brain in order to think will meet with failure.

In a state of spasmodic tension, nothing succeeds for us. We thereby block all inlets and outlets; the brain does not work because the supply of magnetic energy has been paralyzed by spasm of the muscles and vessels. Here lies the origin of many depressive phenomena and numerous psychogenic, mentally conditioned functional disturbances in the bodily system. It is the result of an incorrectly understood therapy of the will.

Strength of will is a psychological, external matter. It should concern our tenacity and perseverance, not a convulsive exertion of will upon the bodily system, muscles, vessels and so on. Incessant activity leads in the end to collapse.

You must understand the meaning of the word “relaxation,” its healing effect on body, nerves and soul. Nervous people, burdened by their thoughts and affects, find it difficult to calm themselves, for the tension in which they live is higher than in healthy people.

(791) What does it mean to relax? For the body it means to leave it to itself, release and “switch off” muscles, joints and limbs. For the soul it is calm, separation from activity and exertion. Where there is complete calm, where we want nothing, healing begins. We begin to acquire new strength for spirit and body.

The technique of relaxation requires practice and attentive control. In complete relaxation we must calm thinking as well. It is good to lie on a couch, close the eyes and breathe deeply without effort. We let thoughts pass freely through the brain without paying attention to them. In our mind let us imagine a white, round surface. Let us remain in this mental image until thoughts fade and disappear. This simple exercise induces a state of relaxation that gives us deep inner peace, from which we can then draw new strength.

(792) If you cannot fall asleep, first become aware that you are lying down and not continuing mental activity, but allowing body and spirit to rest. After lying down, relax completely, think of nothing and breathe deeply. Deep breathing draws blood away from the head and makes falling asleep easier. Close your eyes, turn them upward and have a single thought: I am falling asleep, falling asleep… It is enough to close the eyes and think of nothing; we rest mentally and physically; we fall asleep.

The will, however, will not help you toward such relaxation and sleep. You cannot “will” yourself to relax, just as you cannot “will” yourself to fall asleep, because all willing tends toward activity, and every activity, even thinking, tenses the muscles. You do not relax or fall asleep through willing, but by drifting into and feeling your way into the state of a tired or sleeping person.

All you who are ill! Take hold of these instructions! By way of further instruction I add that a vivid mental image, imagination, is more powerful than the will. We must therefore awaken and create within ourselves such a vivid mental image of our health. Merely exercising the will is not enough; we must constantly maintain and strengthen vivid imagination.

The will alone, without imagination, does not heal! Nor does the mental image of health alone heal if we let even a small doubt pass through the mind!

In creating ideoplastic, vivid mental images, faith and strong will must always cooperate and be in accord!

Great tension of the will is unnecessary; it is sufficient simply to have a strong will, believe and strongly wish to be healthy. I must be aware of the constantly repeated words: “Let the illness disappear!” and the like. I must not say them thoughtlessly or mechanically; as I do so I must constantly form a mental image of complete health, hold it and experience it in the soul. The esplano then grows more powerful and expands in its nucleus; it is alive and has a powerful influence upon the subconscious itself, which directs everything within us toward recovery.

(793) If, with good attention, you fix your mind upon the thought “I am getting well,” you bind it to your consciousness and hold it within yourself through strength of will for as long as you choose. If aroused by a burning desire or vivid mental image, it is capable of inducing your spirit to begin healing activity through the powers of the subconscious.

Through the nerves, the subconscious governs the activity of all our organs down to the smallest cell. This means that it acts toward recovery. Just as a hypnologist can govern the subject’s subconscious SELF in every direction, so a new esplano arising from conscious autosuggestion can govern the subconscious; it thus has the same mysterious power and strength as the hypnologist. We must learn to govern the mysterious power of the subconscious with the aid of autosuggestion; we must have within ourselves certainty and faith with vivid imagination, imagery, that things will happen as we wish. Of course, we must not lack patience and perseverance!

The subconscious SELF is an immense force capable of acting upon matter in the familiar experiments of levitation, telekinesis and materialization. These phenomena, although they seem unrealizable to us, are nevertheless facts. In precisely the same way, the subconscious SELF acts directly upon a physical or psychophysical defect. Slowly, indeed, but surely, until a permanent cure.

From the preceding experiments in materialization we have convinced ourselves that in the subconscious the soul has the ability to embody any forms it chooses from its own creative plasma, governed by the psyche, the psychic faculty. The soul forms the body from matter and thereby presents itself as an agent. From this knowledge of its astonishing subconscious faculty and strength comes proof that through imaginative autosuggestive treatment I can compel my subconscious to renew, reshape and heal my diseased body.

(794) According to subject K.’s observations, every prolonged illness, together with the course of its painful symptoms, becomes embodied or represented in an esplano. Through an operation we indeed remove the illness and sometimes its cause as well, but the diseased esplano with the image of the illness remains. It often happens that its active force gradually evokes illness in another, previously healthy part of the body. It is known that some people never emerge from illnesses. Let us remember, after recovery or an operation, to create a counter-esplano with a mental image of firm health.

(795) I repeat that the foundation of autosuggestive treatment is to create an image, a single idea, in the mind, that is, to concentrate all energy upon one thing while banishing other thoughts. In other words, a narrowing but at the same time deepening of self-awareness for plastic imagination.

If thoughts and vivid mental images fill our entire mind, they become reality. Subconscious activity itself takes them over and changes them into behavior and deeds. To convince unbelievers I give the following actual case:

(796) An acquaintance of mine from the neighboring village came to inform me of a peculiar thing happening in their apartment. He recounted: “We do not know what causes it, but when Mother boils milk in the early evening, suddenly one of the little pots rises from the stove and some invisible force hurls it to the ground. It has happened three times already.”

I did not believe him and smiled. The acquaintance invited me to visit, however, so that I could convince myself. I accepted his invitation and made the visit the next day. The milk boiled, but nothing happened. At their request I repeated the visit the following day, at the time when the milk was put on the stove to boil. It had already been boiled for some time when suddenly I saw one of the earthenware pots hovering above the stove, whereupon it was hurled to the ground.

We all looked at the broken pot. To explain the mystery I came again the following day, this time with the subject Křeček. I put him to sleep and told him everything I had seen the day before. The subject looked around as though searching for something, then said: “I know now. Let everyone leave, then I will tell everything.” They objected that they too wanted to learn the cause directly from the subject. I told him this, and the sleeper replied: “If they want to, then let them hear it. They are wealthy and miserly, especially the mistress of the house. They have a farmhand who toils very hard, but in the evening he gets only black coffee for his meal, rarely whitened with a little milk. This miserliness pains and torments him greatly, for he sees that even the pigs are fed milk, so he is very angry. Whenever he falls asleep, he thinks about this injustice. Because he is sensitive, he cannot rid himself of these impressions and falls asleep with them. His subconscious SELF takes these impressions as its own during sleep and itself destroys the pots of milk through its own power. It happens only when the farmhand goes to bed in the evening and the mistress is just boiling the milk.”

From this story we recognize the astonishing power of subconscious activity, which we can awaken, direct and aim toward our own health through a free decision of the will.

(797) There are people who, with the best will in the world, cannot use my method of autosuggestion. They lack the strength, even if they wished to. I have convinced myself of this several times. I advise them not to despair of themselves, but to ask their family members and acquaintances to send the patient this living thought while he sleeps: “You are getting well! Your illness is disappearing day by day!” The subconscious SELF, which remains awake in the oduší and protosplana during sleep, will receive the thought sent to it as its own, anchor it in the upper subconscious, and under the circumstances described earlier cure the illness. During the patient’s sleep, let believing members of the household pray trustingly for recovery, with firm faith that it will happen. They themselves will benefit from this, for they will share in God’s graces for eternal salvation.

Treatment by autosuggestion proceeds from a free decision of the will.

A person decides through freedom of will, in which he is morally responsible for his actions. Supporters of determinism, however, declare that human decision-making is subject to causal necessity and that freedom of will is only an illusion. They maintain that human willing and behavior are governed by immutable laws, that a person obeys his own laws and his decisions depend upon his personality, which itself is a product of lawful factors. They maintain that independent freedom of decision does not exist, and that a person’s freedom consists only in consciously willing what corresponds to his being and what, like everything else in nature, is subject to natural laws.

(798) Freedom of will and moral responsibility exist! We must distinguish what I want from what wants within me. A comprehensively educated person is aware of the spirit’s higher powers, reason and will, which can reflect and watch over lower instinctual activity. His inner “superego” is aware of mental freedom and liberty in deciding, free from internal and external psychophysical pressure. Freedom of spirit has a task in the order of activity; it can distinguish values of good, for which it freely decides. Values motivate willing. Without a relationship to values, a person’s moral freedom is inconceivable. The governing power of the spirit is a higher component of the personality, superior to it and ruling over it. The soul has an activity of its own. It can master impulses, has command over the lower side of nature, intervenes in bodily processes, governs passions, subjects them to itself and directs them toward achieving higher goals. It is entirely distinctive; it is spiritual. The governing power of the spirit cannot be derived from lower bodily-mental causal lawfulness, because it is superior to that lawfulness and governs it. Therefore freedom of will, in the sense of independence from natural lawfulness, cannot be deduced from mechanical causality, but from spirit. The will is free because a human being is a rational and self-governing being.

(799) Those tormented by thoughts of taking their lives or going mad and the like must turn autosuggestive treatment against these thoughts and suggest to themselves, create an ideoplastic mental image, that this will not happen, thus the opposite of the original negative thoughts. I repeat that every diseased thought must be balanced and displaced by a healthy one!

As soon as good thoughts become powerful and equal diseased thoughts through their own strength, those diseased thoughts begin to weaken to the point of losing their power over the gray cerebral cortex. From now on you will not flee a diseased thought and will no longer be afraid. You will be indifferent toward it! Today you know its origin and the way you will surely rid yourself of it. As soon as the thought appears, in your mind you will shake its hand, greet it with a smile on your lips and say: “Look! An old acquaintance who will leave me for good as soon as possible, so, a safe journey!” Simply by your not being terrified of the diseased thought, it will weaken, the whole esplano with its little knots will wither, while the gray cortex will strengthen. Then you will gather your trained will, form a vivid mental image of the opposite of that thought, and strive to concentrate your mind upon it as much as possible.

A person who can control himself and keep a cool head in critical moments, who does not surrender to feelings and knows how to observe and analyze his own inner life soberly, is not accessible to self-deceptions and intrusive diseased mental images.

(800) Do not be melancholy! Your thinking must not stray in only one direction, for that would bring it into a diseased state. You must achieve balance! The soul shapes the body!

If you hold a diseased thought in consciousness for even twenty minutes, there is a danger that it will become anchored, and you will have to exert yourself greatly to rid yourself of it. Care for thoughts is the hygiene of the spirit, so you must give yourself the command to control them.

You must immediately suppress dangerous thoughts in their beginnings. Summon only good ones and make them your own.

A person’s well-being depends upon his inner world of thought far more than is generally believed.

(801) Most mental disturbances are fundamentally emotional disturbances, with an inborn disposition. The causes may or may not be congenital, hereditary or physiological. Almost all psychoses are the culmination of failures that befell an inexperienced and mentally unequipped individual when he had to adapt to his environment. Unsuccessful self-fulfillment is likewise a frequent cause. Apart from repressed, undesirable mental images, heightened activity of the subconscious SELF causes neuroses. It awakens from a lack of conscious activity, assumes various forms and mental images that it casts into consciousness, which often comes into conflict with them. It is always a deficiency in the spirit’s activity in consciousness, its defensive forces and its individuality that makes the individual incapable of overcoming psychosis. The formative element of personality is the activity of the spirit in conscious activity. Under its rule must be all conscious activity and the creative power of subconscious activity as well. We are not merely a product of heredity, environment and subconscious forces; in consciousness we have a creative power, reason and will. This enables us to come to terms with ourselves in good time.

(802) Therefore, from today introduce a certain order into your thinking, separating diseased thoughts from healthy ones, and at the same time sow good and useful thoughts in the esplana. Your brow will then be clear, your face and eye will brighten and radiate the harmony of your soul; no bad thoughts will dwell behind them. You will not live in apprehension of whether depression may come, but in self-confidence and firm hope that your armed will will immediately mobilize all defensive thoughts and bodily powers to subdue and banish the intruders of unhealthy thoughts, and thus remove all mental disturbers of peace from your world of thought!

From today you will harbor no mental weeds in your mind that greatly weaken your vital force and disturb your mental balance. You will check your thoughts more often. If necessary you will carry out a cleansing, thereby freeing and releasing yourself inwardly and attaining inner peace, calm of spirit and balance of your own SELF.

(803) People suffering mentally who came to me complained that the more they banished tormenting thoughts and fought against them, the more they returned and intruded. This is natural; acting against them and merely repressing them does not help. A counterpressure must be aroused in the sense of a new, healthy thought that I place beside the diseased thought. Merely pulling out is not enough; one must also, and above all, sow.

A good hypnologist too can be of great benefit with these thoughts. As part of an experiment, I evoked such a patient’s diseased thought through suggestion. When I observed it, I immediately removed it through suggestion. Sometimes success came after the very first experiment. The thought no longer appeared by itself. At other times it did indeed intrude upon the threshold of consciousness, but after each further evocation it was weaker, until finally, under suitable suggestions, it disappeared entirely.

(804) In a complicated illness I evoke its whole state. There are then, of course, many more diseased thoughts, impressions and mental images. Through suitable suggestion I remove that whole state with the thought that it will no longer appear. The same thing happens as when, during hypnotic experiments, I tell the subject: “Through falling from a tree and being frightened, you suffered a shock to the nerves; you are trembling all over!” He immediately begins to tremble. Or I say: “This color is black, but from today it is always green!” In this way I have created an impression and mental image in an esplano as though it had really happened. The new esplano will cause the subject to tremble continually, for as long as the impression of the diseased esplano does not vanish of its own accord. He will also stop trembling if through a new suggestion, that he no longer trembles, I tell him that he is healthier than before.

During such experiments I sometimes put clairvoyant subjects to sleep for checking and observation. To other people, before putting the subjects to sleep, I suggested false mental images, in short a state of derangement. In those who accepted my suggestion, the checking sensitives observed that new little knots flared up on the rays of the esplana and the esplano shone more brightly. Upon withdrawal of the suggestion, the knot immediately faded, because it was young and not established.

When withdrawing a diseased mental image, it is essential to evoke a healthy one! This is a safeguard that a normal state will certainly ensue. Sometimes even after the diseased thought is withdrawn, some signs remain. They would indeed die away in time, but a suggested counterthought destroys them sooner. If I left a diseased mental image in place for twenty days, in some it faded by itself; in others it strengthened, according to how the person concerned had received it. Sometimes I succeeded in removing it with a single experiment; at other times I had to perform three or four experiments to remove it.

(805) A state of derangement is psychically contagious. Once I evoked a strong state of derangement in one subject. Within half an hour, the three other subjects present had been carried away by the first to such an extent that they would have beaten one another to death. My calm and faith, expressed by a wave of the hand, and a suitable suggestion prevented it, however.

Such experiments can be afforded only by a hypnologist absolutely certain of his ascendancy over the subject. A weakling may lose composure and faith, and then have such people on his conscience and reflect upon his bad judgment in the cool of a prison cell.

It is evident that it makes no difference whether an unhealthy impression arose through artificial suggestion or naturally under other circumstances. In both cases treatment is the same, whether it takes place in the waking state or in hypnotic sleep.

Illnesses that are not longstanding can be treated in the manner described. The younger the illness, the easier the cure, because in that case it is bound to only a few rays of the esplana.

(806) I can, however, influence a sick person in another way too. When she falls asleep during magnetizing, I sit opposite her and converse mentally with her subconscious to the effect that the illness should disappear. At the same time I form mental images of her health for the future waking state. The subconscious receives this as its own and in time arranges everything for recovery by itself.

When your child sleeps, his body and consciousness rest. The subconscious, however, remains awake. If we speak to the child in the sense of proper upbringing during his sleep, we act upon his subconscious. In illness we send suggestions of his health. The child gradually moves toward what the parents wish.

Take hold of my valuable advice! The child’s subconscious too is a true miracle!

(807) Mental and nervous illnesses have their foundation in an unbalanced and uneducated soul that neither understands nor knows itself.

If the soul has suffered much pain and disappointment through upbringing and the environment in which it lives, if it has been perversely guided and led astray, it is wounded. This is not yet, however, as many might suppose, mental illness. It simply lacks the capacity and strength to emerge from its unhappy state, does not know how to guide itself, and needs another person’s help.

Beware of passions and a dissolute life. The intellect, the rational faculty, has ecstasies that surpass the orgies of physical passions. If a person occupies himself with God, he is granted a more lasting joy in the rational faculty than that flowing from any passion.

If you do not want to lose yourself in a mental labyrinth, follow a good rule: love discipline, and you need not fear a sad end in an institution. Moral and rational progress will be the foundation of your mental life.

(808) Frequent suffering, great losses, dissatisfaction in one’s occupation, inner conflict, fear and anxiety all produce mental low spirits, transmitted to the nerves. This has a considerable reciprocal effect upon the soul, which succumbs to hurried, powerful, unrestrained thinking, impressions and mental images. The patient is mentally and physically exhausted, psychasthenic, cries, complains and seeks various methods of treatment from various physicians, but usually entirely in vain.

Grief, fear, longing, faint-heartedness, envy and hatred shorten human life and destroy dignity. Fear deprives one of strength, circumspection, judgment, decisiveness and all the advantages of the human spirit. It is a constant spasm. It constricts and presses all the small vessels; the skin grows cold and pale. All the blood collects in the large internal vessels, the pulse stops and the heart becomes overfilled, so that blood cannot move freely. From disturbed metabolism a poison forms that shortens life.

(809) Manage your time and precious mental powers well. Seek to order all the movements of your thinking by acquiring healthy principles and good rules that suppress and overcome the phenomena described above as the soul demands and wishes. The soul directs thoughts, not thoughts the soul! Do not exhaust yourself in fighting compulsive mental images and thoughts; you must not pay them too much attention, for you would thereby worsen your thinking. This can be achieved through a kind of outwitting, a stratagem: evade them!

You may know these thoughts and images, but they must not become your ruler, for the soul cannot permit it. Courageously resist the conscious, hostile tempters, disregard them, discount them and laugh at them. You have a complete guarantee that they will not overcome you; set against them a rampart of your healthy thoughts and preserve deliberation and calm. Through this you will train yourself for this stubborn struggle in living faith and certainty that you will prevail over them!

(810) A person develops through the spiritual effort of his faculties, reason and will. In this way he creates his inner order.

Does anxiety assail you? Remember that it is an affect, a precipitous disturbance of the mind’s balance, an agitation of mind. It is a depressive feeling, for it is associated with displeasure. Anxiety is an experience, something lived through, that enters a person through the soul and can fill him entirely. Our self-observation is insufficient, for anxiety has flooded us and deprived us of our SELF. It has joined in a state of loss of the senses, so that we are beside ourselves with anxiety. We must not let it come near us! Where we understand it, it loses its omnipotence. It passes into a feeling with a more definite object, such as fear. Anxiety paralyzes; fear can be overcome through action. [Translator’s note: the source’s wording about anxiety joining in a loss of the senses is obscure.]

Fear nothing; ignore everything that awaits you. Everything must be regarded as nothingness, and one must defiantly remain anchored in this world! To show no weakness but combat it and show one’s strength is the best medicine for overcoming anxiety!

(811) Haste and agitation do not help; on the contrary, they delay recovery. If your soul has found itself on a slippery slope, do not repress old guilt or diminish its significance and magnitude. On the contrary, you must understand it and make amends! How? You must balance it with actions and good deeds. Where possible, directly. Where that is impossible, in another way, indirectly. For example, sincerely repent of grave crimes, murders, adultery, robbing the poor and orphans, and confess them to a psychiatrist, who can help you with advice. A believer will go to a priest and confess. You must allow yourself to be guided by this proven advice. I wrote the entire book, including this advice, in an effort to help everyone who sincerely seeks help and will benefit from it.

Nevertheless, take your treatment into your own hands and do not expect someone else to think and exert himself in your place! You yourself have that mysterious power within you; only will it and you will awaken it!

The secret of being healthy lies in control of the will, discipline, mental balance and the spirit’s vivid imagination.

Editorial note before paragraph 812

The following paragraph’s stigmatizing claims about homosexuality and proposed practices for changing it are retained solely as historical source material. They are not endorsed by this translation or offered as treatment advice.

(812) Homosexuals too should make use of this advice, for their inverted sexual feeling is not in itself a personal monstrosity or even an illness. Monstrous and diseased is only the instinct that evokes that feeling.

The soul has no sex. Same-sex feeling has its place in the brain, where the sexual instinct has developed. In a man it is directed toward a man, in a woman toward a woman. The amorous relationship of these people cannot change or cease by itself. The cerebral convolution itself, which began its development in the mother’s womb, would have to be removed. Only a strong will, perseverance and a definite, precisely set goal can change or remove this instinct. We know that the gray cerebral cortex forms anew every day. Let us therefore will and ourselves create a new cerebral convolution, a new place for an instinct always directed toward the opposite sex. This healthy sexual instinct will form at the expense of the diseased one.

We must not support and nourish the monstrous instinct within ourselves. Only thus will it weaken by itself, atrophy and after years die away. In its place a new, normal and healthy instinct will arise.

If a homosexual cannot rally himself to create a new, normal cerebral convolution through his will, he need not yet be unhappy in life. The soul directs thoughts and governs them. The intellect, the rational faculty, must prevail, engaging its entire essence and all willing for a noble goal. If he ceases to occupy himself with thoughts about his condition, ignores it and masters himself when it flares up, the undesirable state will atrophy and in time disappear entirely. Mental peace will come. I can seize that diseased instinct, condemned to die away by my will, and transform it for the good of humanity.

(813) Strength of will and willing the good must rest upon a definite noble goal.

Having discussed the hidden gifts, I once again emphatically warn everyone who would wish to misuse them for evil. Fortunately, there are few who could cultivate them to such a degree as to master them fully on a higher scale. Fewer still will be those who, having mastered them, would wish to harm others. A malicious person might, for example, wish to take revenge upon someone. To this end he would establish a magnetic connection with him and unobtrusively send evil thoughts and mental images during his sleep, to destroy him nervously or spiritually. I assure everyone again that in time the same thought will turn against the perpetrator himself, at a suitable moment when his upper consciousness weakens, which happens to everyone. Because the lower-order subconscious takes the place of weakened consciousness, it will clothe itself in the sinful thought and torment such a villain, terribly torturing him in his soul until he ends worse than his victim. I have proof of this!

(814) It is a different matter to wish, for example, to humble a proud person who has harmed me, in the sense that I compel him to acknowledge his mistake and have to come to make amends, perhaps even against his will, for what he previously did, and to have no peace until he does so. For this, even a magnetic connection is unnecessary. It is sufficient to direct one’s thought more often toward his subconscious, preferably when we know he is asleep. We can achieve it also by releasing ourselves toward him through our own autosuggestion. In this way an injured person can bring even a thief to himself, and the like. In that case, however, I must believe that my subconscious has the ability to release itself spatially during sleep and, with the aid of the oduší, find the true culprit. Then to awaken anxiety and fear within him, that is, evoke an uneasy conscience, until he is compelled to come and confess, and possibly make good the damage. How we should behave during spatial release has already been stated in this book. Practice, perseverance and above all faith, however, are required.

(815) The individual’s life, in its manifestations of subjectivity and creativity, is unpredictable and beyond influence. To be subject and object, freedom and determination, creator and sufferer at the same time: that is the human lot. If a person takes life matter-of-factly and treats his neighbors humanely, retreats before nothing and does not cling to everything the world offers, is independent while at the same time feeling part of life and society, accepts his tasks responsibly while remaining free in their choice, his will, vitality, capacity for work, and ability to suffer and live without boredom, grumbling and limitation grow and strengthen.

He can do this only because, in the crises of the purifying process, he recognized the necessity of renouncing himself and sacrificing his effort to secure comfort, so as to feel the true meaning of life in work and maturation.

Only an unreasonable person, in his irritability, separates himself from the world and regards his illusory mental images as real in order to avoid the truth.

71. Oduší as the Best Remedy for Illnesses

Editorial note: historical treatment claims

The author’s healing and scientific claims below are preserved as historical material, not endorsed medical guidance. In particular, do not delay medical assessment or replace prescribed care with the claims about curing tuberculosis, cancer or other illnesses through oduší, faith or magnetism.

(816) An old rule says: “The physician treats; nature heals.” An experienced physician therefore seeks in his own way to support and strengthen this unknown force.

The great physical and chemical work of nature’s vital force continues as long as the soul is in the body, for the vital force springs from it. It is this force that governs all the turnover of diseased and waste substances, awakens life-giving magnetism and electricity to support glandular activity and abundant secretion of hormones, and prepares, assembles and forms various remedies that, according to its immutable laws, combat and destroy the existing illness without ever being mistaken. Such purposeful work as the vital force performs in a few hours could not be accomplished by all specialists in the course of ages, indeed never at all.

(817) Hypnotic studies have demonstrated that our whole body is permeated by a light-blue radiant fluid, the oduší. Through it the soul is present in its whole being throughout the entire body and directly animates all its matter. The oduší consists of particles and is a substantial material compound. The soul is simple, uncompounded; it is a spiritual substance. It cannot change in its essence even if the whole body has changed through the removal of some part. If a human being, who forms one substance with body and soul, is to be healthy, a perfect mutual connection is necessary. Then he brims with health.

If a magnetic or electrical disturbance arises in some part of the body, energy escapes from the bond of atoms. Illness follows; the soul in its oduší gradually leaves the diseased place, whereby strength weakens there and metabolism ceases. Preserving health depends on complete balance between matter and spirit, between nourishment and excretion.

(818) Through scientific work and constant study I came to recognize that a subject perceives a diseased place as less radiant. As the illness progresses and persists, the radiation of magnetism appears veiled, darkened, gray in color, and in more severe cases brown to black. If the soul with its oduší leaves the diseased place entirely, vital force dies away there, and it becomes good soil for disease-producing bacilli. In that place the subject finds a new fluid of oduší in the form of radiant dots, the presence of disease-producing bacilli.

In more severe, complicated cases of illness, the oduší leaves the diseased place part by part and draws back toward the head.

(819) The soul’s workshop is the brain, where the soul develops and asserts its rational, sensory and vegetative activity. If you are ill, there lies your strength: will it and awaken it! Do not object that you are weak and cannot do it. You would consciously deprive yourself of health and give it up yourself. Believe and will! Through slow and persevering practice, you will succeed in concentrating mental capacity in the diseased place to revive and awaken the half-extinguished vital force. What will happen? The oduší will begin to intervene, expand and shine through, allowing its fluid to act, animating and strengthening the diseased place. If complete disintegration of the atoms has not occurred, the process will stop. Vital force will gradually assert itself more there, activity will be restored, the fluid of vital magnetism will form, electricity will be awakened, and regeneration and replacement of diseased organs will occur. The oduší, being a life-giving force stronger than the oduší of disease-producing bacilli, will destroy them. If you blaze with faith, you will recover from every illness. People suffering from tuberculosis can stop the disintegration of their lungs. The same applies to cancer.

(820) The mental awakening of a diseased place can be accomplished only through regular concentration of the mind at least five times daily for ten to twenty minutes, in complete quiet, undisturbed by anyone. The mentally weak can help themselves by placing a hand on the diseased spot, so as to achieve the necessary concentration in mental awakening and revival. At the same time attention must be paid to natural living and natural treatment. A healthy magnetizer will supply the necessary energy and oduší to very weak individuals.

Magnetism provides diseased cells with material nourishment. The oduší revives diseased cells anew with the cooperation of the soul’s principle and the magnetizer’s faith. Today we know that the building substance of atoms is electricity, thus a force and substance almost immaterial. The electromagnetic force forming the storehouse of energy, of power, of every material substance is called atomic energy. In animal food this electromagnetic force is impaired, because the animal’s life has already consumed certain kinds of this energy. Through this loss the animal cells age. If matter changes or disappears, it is merely a release of bound energy. Plant food contains electromagnetic material and vegetative power, this living matter, in an unimpaired state! Every illness is a disturbance in the structure of matter, merely a release of bound energy. Matter is a hidden state of energy, essentially a condensation of light waves; it thus arose from light, the primordial matter of light particles, sitons, which have the properties of energy, matter and psyche. On the first day God said: “Let there be light!” Everything visible, including us human beings, is created from immutable light energy, primordial matter.

72. My Own Illnesses

Editorial note: historical personal account

The account below preserves the author’s experiences and his interpretation of recovery. His treatment claims and recommendations, including fasting and delaying surgery, are historical material, not medical advice or evidence of a cure.

(821) Everything I have written about conscious autosuggestive treatment I first tried upon myself. My constant illnesses were the reason I arrived at the findings described.

Dear reader, however ill you may be, never despair. As long as the soul is in the body, you can recover. To awaken faith in you, I shall tell you something of my health, or rather of my own illnesses, which, however, also had certain hereditary causes.

In her youth my mother suffered from coughing up blood; at the same period my father contracted a chronic lung disease.

As a one-year-old child I fell down the stairs while in the maid’s care. After prolonged treatment, the physician succeeded in preventing my being crippled for life. A year later I developed pleurisy, and for a further two years whooping cough tormented me. A rash illness and measles only completed my weakness. I was anemic, and from a slight chill contracted rheumatism. From this a serious heart defect then developed, valve insufficiency. The joint of my left arm swelled and hardened, and despite the physicians’ efforts the arm became crippled. Through an accumulation of diseased substances, the joints in my legs swelled too. By the age of six the illness in my legs had eased somewhat; only the arm remained crippled. Because I was physically and mentally weak, I stayed alternately with my father’s and mother’s parents, to recover there through a change of air and diet. [Translator’s note: the source lists both “osypky” and “spalničky”; these can overlap in historical usage, so the first is rendered broadly as “a rash illness.”]

When I was seven, I was walking from my mother’s parents in Žernov to my father’s parents in Ratibořice. The path led from the Žernov rock into Grandmother’s Valley. At the top of the rock I met three youths. I paid them no attention. They, however, began to harass me and knocked me off the rock. I lost consciousness. I know that I came to from a high fever in my parents’ apartment. The physicians found damage to the vertebrae and spinal cord, with bleeding between the vertebrae. For four years the foremost physicians treated me. They achieved only that I could walk slowly, but with pain. The vertebrae remained swollen, the spine crooked and inflexible. The spinal-cord injury had a consequence: general nervous weakness. I constantly coughed, grew weaker and wasted away.

Yet within me lived the awareness that I must be healthy again like others, that I must recover. Through my illness I missed much at school. At home I occupied myself with nothing but writings on nature, and succeeded, at fifteen, in releasing the disease-producing substances in my arm and spine, so that I could bend both.

My spirit loved art. Although I was very weak, I had a firm will to learn woodcarving and sculpture. Scarcely had I completed my apprenticeship when I developed severe appendicitis. Because of my general weakness, especially of the heart, I could not be operated on, and lay ill for fourteen weeks.

(822) I recovered a little and went out into the world. Work was difficult for me; I had to overcome the diseased body through strength of will. At nineteen I again developed pleurisy and disintegration of the right lung lobe.

First I sought help from the best medical authorities. In Prague alone I visited five professors. I went to my parents and tried their advice at home, but without complete success. When I could scarcely drag my feet any longer, I gathered my will once more and began treating myself with natural means that I had put together myself. Within half a year I cleansed the lungs and pleura of disease-producing substances and stopped the suppuration of the lungs for good. Weakness of the nerves and heart remained, however.

I worked for a time, then slipped on ice and broke my collarbone in the fall. I healed this within six weeks.

Afterward I took over a larger workshop and worked with seven to nine workers. I sent goods out into the world on credit. But I did not have enough money for the trade. On top of everything, my stomach was failing me and my nerves continually weakened. My head was full of worries about paying the workers. Through this the nerves weakened still further and mental torments arose. I therefore began seeking means to calm the soul. I studied mental disturbances and thus came to the study of the science of the soul.

(823) The First World War came, and I lost the money owed to me abroad. Military call-up examinations constantly pursued me, one agitation after another. After one examination, as I was returning home, weakness of the nerves and heart brought on a severe heart attack. I was put into a carriage in the street and taken to hospital. There I was given the sacrament of the last anointing, and only death was awaited. The attack lasted five and a half hours. My body was blue and cold, my limbs and eyes completely motionless. Only my will was firm, and I believed that God would help me overcome this attack.

My thought was: only do not lose consciousness! I did not let go of the thought that the soul must not leave the body. I overcame the attack, and the physician himself said: “You survived it as if by a miracle!”

Yet my half-dying left an even greater mental disturbance and terrible mental torments. I could not control my hand to write a few words. I could not compose a single sentence; beyond it gaped an abyss, the end of thoughts. I became a machine, a receiver of all the nonsense that came by telepathic means. This ordeal was the hardest. Only a tiny spark of hope lived within me, the faith that this too would pass.

For twenty-two weeks I lay ill amid constantly recurring heart attacks. It took four years before I emerged a little from mental stupor. During that time everything was fading in my head, and I was losing understanding of the world. Everything frightened me. I therefore went into nature with my wife and calmly learned to recognize everything anew.

Meanwhile similar misfortunes pursued my parents and siblings. My brother J. developed disintegration of the leg, and before death the flesh turned black through poisoning, and even the foot separated. In my other brother, tubercular substances inherited from our parents reached his head, and he died of meningitis. My sister A. became mentally ill and had to be placed in an institution, where she died at nineteen. My father succumbed to lung disease.

As far as my nerves permitted, I studied medical science. I exercised the will daily, so that I could overcome mental torments and was able to subject other people to myself as well.

(824) My spirit and nerves grew fairly strong. But appendicitis announced itself again, after a year producing catarrh of the intestines and bladder. Only my faith was the reason I rid myself of them. I permit the use of the surgical knife only in the most necessary case, when insufficient time remains for mental treatment.

I did not enjoy even six full years of health. Violent attacks from kidney stones prepared a new test of my will to overcome a severe illness, which I have already mentioned. At the beginning of the Second World War I underwent a major operation, removal of the right kidney.

Although my nerves are trained, I must constantly lead, hold and direct myself. If I did not have a strong will, I could not go into the street, among people or into company, travel by train, emit a magnetic current during experiments, and so on.

To strengthen spirit and body, regularly every sixth day I observe a complete thirty-six-hour fast. I recommend it to everyone. Once you have tried it four to six times, you will recognize its value. You will not even feel an appetite for food; on the contrary, your nature will scarcely be able to wait for the fasting day. I immerse myself in cold water daily.

Despite everything I have experienced, I am cheerful in spirit, and scarcely anyone would notice anything in me. Autosuggestive treatment succeeds where all medical help has proved futile. Only when a person is left to rely upon himself will he know how to treat himself according to this method and have success. For he will no longer be tormented by the intrusive thought that perhaps somewhere else they might still help him.

73. Warning Dreams, Visions and Prediction

(825) What are sleep and dreams? Sleep is a great blessing for people. It refreshes body and spirit and is an indispensable condition of life and health.

Sleep is the soul’s retreat from conscious into subconscious activity. It is the disappearance of personality, for the mental world is completely closed to the external world. The soul retreats into depths where only an expert’s sensitive analysis can follow it.

A sleeping person’s consciousness disappears because connection with the esplana disappears, and with it awareness of his personality. For a certain time he ceases to be a human being in the free development of the spirit. The soul in its SELF descends into the entry subconscious states, often as far as the deepest, according to the strength and depth of sleep. The person falls more and more deeply asleep. If he falls asleep superficially, that is, immerses himself in the first entry subconscious states, he still has a dim connection with the esplana; sleep is disturbed by them, so that he sleeps in an unrefreshing half-dreaming state, as in nervous and overworked people.

During healthy sleep, mental activity asserts itself directly in the oduší. The mental image of personality is diminished, reason and will are suppressed and assert themselves only partially as the soul descends as far as the pure subconscious.

(826) The paths of the senses through which the world penetrated to the person all day are closed during sleep. Through sleep mental activity merely changes; it does not disappear, for the soul cannot enter a state of inactivity. Its internal active force awakens, directed chiefly toward experiences that have passed into the soul’s consciousness from daily life. An ordinary dream is conjured in the soul, gradually arising from perceptions, impressions, mental images, pictures, thoughts and experiences that have already passed into consciousness. A moment of “seen thinking” occurs. All impressions are often mixed with old experiences long buried in memory, and among them fall individual unclear, fantastically elaborated new perceptions and feelings, bodily sensations and remnants of impressions received by the senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The psychological structure of dreams is varied; many dreams plainly relate to the content of consciousness in the waking state, for everything impressed into the esplana simultaneously passes into the soul’s consciousness.

This explains the abundance and complexity of interlocking images, and also the flow of our affects, which are almost immeasurable.

(827) In a dream there is neither space nor time. In it we live experiences of the moment without past or future. Childhood experiences combine with yesterday’s experiences. Everything in a dream is the present of things from the past as wishes for the future, appearing fulfilled in the form of various enticingly attractive images. Abstract thought processes dissolve into the primordial language of images. The mental apparatus is engaged one degree lower; it does not create abstract “rational” thoughts but only groups of perceptual images flowing before it like a running film. The soul has the feeling of a spectator observing. Yet at the same time it feels them as part of its SELF. The boundary between the SELF and the external world dissolves in a hazy awareness.

For a psychologically trained physician, his patients’ dreams are indispensable material, through whose analysis he penetrates deep mental connections. This applies also when direct questions posed by patients in their waking state do not lead to the desired result. [Translator’s note: the source says “posed by patients,” although the surrounding context may suggest questions put to them.]

(828) From the pathological standpoint we observe that epileptics most frequently dream of wild struggles, crouching, nightmares or cats on the chest, biting dogs, crushing boulders and the like. Hysterical people have terrifying, fantastic dreams. In alcoholics dreams have a character of disgust and fear; they see grimacing and gesticulating figures. In disturbances of blood circulation, sleepers are “threatened” by fire, fall into deep ravines, or witness bloody scenes. Typical dreams of a normal person manifest themselves, for example, in flying, walking about insufficiently clothed, infidelities, attending funerals and the like.

(829) A phlegmatic person is not excited by his dream. For a melancholic, however, it is mostly oppressive; a dream often angers a choleric and cheers a sanguine person.

A dream usually lasts only a fraction of a second or a few seconds before complete awakening. Inner sight, the esplana, still captures the vanishing central events taking place in the soul’s consciousness, which in the transition to consciousness becomes aware of them in its SELF upon awakening.

The dream captured is usually not an exact reproduction of what we dreamed. In clarifying dreams, we enlist fantasy, supplement and alter missing experiences, so that we invent the dream for the most part. In doing so we are not even aware that we deceive ourselves. We must therefore not base our existence and life upon subjective dreams, as many do, for we would lose them. We shall not deceive ourselves through a dream or let it guide us; rather, it is good to reject a dream by strength of will immediately upon awakening.

(830) In this explanation I have discussed the dream as a subjective process of the soul. There are, however, other dreams that the soul obtains through spatial release of its essence. We have already learned that with the aid of the oduší the soul can release itself to a distance. It does so from an inner instinct for the spirit’s liberty and freedom, from the stimulation of various impressions and mental images we have yet to realize. During sleep the soul already works in this direction beforehand and releases itself toward those places. That is why it often happens that in reality we recognize places and people we have already seen at some time in a dream. At other times the soul gathers and brings back various impressions from space, both good and bad.

From the soul’s spatial activity also come various dreams that have nothing in common with the preceding ones.

From the state of spatial release of the soul and expansion of the oduší, I single out so-called vivid dreams, whose content upsets us and thus causes unrest in the soul. We shall concern ourselves with these and analyze them.

To analyze so-called vivid warning dreams that came true, I shall concern myself only with those of whose truth and reality I have personally convinced myself.

(831) I was treating a girl D. with a nervous illness that arose from an injury. Her mother told me: “For several days I had intended to bring certain things by bicycle from Říkov to Kostelec. My daughter was interested in my journey. The day before my departure, however, she had an ugly dream in which pieces of liver, soiled with blood and mud, seemed to come out of her through her mouth. The dream affected her so strongly that in the morning she did not even go to her sewing work, although it was very necessary, and offered to go with me. We did not return from the journey until toward evening. We had the things fastened to the bicycle carriers. On the asphalt road from Třebešov to Česká Skalice we were just about to ride down a small slope when my daughter called out to me anxiously. We both slowed down. Although she rode a bicycle excellently and was already almost on the level ground below the slope, suddenly, to my horror, she struck a telephone pole beside the road. In falling from the bicycle, across the pole’s guy wire, she injured her leg so badly that she caused a large laceration right down to the bone. After the injury my daughter underwent three operations on the leg. The treatment, however, was complicated by the skin disease erysipelas, so it was very difficult. It is simply her fate,” the mother concluded her account.

(832) In this case I established that the mother belonged among the sensitives. The father came from a family in which illness, suffering and pain were not scarce. The daughter thus carries certain hereditary dispositions within her, which often have a harmful influence upon the subconscious. Her character was withdrawn, with inclinations toward sensitivity. In this case esplana formed in this way irritate and disturb the sensitive’s subconscious, which already itself suffers through receiving various susceptibilities from ancestors, so that the introduced unrest poisons the soul without the victim herself being aware of it. The soul, however, wishes to experience only what is beautiful, dear, cheerful and blissful. Therefore, in the subconscious, where reason and will do not fully assert themselves, the soul wishes to escape the tormenting environment and seeks and accepts every opportunity to rid itself of its material body. An independent diseased complex is thereby formed.

(833) Everything we consciously wish to perform and do is immediately recorded and impressed into the esplana, and simultaneously passes into the soul’s consciousness.

For these reasons the wounded soul releases itself spatially during sleep, in our case in the direction of the next day’s journey, finding a suitable place where the body can be brought to destruction so that it can free itself from it. On the basis of this plan, arising through subconscious processes, the subconscious SELF itself already arranged for the daughter not to go to work but to offer to accompany her mother. Because this unhealthy subconscious activity of the soul, with its entire plan formed during sleep, is extraordinarily strong, it stimulates empty esplana, thereby forming related mental images of injury, blood and earth within them. For the human soul there is neither past nor future time, only a constant present. The event that arose from subconscious activity and is to occur in the near future is already known beforehand by the soul in its futurity and presentness. In this way we arrive at an explanation of so-called fulfilled vivid dreams.

Sensitives should therefore take such a dream as a warning. In the following days they should remain constantly attentive through their reason and spiritual power, in case they do not thwart the entire plan through a subconscious intervention, or until this subconscious activity calms down.

(834) In the case described, the connection between the dream and the intended journey, and the possible postponement of the journey, should have been considered. A different journey in another direction could, however, have been undertaken, for by avoiding the chosen place, the soul in the subconscious would not enter into destructive activity toward its body. For this can occur only through reflection and connection with the given place upon actually seeing it. If there was no avoiding it and the journey had to be undertaken, attentive vigilance was necessary in order to thwart the power of subconscious activity with the aid of reason and will.

The principle is to know how to join the entire activity of the subconscious with the activity of consciousness in one SELF. The soul will then have no opportunity to retreat into the subconscious and carry out its intention.

I asked the girl why she shouted already at the top of the hill when the accident happened only below it. She said that a peculiar fear and anxiety came over her. She could indeed easily have braked, but at that moment the possibility did not occur to her at all. On the contrary, something compelled her to ride straight at the pole. From this we see that the complex formed was already working independently in its lower-order subconscious SELF.

(835) To my question as to why, as a good cyclist, she had not kept to the wide road, she replied: “I don’t know; perhaps it was possible, but already on the hill I felt inwardly that I would run into the pole, so in that anxiety my only effort was to call out to Mother.”

From the answer it was evident that at the given moment the awakened activity of the complex of the lower-order subconscious SELF had assumed leadership at the expense of conscious activity. The lower-order subconscious activity wanted to carry out its plan, so that the conscious activity was powerless. This happened because the girl had not been instructed about the activity of the lower-order subconscious and could not make a rational decision.

(836) If we are not constantly attentive and consciously vigilant, the complex formed will continue to work dangerously in its SELF.

So it was in this girl’s case. The lower-order SELF created a new plan, which a fortune-teller sensed telepathically when the girl turned to her for advice in a certain matter. She told the girl that she saw her lying ill in a sanatorium.

When the girl told me the contents of her visit to the fortune-teller, I did not conceal that I considered her decision to go to a fortune-teller unreasonable, because it awakens and strengthens lower-order subconscious activity. I asked her to practice the thought that she would not become ill again. The girl objected, however, that she had a weak will and could not do it. She herself was incapable of exercising a firm will, and the diseased complex was regaining its original strength.

Several winter months passed. One evening the girl came to me lamenting that she felt mentally dreadful and feared whether she would survive the feeling. “At least I’ll go to the cinema,” she concluded. The next day she was in a sanatorium with a double fracture of the arm, and remained there for several months. She told me that on that critical evening, near the cinema building, the thought came over her that she must fall, which actually happened in the next moment, twice in succession. At the third pressure of the intrusive thought, she preferred to sit down herself, and only great pain made her aware of the broken arm.

Let us therefore remember: if we have a vivid warning dream or an unpleasant symbolic one, let us be vigilant in the following days and firmly believe that nothing bad will happen. We thereby neutralize everything beforehand and thwart and prevent lower-order subconscious activity. Its efficacy and striving will cease. Of course, at the same time we must treat ourselves according to the chapter “How Will You Restore a Mentally Ill Person to Health?”

If a diseased complex has already formed, from which sensitive fortune-tellers can draw, we must begin treatment in good time.

After this explanation, we now have the opportunity to interpret the following actual event for ourselves:

(837) Mr. U., suffering from tuberculosis, told his family, still agitated by his dream, that he had dreamed of being run over by a cart on his way to work. Nevertheless he went to the factory as usual and no longer thought about the dream at all. As he walked home from work, thinking about ordinary matters, he did not even notice the approaching cart. It knocked him down and he suffered a serious injury.

This warning dream was fulfilled almost in every detail. If we seek the cause, we find that Mr. U. was severely tubercular. Such patients are mostly nonmagnetic. Their oduší is not enclosed by magnetism. The soul then has the opportunity during sleep to release itself spatially from the coarse matter of the body with the aid of the oduší, feeling liberty, freedom and refreshment. A seriously ill person mostly lives in constant mental sadness, which has a harmful effect upon subconscious activity. Therefore in the entry subconscious states the soul seeks a way to free and release itself from the diseased body.

In this case, during spatial release, the soul saw in the esplana of the farmer concerned the entire plan of his journey. The day before the accident the farmer already knew exactly when he would set out with his cart, and in its clairvoyant faculty the patient’s soul in turn saw that the farmer would be arriving precisely at the place where Mr. U. would be crossing the road at that time. Bringing the patient under the cart’s wheels lay within the powers of a certain subconscious activity, which directly from the subconscious controlled the motor nerves of his entire body.

(838) People who believe in their fate crush their soul, which thirsts for true nourishment. If illness, longing and difficulties arise, the soul begins to abandon conscious activity and replace it with activity in the entry subconscious states. In illness and at every time, let us give the soul what belongs to it: certainty, resolve, faith and prayer in contemplation with God, knowledge of its true goal, cultivation of virtues, good deeds and love of one’s neighbor. These are the true paths and remedies for a parched and restless soul. If I nourish the soul consciously, it will not awaken subconsciously; contentment and peace will then come. The soul will not seek ways to rid itself of the tormenting body, but will treat itself through autosuggestion.

Fate is a power that leads and directs only weak wills and, through weakness of spirit, is left to the forces of the lower-order subconscious. If I am consciously attentive and vigilant so as to take away the strength and power of the lower-order and entry subconscious through will and reason, then fate has no chance.

The impulse toward life comes from the soul’s interior, which in great pain does not care whether it experiences life’s processes in consciousness or in the subconscious. Only reason and will decide, for only in consciousness does the soul find full knowledge for life: it knows that it lives.

In healthy sensitives, subconscious activity manifests itself interestingly in other ways too:

(839) Mrs. Ž., whose husband owned a funeral business, always announced beforehand to acquaintances that someone had just died, so her husband would make that person’s coffin. She revealed to me that when she slept at night, they received a sign through a noise caused by the tensioner of a hand saw coming loose and springing out. Sometimes the sign came during the day as well.

The couple knew that I was interested in such phenomena and therefore immediately reported every death to me beforehand. I established that the sign always appeared just before death, or at most two or three hours afterward. Because I lived in the same house, I wanted to see the mysterious release of the wooden tensioner personally. I spent several evenings sitting with the couple in their workshop, which was also their kitchen.

One day, while we were talking, the tensioner suddenly came loose from the hanging saw and flew into the middle of the room. We all fell silent. I looked at Mrs. Ž. and found that she was asleep. Because I detected no deception, I reflected upon the matter, especially when the next day a man came from the neighboring village and asked for a coffin to be made for his daughter, who had died the previous evening.

I convinced myself of the accuracy and reality of the sign several more times. In doing so I established that the mistress was always asleep when the tensioner came loose. I concluded that she herself was the cause of the release of the tensioning stick.

I tried putting her to sleep and found that she was very sensitive. She was a good businesswoman and was glad when her husband had work. That was, of course, only when someone died. Before the First World War there was hardship and a shortage of other work, so coffin-making was a profitable trade.

This conscious and vivid interest and expectation of business caused the spatial release of the very sensitive woman’s oduší. Her subconscious SELF then ascertained someone’s death in the nearby area, withdrew through the fluid, and immediately through its own activity released an ectoplastic substance from her body, directing it so purposefully at the impulse of subconscious reason that a teleplastic projection formed between the body and the saw. Then, with the aid of this materialization, the subconscious SELF could easily release the saw’s tensioning stick so that the taut cords themselves flung it out. Thus, no sign from the dead, as the couple mistakenly supposed.

(840) I often met with the local barber, Mr. V. At that time he was still courting his future wife. They arranged to visit an aunt near Česká Skalice together on Sunday. They agreed to meet and set out at nine o’clock. The next day, when they met, the girl told her future husband that she had had a terrible dream in the night, so it would be better not to go anywhere. She had dreamed that when they approached the Slatina bridge over the Úpa River, they saw a boy on a bicycle riding down a hill over stones, falling and becoming bruised all over, his face bloodied, so that Mr. V. helped him, wiped away the blood and cleaned his wounds. They then continued their journey and, near Rousín Wood, saw a gathering of people beside the railway tracks over a woman’s torn body. Mr. V. laughed at the dream and decided that they would go if only to establish whether it was true.

As they crossed the Slatina bridge, they saw a boy riding a bicycle rapidly on the road from Boušín. Before the bridge the road was blocked by a barrier, which the boy seemed not to see. Only at the last moment did he brake sharply, so that the bicycle screeched, the chain broke, and the youth, to avoid the barrier, was forced to turn abruptly toward the river, fell and went flying down the stony slope. The girl could not move for fright, but Mr. V. ran to help the boy, wiped his bloodied face and established that apart from abrasions and fright no serious injury had occurred.

(841) The girl no longer wanted to continue, but V., curious whether the second part of the dream would come true as well, compelled her to go on. Although the girl delayed the journey with many stops at restaurants in Ratibořice, they nevertheless continued. Where the railway cuts through the wood, they saw a small gathering of people, exactly as in the dream. The whole event was identical too. But the girl could go no farther. Mr. V. then learned from the group that the unfortunate woman had been walking beside the line for a long time, let several trains pass, and jumped only under the one that had passed a short while before.

Many a reader can now interpret this girl’s vivid dream for himself. Nevertheless I shall help by repeating: under the known conditions of natural sleep, the girl released herself spatially. The conscious SELF had created an interest in the joint visit to the aunt. Her soul, which liked to release itself spatially in the awakened subconscious, accepted the intended excursion as its own and went out in the same direction beforehand. Through its extensive mental faculty it saw what was happening in places where its oduší had spread, and also what each person thought and what plans they had for the future. In this spatial release, it was stimulated and struck in its own oduší by discharges of radiant siloton particles released from the brain of the desperate woman, who had already decided to jump under a train. These materialized thoughts, streaming into space, brought the girl’s subconscious SELF to a conscious interest in the suicidal woman’s unhappy decision.

(842) Both subconscious activities came into mutual contact and recognition, but only regarding the rationally limited act itself. Under the influence of the strong stimulation of the unfortunate woman’s soul, the girl’s soul took over her entire fixed plan, which affected it so vividly through stimulation of the brain that it became impressed into her empty esplana and was recalled to the point of awakening consciousness. How the woman’s body would be destroyed and scattered over the tracks, she saw in her own seeing, constant present and attentive psychic faculty.

During the actual journey the girl delayed her companion greatly. Even a three-hour delay, however, did not enable her to escape the sight of the suicide. It is evident that both subconscious mental activities were already bound to each other from their first encounter, at the time of spatial release, so that the unfortunate woman had to wait beside the railway for the arrival of her nighttime friend, in order for the act to unfold exactly as subconscious activity had determined.

The first phenomenon, the case of the boy, is almost identical in explanation. During her spatial release, the girl’s soul received everything that was to come into close connection with the intended excursion. It saw in the youth’s esplana that he would be riding his bicycle at the place and time when the couple would be crossing the bridge. That she saw the entire course in such detail through her clairvoyance belongs among the soul’s hidden gifts.

The following event will illuminate for us the capacity for mutual contact and communication between subconscious activities:

(843) One evening the subject Mrs. K. was preparing the things needed for marinating meat when she found that she lacked bay leaf. She searched the shelves of her pantry in vain. After her work she then fell asleep with the thought that in the sixth year of the Second World War this spice would no longer be obtainable anywhere. Her SELF, which entered the subconscious during sleep, helped itself, however. With the aid of the oduší it released itself spatially, and because it found no one in the whole town who could spare the spice, it released itself into a wider area.

The next morning Mrs. Vlčková, about thirty-four years old, came from Lhota and handed Mrs. K. a bag of bay leaves, saying: “I saw you vividly in a dream, and you asked me for this spice. Because I have plenty of it, I am bringing it to you. But I have also come because I wanted to establish whether the nighttime meeting in the dream was real!”

Both women were very sensitive, so the faculty of both subconscious SELVES manifested itself spontaneously, without practice. If we practice and will it, we reach still better results, as I shall describe at the end of this chapter.

(844) Mr. L. writes to me:

Once Private Zeman told us about his peculiar dream. He had dreamed that one of the bullets he wore joined by a ring as a clasp on his cap suddenly came loose and slid along his head until it entered his head at one point. From that moment, he said, he had to think about it constantly, and showed us where he felt almost a pain. The other soldiers laughed at him and advised him to throw the clasp away. The next day we were in battle. Private Zeman fell. He was killed by a bullet that entered his head at the place he had previously shown us.

As prisoners we were sent to work at the Yuzovka mines, to the Bohoduhovský Rudník mine in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate. We were housed in a fairly decent barrack. As the lads returned from their shift, the prisoner Veselý, who came from Bohemia, ran up and told us fearfully: “As you know, my place in the mine is at the junction where I change the switches. Before the miners have dug the coal, it is relatively quiet for about two hours. Then the coal tubs arrive and quite a bit of traffic begins. Today too I was sitting beside the switch and thinking of home. Suddenly I heard someone calling me: ‘Václav, Václav!’ I stood up and looked toward the voice, but saw no one. I thought I must only have imagined it. I sat down again and heard the same call once more. It seemed as though it were my wife’s voice. Yes, I heard it quite clearly. Again I saw no one, so I dismissed it, thinking it was only an overstimulated mind. After all, I had been thinking of home. I was almost beginning to fall asleep. At that moment I again heard my wife’s voice, but it was so anxious that I jumped up, seized the lamp and ran in the direction from which the voice came. After about five steps I suddenly heard a crash; the roof had collapsed where I had been sitting before. If I had remained seated, I would have been crushed.”

We marveled at the account and discussed it for a long time afterward. I told Veselý to write home and ask his wife what she was doing at the moment when he heard her warning voice, but not to write what had happened in the mine. After two months the reply arrived: “Yes, I remember that day very well. At about nine o’clock a terrible anxiety seized me. It seemed to me that you were in danger, so I called you. I could not explain the anxiety I was experiencing. I called you three times; after the third call it was as though everything fell away from me, and I felt relief.”

Private Veselý was a sensitive, nonmagnetic person. His wife was the same. She, however, had the ability to release herself spatially with the aid of the oduší and ascertain the danger. The two subconscious minds entered into connection, so that Veselý clearly heard the voice of his wife, who actually drew him away from the dangerous place and saved him.

Private Zeman’s waking subconscious SELF had the opportunity to look into its future earthly life. His tragic death was symbolized by the event with the bullet worn on his cap. In this case it would have been sufficient to heed the warning dream and, for example, protect his head with a helmet.

(845) The physician Š. wrote to me that as a medical student he owned human skulls and a human skeleton. A terrifying dream came, in which the dead man strangled him until he lost consciousness. As he awoke, the dream continued with his carrying the skeleton to the cemetery and laying it in a grave. In the morning he discovered that the skeleton had disappeared, that he had actually carried it away. A grave had been dug in the cemetery, as a funeral was approaching.

Mr. Š. belongs among people with innate sensitivity. He has heightened activity of the subconscious SELF, which likes to release itself. Frequent sight of the skeleton caused many fantasies, conjectures and thoughts as to whether the skeleton should not rather rest in a grave. A young person is often mentally unbalanced, and therefore the sensitive medical student’s subconscious SELF came into conflict with subconscious activity. In somnambulistic, sleepwalking nighttime processes, it took possession of the student’s sleeping body, which rose, seized the skeleton and carried it into the dug grave. The conscious SELF did not know of the grave’s excavation and only passively watched the entire process. [Translator’s note: the source states that the “subconscious SELF” conflicted with “subconscious activity”; this wording is preserved.]

(846) Among my sensitives I had subject K. I invited him to travel with me in a few days to Jilemnice, where we were working at the time. The next day he told me that during sleep in the night he had already seen the Jilemnice countryside and people. He recounted that we got off at a station whose building was stone, and because we had to wait for another train, we passed through a corridor behind the building and sat on a bench under the trees. On the neighboring bench two boys were smoking cigarettes through a long holder. The subject looked ahead at the open countryside, where on a small rise there was an enclosed, overgrown place. He asked the boys what it was. They answered that it was a cemetery.

The subject continued: “Then I saw seven people coming out of the cemetery in mourning clothes, carrying a wreath. I don’t know how I knew, but the boys came from the village I saw on the left side of the landscape. I asked them again who had died, and they answered that it was a young girl from a farm; they said she had meningitis. Somehow I was thrown back into the past and saw her lying there, pale and lamenting. Then I woke up.”

We forgot the dream and departed on the appointed day. At Martinice we changed trains and waited for the train to Jilemnice. We passed through the corridor of the stone station building and on the other side sat down on a bench among the trees. Two boys smoking through a long reed holder disturbed us from the neighboring bench. My subject looked to the right and asked the boys: “What is that over there on the right?” From then on, exactly what had appeared to the subject in the dream took place.

At that moment I remembered the vivid dream the subject had recounted to me and that we now had so faithfully before us.

(847) I reflected on this for a long time. My subject’s soul had received the promise that I would take him with me to Jilemnice and formed an esplano in this direction, which caused his soul to release itself spatially beforehand into that countryside. Subject K. dematerialized himself very easily; he himself was afflicted by a worsened state of tuberculosis of the throat, so that the soul was freer and could easily penetrate and recognize everything that has a regular habit and course in people. The soul, for which only the present exists, saw that seven members of the dead girl’s family would leave the cemetery last and carry a wreath. The subject’s soul had been in contact with the boys in the dream described, for he told me that he recognized them both. They were brought to the bench by their own subconscious power at the time when my subject’s released subconscious awaited them, so that it could enter into contact with them again.

We recognize that for various reasons a sensitive’s soul dematerializes itself from the body during natural sleep and recognizes at a spatial distance things that are yet to happen. This state of the soul’s dematerialization, we might say liberation, from the body’s coarse matter can also be brought about in good sensitives on request, by bringing them into the fourth degree of hypnosis.

(848) Mr. R., an editor of Národní listy, asked the sleeping subject K. to look at the place from which he had just come, inspect his property and tell him what his financial circumstances would be like in two years. I repeated the editor’s request to the subject, who said: “I see that the gentleman owns a brewery and is in very poor financial circumstances. In the time that comes two years from now, someone else will already own the brewery.”

I do not know what happened in the editor’s mind, but he wished to know no more and asked me to interrupt the experiment. I apologized, saying perhaps the subject was seeing incorrectly; where and how would the editor have come by a brewery? He told me, however, that the subject was seeing correctly and that he would be curious about the outcome of his prediction.

Two years passed, and the editor came with his wife to tell me that he no longer had the brewery and that its sale had relieved his financial situation. Now, however, he had another request. He wanted an examination of his wife, who was not healthy. She asked whether she could be examined from a distance and go into the adjoining room. I agreed. The subject penetrated the wall and body and said: “The lady has liver cancer.” The editor was greatly frightened and wished to know how long his wife would live. The subject complied with his wish and said: “I do not see that lady in your time three years from now.” Less than three years after this experiment, I received a death announcement from editor R.

(849) In experiments we encounter the fulfillment of predictions about the future. The subject, however, can foresee only human affairs already begun, and see and recognize organic changes in the human body. Through its inner vision and perception, the soul knows how such a change will end. In liver cancer, every physician establishes from its extent how long the illness will still last. All the more, and more precisely, can a subject do so. The principal cause of the brewery’s sale was the financial question. Through his extended vision, the subject established that the editor, as a nonspecialist and weak financier, would not retain the brewery, and although he had not intended it, he nevertheless had to sell it.

Only a very advanced subject can see in advance things dependent upon the decisions of several people, or their deliberating wills, for example who will be elected, changes in affairs of state and so on. The subject makes such predictions only in rare cases, for people’s free will fully asserts itself, making changes according to need and situation, so that it is difficult for the subject to foresee from them. He perceives the outcome more definitely and clearly through his own being, that is, through his intuitive vision.

A subject cannot foresee in the case of a person whose reason is highly developed and who has a mature, strong will. Such a person arranges matters through his own reason according to need, surroundings and situation, so that through his decision he can thwart everything unpleasant and dangerous. He can, however, foresee well in people of weak will and weak reason. For such people are good instruments and victims of evoked causes, in whose grip they are, and of clairvoyants, whom they believe word for word and without whose advice they do nothing through their own reason and will.

(850) Another case: my friend Kubeček, a local official who was often present at experiments, wished to know the time of his death during an investigation of how long people would live. Subject Křeček made calculations from his brain matter and reported that he would die within a year. The news surprised us and made us laugh, because at twenty-eight Kubeček was completely healthy. No one present believed the subject. The subject’s statement was confirmed, however: Kubeček died within the year.

(851) Another person present, my friend Chráska, a former teacher, was curious about his end. The clairvoyant predicted that he would die in seven years, three months and six days, at ten in the morning. The man then jokingly reminded us several times that the predicted day was approaching, without seriously believing it. It came, however, four days earlier: at ten in the morning he suddenly died of a stroke while visiting his friend Mr. Mojžíš.

Reflect! Again the thought may arise that a so-called fate accompanies every person. Many people believe in it. I maintain, however, that there is no fate. Death occurs from natural causes when the organism is in such a state that it can no longer serve as the soul’s vessel. Only in the fourth degree of hypnosis does the sleeping subject have the ability to recognize the state of the human body’s organism and determine the time of death.

(852) A typical case known from English literature is that of Lord Dufferin, who awoke after midnight under the influence of some unpleasant mental pressure. From the window he saw a repulsive man with a very hideous face carrying on his back a large, long box, like a coffin, whereupon the apparition disappeared. The lord was greatly disturbed, although he did not otherwise suffer from sensitivity. About eight years later he came as an ambassador to a French city. As he was about to enter the lift in a hotel, he saw the ugly man from his long-ago apparition as the lift attendant. In astonishment he stepped back and went to ask the receptionist who the man was. Then a great crash sounded. The lift cable had snapped, and the lift buried all its passengers together with the ugly man. Nothing was discovered about the stranger. He had been hired only that morning in place of the sick regular attendant.

The case described presents no riddle for interpretation. There are individuals, true sensitives, who do not know of these faculties of theirs. Sometimes in natural sleep they enter the fourth entry degree of the subconscious, where the soul acts freely, independent of body, matter and time, and releases itself spatially with the aid of the oduší. It lives in a constant present. Past and future time do not exist for it. In this constant present, in the future according to our human understanding, it sees that it is to enter a lift in a hotel and, as it penetrates and knows everything, knows that the worn cable will fail and a catastrophe occur. [Translator’s note: the source here calls this the “fourth entry degree,” although elsewhere it distinguishes the first three entry degrees from the fourth.]

On the critical day a stranger replaces the sick attendant. The reflection of the ugly and unsympathetic appearance stimulates the sleeping lord’s soul to heightened activity. In doing so, in a symbolic vision, it combines the lift attendant with a coffin through his own possible death in the lift. The power of the phenomenon, in which his own death is at stake, stimulated activity toward conscious processes, and upon awakening, as the sleeper comes to consciousness, the esplana capture only a symbolic fragment of the whole phenomenon. Once awakened and looking at the window, he sees the reflection of this mental phenomenon. An association joining the phenomenon with actual vision in the garden beyond the window into a unity asserted itself.

The image of the ugly man, received by the esplana through conscious vision, remains a permanent warning. Years later, when the situation arises, the lord recalls his vision. His own subconscious activity, manifested in that symbolic forewarning, together with the delay caused by asking about the stranger’s identity, saves him from death.

(853) It might seem that everything we do today and everything that will one day happen to us is a kind of fate, predetermined for us. This view is mistaken. It is precisely people of Lord Dufferin’s type who provide proof that the human soul is created in God’s image and received as its endowment a certain, albeit small, portion of all God’s properties and faculties. Under certain causes, these gifts and faculties sometimes manifest and assert themselves. It is therefore no peculiarity that in its activity the soul sometimes comes into and enters the time of the constant present, in which it sees, in a limited way indeed but essentially as God does, changes concerning the earthly journey in future time.

In the constant present the spirit sees things and events that occurred in past and present time, but also many that are to occur through human will only in future time.

Only the human soul thinks, lives and imagines everything according to the manifestation of matter, which has space, time, past, present and future. The human soul is incorporated into matter and depends upon it. It lives with it and also thinks according to its phenomena and changes. Thus it cannot imagine the constant present. From matter it derives space, time, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Also admissible is the explanation that the ugly man was only the lord’s own materialization, which appeared to him in a dream as a warning phenomenon arising from recognized danger, and then actually stood in for the sick lift attendant, so that this materialization allowed itself to be killed and buried as well.

The principle of the lord’s soul suffered no harm from this. The soul merely exercised its ability to divide into a conscious and a subconscious SELF, and its ability to rearrange elements taken from its own body. The soul received this ability as part of its endowment too.

(854) Records and reports are known concerning the materialization of Don Bosco, who for a whole week traveled and visited his institutions on distant journeys in Spain, while simultaneously working that same week at his office at home in Turin.

There are precisely verified cases of fulfilled predictions. Several years before the French Revolution, a nobleman, a sensitive, declared in distinguished company which of those present would be executed and in what manner. He predicted the same for himself.

Such a sensitive, through exercising hidden powers by his own intuitive light, inner vision, upon entering the time of the constant present, directly sees and recognizes what kind of death each person present will meet years later.

(855) During the first Czechoslovak mobilization, in 1938, I asked the sleeping subject V.: “How long will Hitler run wild?” Mental tension was visible in the subject; he said: “Seven years.”

In 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, before witnesses I commanded the sleeping subject Vavroušek, although he was not always reliable in his statements, to look into the following year, 1940. I asked: “Is there still war?” “There is,” he answered. I brought him into 1941. The subject reported that the war continued. I proceeded to 1942. The subject still saw war. I asked: “Do you also see Hitler?” “I do,” said the subject. I led him into 1943. “Is there still war?” “It is all around us!” Many present laughed at the subject’s statement. The builder Vejr called out: “Nonsense!” I asked: “Is Hitler alive?” The subject answered that he was. I came to 1944 and asked again: “Does the war still continue?” “Yes, it is drawing nearer!” “Has fighting reached our territory yet?” The subject answered no. “Should we build shelters?” “There is no need,” he answered. Now more for amusement, I brought the subject into 1945. He looked into the first months. I asked: “Does the war still continue?” “Yes, it continues.” “Is Hitler still alive?” “Yes, he is still alive.” Everyone laughed, not believing the war could last so long. I asked a final question: “Will there also be fighting in Bohemia?” The subject looked searchingly around: “Everywhere I see regular war; I do not see it in Bohemia.”

Because I too did not believe the subject’s statements, I had the builder Vejr build a solid shelter, which of course I then did not need.

In 1943 and the further war years, witnesses to the experiment often drew my attention to the fulfillment of the prediction. They believed and consoled themselves that although we were on the border, there would be no war in Červený Kostelec.

(856) At the beginning of 1940 the subject Mrs. L. drew me a map of Europe and marked precisely upon it the arrows of the advance of Russian armies and battlefields toward Germany. She also marked arrows from the west and south. I drew several acquaintances’ attention to this map, and everything was fulfilled in the following years. She could not, however, determine the timing of offensives and the end of the war; statements made in that direction were wrong. She was not a reliable subject.

(857) The soul’s faculties are great and cannot assert themselves to their full extent through the five senses. The eye does not perceive all light, the ear all sounds, and reason grasps things gradually, and so forth.

Human knowledge is imperfect. Reason knows through the senses; only from acquired impressions can it judge further. Reasoning occurs through a laborious process; we cannot think of several things simultaneously, and thousands of others escape you.

The soul has a different knowledge after dematerialization, when it is connected only with the oduší in completely free expression and limited spatial omnipresence. In this state it knows itself, its properties and other things through its essence. It knows them through pure act by means of its being, through its inner light, for it is supremely simple. Through its omnipresence it penetrates everything material, even ensouled matter together with its oduší, and knows them directly in themselves.

(858) We human beings proceed from knowledge to knowledge. This imperfection does not exist in the free soul. Through its inner power, the soul knows almost every object exhaustively, because it is omnipresent. All things are laid open to it; it knows them immediately in themselves. It does not know through secondary sensory cognition, but knows everything in its own being as the means of its omnipresence within a limited space.

All acts proceed from causes according to the laws by which the world is governed. The soul knows beforehand its own acts that it will one day perform according to its free will. This knowledge of the soul is timeless; it sees itself in its own decision-making. Our future free decision, made in time, does not change for the free soul in the constant present.

(859) Knowledge of future things proceeds from the soul’s essential inner power through its existence, through its inner light and contemplation of inner will in a future decision, both in itself and in others, insofar as these are not their spiritual secrets. The human soul is endowed with knowledge, properties and likeness to God, because it was created in God’s image and likeness, though in everything only to a small degree, being dependent upon God.

I do not deny that some things revealed beforehand are not beneficial. In thirty-seven years of experiments I have learned that most statements by subjects evoked grief rather than joy. Pain and suffering are foremost in this world, so that a subject, if spatially released, is directly overwhelmed by them. That is why there are so few joyful predictions.

Now I shall give something more cheerful:

(860) During a theatrical performance in the village of B. T., a girl came to me and said: “Well, Mr. Kafka, I had my fortune told by old Vokačka. Do you know what she told me? That I will marry an outsider, we will move beyond the mountains and have a large house and business, so I will be a lady!” Old Vokačka divined many things; she belonged among the sensitives, so her soul dematerialized itself during fortune-telling. It dematerialized itself just as well in the case of this girl, for whom her prediction was fulfilled to the letter.

But this successful answer had to be fulfilled. As I established, the girl was then thinking of a young man she liked, and he too paid attention to her. He was an outsider, an upright man, and had plans for a business of his own. Old Vokačka easily sensed that the inner power and concealed, hidden longing of both souls would lead to marriage and the building of an enterprise. Yet Vokačka described the entire enterprise and building in considerable detail!

This too is possible in sensitives, for people have in mind a plan of what they would wish to have in life and how. In strong individuals the soul itself takes over this wish for elaboration into its subconscious.

These completed plans are then attached to the matter of the brain cells and await only the moment and opportunity to be set upon the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness then receives them as a splendid and happy idea and often realizes it unchanged at a suitable time.

(861) In people who think about inventions that will appear to the world only in a hundred years or more, these innovations are already prepared today and live complete in the subconscious, attached to the corpuscles of brain and germ cells. Through the law of heredity they pass in this fortunate inventor, without his awareness, from generation to generation until they find expression at a suitable time of technological progress. In this way it is possible to explain why Jules Verne could describe beforehand inventions that are today gradually being devised and realized. As a good sensitive he saw them within himself, in his cells, actually already complete. Unknowingly he could have been a joint bearer of the same technological progress through heredity, although the inventions came only later from others. For every age, as much truth will be revealed as people can digest.

(862) Young J. wanted to build a new factory. In family discussions everyone opposed it, so he came for advice through a subject. Twice the answer was that he should build the factory, for in four years its excellent operation would pay for it. The young gentleman asked whether the goods would continue to sell after four years. Subject Vavroušek answered that in the later period he no longer saw goods being produced, but the factory would be paid for, so he could build without fear.

The prediction was fulfilled. The factory was built, its goods sold excellently, but after four years, because of wartime conditions, the factory was requisitioned for armaments production. By that time, however, it had already been paid for in full.

(863) A lawyer of my acquaintance had an unpleasant trait: he delighted in slandering his colleagues to damage their practice. They complained against him to the bar association, but he defended himself well enough that no penalty was imposed.

He then continued all the more to write anonymous letters to leading firms represented by his colleagues, and the like.

Another complaint was brought against him. Before traveling to Prague for the hearing of the second complaint, he stopped at my home, acknowledging the wrongs he had committed and asking that the subject advise him how to get out of the matter, because otherwise his legal practice might be suspended.

I put the subject to sleep and told him in a few words what the matter was. He then stated: “He has his defense in his pocket; let him defend himself.” The lawyer told me that he lacked confidence. The subject then added: “If you wish, I will connect with the judges and present the defense to them myself.”

The subject was sent to the disciplinary hearing of the bar association, connected subconsciously with those deciding the matter, and after a while reported to us: “He will again be virtually acquitted; he will pay only a nominal fine of 100 Kč, so with all the other expenses this dispute will cost him 280 Kč.”

Because the lawyer had previously attended some of my experiments, he firmly believed the subject’s statement and rejoiced in advance. I myself too was curious about the result of the hearing. After several days I received a letter informing me that everything had turned out well, exactly according to the subject’s statement, including the predicted costs.

(864) In other complicated legal matters too, subjects K. and V. gave good advice, and it was interesting that they revealed beforehand even the content of judgments delivered.

The soul of a good sensitive who has the ability to release himself spatially recognizes from the judge’s upper subconscious his entire intelligence and faculties, from which it establishes beforehand how the matter will develop and end, for the laws of the courts are known to both sensitive and judge, and judges judge and act according to them.

In similar business matters, a good sensitive, if his inner vision is well developed, can recognize beforehand whether a plan will succeed.

Only some, however, have this ability. Certainly not everyone who tells fortunes and makes predictions has it. These are only exceptions. I have many records of experiments in which the subject really gave good advice.

Not every subject is suited for every kind of experiment. Subject A., for example, reacts splendidly to the radiation of water. His inner vision determines precisely the location and depth of springs in the earth. During the drilling of wells I personally convinced myself of his ability several times.

I shall give another example of the soul’s ability in the subconscious to influence other people at a distance.

(865) A certain man was using the courts to force me to pay an unjust fine. My friend Dvořáček, who at that time worked for me as a clerk, declared that we would not pay it and proposed that I put a subject to sleep and send him to the man with an order to withdraw the demand for payment of the fine. If he did not, he would suffer for his injustice and be afflicted by great mental torments.

Subject K. was put to sleep in the evening and sent to seek out the gentleman, who was asleep at that time. The subject therefore impressed our intention into his soul. At my friend’s suggestion, more as a joke, the subject further commanded him that if he did not withdraw the matter, he must come to us and beg forgiveness in tears, without, however, being aware of why he had come to us at all.

(866) Three days later we suddenly saw a carriage outside the windows, from which three people alighted. The dejected gentleman in the middle leaned upon a woman and a young man. Because he was the unjust man mentioned, we were almost dumbfounded when the woman told us that her husband had become deranged three days earlier and was suffering greatly in his mind. The patient clasped his hands and wept. Because only now did we appreciate the subject’s astonishing achievement, I put him to sleep again to advise us. The subject said that the gentleman would recover as soon as they arrived home, provided he withdrew the document in his office drawer, of which he was well aware.

The wife and son were unwilling to believe it, but the subject insisted and advised that if he did not recover after this advice, they could come again. Because the fine was withdrawn, the gentleman recovered.

(867) On another occasion subject K. advised: “If you can believe strongly, give yourself a command before sleep that you will release yourself mentally toward a particular person and, during that person’s sleep, give him a command to do something without his being aware of it, thus subconsciously.”

This was at a time when businesses in Slovakia to which I supplied my statues for their sales departments were not prospering. A composition with creditors, bankruptcy, followed, and I was informed that I should submit my claim. Because I too was in financial distress and would have greatly missed the sums owed in Slovakia, I did not join the proposed settlement.

(868) That day I was conducting experiments in the local inn of Mr. P. After the experiments I showed the guests the lawyer’s letter that had arrived concerning this matter. I said that I would not join the settlement, but would try to obtain my money within four days. We agreed to meet again then.

After returning home I waited until one o’clock at night and consciously gave myself a strict command that my soul would release itself toward the head of the Slovak enterprises and order him to send me the money owed himself, thereby settling my accounts. The following night I did it again. On the fourth day the outstanding sum of 16,750 Kč arrived. At the same time, however, I received a letter in which the head of the enterprises asked me to send back the counterfoil of the remittance, so that he could establish which clerk had sent the cash from the firm’s till. It was evident that the payment had been sent by himself entirely subconsciously.

Because in the evening I again showed the remittance counterfoil and letter to acquaintances in the inn to inform them of the experiment’s success, many present tried it too. Unfortunately, only a few succeeded in inducing notorious nonpayers to settle their debts. The fault lay in insufficient faith and imagination, which must be constantly exercised for success to be possible.

You may object that such an attack upon the defenseless activity of the soul in the subconscious is not just and that we must not approve of it. So that everyone may defend himself, I give another experiment:

(869) I observed that on certain days I slept restlessly and rose tired in the morning. On an occasion I asked the subject to explain the cause. He told me: “You are being disturbed by other people’s mediums, whom they send to you from spiritist circles to ask your soul about a particular matter their mediums cannot answer. During sleep your soul gives them a satisfactory answer and explanation. This connection of souls with the mediums disturbs your sleep and exhausts your body.” I objected that there must be some means of defense against such disturbance, and asked the subject to find it. The subject answered: “Excellent! I know the means! Before going to sleep, dynamize around yourself a thought that will almost materialize, and in it command that no one has access to you.”

(870) Eight days later two gentlemen from Zálesí came asking me to explain a failure that had occurred during their spiritist séance with a medium. They said: “We held two sittings this week. We often send our intermediary to you to ask about various things. Previously it succeeded, but now he has twice reported that he cannot reach you, that you are in some kind of shell protecting you. The medium himself sends us to you for an explanation.”

I was greatly surprised at how soon my subject’s advice was confirmed. I then told the visitors: “So you were the ones tormenting me at night! Well, I outwitted you!” I then explained what I had done against them. After another twelve days, four people from Rokytník came with the same question. Their medium saw me as though encased in a dense, impenetrable cloud. People from a spiritist circle in Dolní Radechová also came. From this I learned how many people amuse and deceive themselves and destroy their health through dangerous spiritism.

David’s ninetieth psalm, whose help is well known to people who pray in danger, acts upon the subconscious, which then protects a person in the same way, but with the difference that through prayer we also obtain God’s grace and help. It is splendid help for everyone.

(871) The music professor Tureček once explained his visions to me. He said: “I am not a believer in ghosts, I do not associate with spiritists or read occult books, and I am very cautious about believing anything or deceiving myself. Several years ago I taught music to a young lady who lived with her mother. During practice no one disturbed us in the room. Once, however, while demonstrating a more difficult composition, I saw a gentleman in a dressing gown and with a long pipe enter from the adjoining room and sit down in an armchair in our room. Before I had finished the demonstration, he rose and left. During subsequent lessons he came and went several more times, always when I was demonstrating. I took him to be a friend of the family, some pensioner from the house, a music lover who did not want to disturb us during the lesson.

“When it happened for the fifth time, I asked my pupil who the gentleman was. The young woman looked at me questioningly and did not answer. I repeated the question and added, ‘The one who sits in the armchair and smokes.’ She answered that she had seen no one; on the contrary, we were always alone during the lesson. We excitedly discussed further details of the mysterious visit until, from my detailed description, the girl realized that years earlier her deceased father used to sit in that same armchair. I had not known his appearance but had now faithfully described it. The girl told me about her father, how he would always come in quietly, smoke his pipe and listen to her playing the piano. We both believed that the spirit of the deceased was coming to visit us.”

(872) “I encountered a second such mysterious case during a Christmas visit to my mother in the village,” the professor continued. “My mother needed fresh water in the evening. I took a jug and went to the nearby well. As I approached it, I saw a girl of about twenty running down the opposite slope, in whom I recognized the neighbor’s daughter. I stood still to see how she had matured during my two-year absence. She ran to the window of her parents’ house and tried to look inside. The window was relatively high, so she could not see well. She ran to the garden arbor and brought a little bench, placed it beneath the window, and looked into the room where her mother was decorating the Christmas tree.

“I watched her no longer, drew water and went home. My mother greeted me by asking why I was late. I told her what I had seen. My mother answered that it must have been another girl, because the neighbor’s daughter had died.

“Because I had recognized her with certainty, however, I wanted to clarify the matter and went to the neighbors, where I repeated everything to them. They confirmed that their daughter had died and recalled that when she was ailing the previous year, on Christmas Eve after returning from a friend’s house she had watched them through the window from outside as they decorated the Christmas tree. Upon coming home she then told them everything she had observed. They therefore believed that their daughter had come again from beyond the grave to look at them.”

(873) Both preceding cases involve the professor’s own rare sensitivity, in which the subconscious fully awakened in the oduší and his soul looked directly into the earlier lives of the deceased, impressed in protonace. Thus, no apparitions of the dead.

Editor Š. writes to me: I am sleeping in a room at a rectory. On a bright moonlit night I awaken and see a face in the upper part of the window staring fixedly at me. A feeling of fear assails me. Cautiously I try to turn on the light, but cannot turn the switch. I run out of the room, and at that moment a noise sounds in the corridor as though cabinets full of documents were toppling, mingled with groaning and crying. I escape into the kitchen, where the housekeeper is still awake. I investigate the cause and find that years earlier a chaplain hanged himself from the window frame in my room. From the housekeeper’s description, I had seen his actual face. I regarded it as a warning confirmation that after death the human spirit serves its punishment at the scene of its ill-considered acts. For even a chaplain is only a human being struggling with temptation.

Subject K. knew how to see and uncover such places of crime. He also recognized the torments of souls expiating suffering brought about by crime. The editor’s subconscious SELF has the ability to release itself spatially as far as the borders of part of the life beyond the grave, where it saw the unfortunate man’s place, face and punishment.

Many people are timid and fearful through their innate sensitivity. They believe in spirits, ghosts and the like, although, unless it is a vision from protonace, these are only fixed visions and hallucinations.

(874) Mr. B. maintained very seriously that his deceased mother had no peace and therefore regularly came from beyond the grave into their apartment every Saturday. I was invited to convince myself of this. On the agreed day I arrived at their home in the evening. After about half an hour I observed both parents and the daughter grow silent. Their facial expressions changed; they looked toward the door, then toward the table, and began to pray. Apart from this, however, I noticed nothing else. I asked Mr. B. what had happened. “Don’t you see our mother, how she has sat down at the table beside the stove?” he answered with a question. I did not reply, because I really saw nothing.

(875) Mr. Š. from Čáslav, a representative of a certain political party, a good speaker and adviser and a very reasonable gentleman, came to bring me a letter from the dean of Čáslav, Dostál. The writer drew attention to peculiar phenomena occurring in Mr. Š.’s apartment, of whose reality he had convinced himself.

(876) Mr. Š., an unmarried man, told me seriously and convincingly that for several years demons had visited him every week. When he approached his dwelling after work, they were already waiting for him. They were well-built, dark-complexioned fellows. At first he did not recognize them and took them for members of another political party. Only their conversations brought him to astonishment. For they knew of things he only intended to undertake and that were still his secret. They spoke beforehand of future successes or failures, and everything always came true. Once he had become accustomed to them and their visits, they introduced themselves as demons sent to harm people. They told him what they had done and would do in various places. When Mr. Š. went to verify their reports, they were always true. They did not harm him himself, for, as they told him, they too wanted some amusement, and therefore came to drink tea and play cards together. Only his faith they sometimes delighted in mocking.

They rarely came together. When he was with two, a third and others would arrive. The largest number gathered was five. They often waited for him inside the apartment, although the house was locked.

He recounted further details about his visitors. He fully believed that they were beings from another world. During our conversation I went with Mr. Š. into the nearby wood, and we sat on a bench. I asked whether his friends knew he had come to me and was telling me about them. Why did not one of them appear now, so that I could convince myself? After these questions, Mr. Š. rose, walked about twenty paces, stopped, and said and explained something, nodding. Then he returned, saying that the demon Darnus, with whom he got on well, had just come to warn him against me. He was not to believe my explanation and instructions, and the demon would take revenge on me that very day. I asked why I had not seen Darnus too. He did not answer.

What are we to think of these and similar visions?

From Mr. Š.’s behavior I recognized that alongside conscious activity, subconscious activity was awakening in him too. In childhood he had looked with pleasure and excitement at pictures of demons, in whom he believed. Fantastic mental images of their figures had therefore formed and strengthened in his esplana. Childhood impressions and mental images are the first and fundamental bearers of a person’s future mental life, for they remain as a pattern for the soul’s further activity.

(877) Mr. Š. returned home tired after a full day of administrative work. Because he lived alone, was also a great sensitive, and his soul was accustomed to constant activity, from the fatigue of conscious processes it spontaneously entered the activity of the entry subconscious, its own interior, from which it connected with old esplana that had always excited it. At the same time the faculty of reason and will was weakened. From the esplana the soul took, abstracted, the mental image of a demon. A splitting of mental activity into several SELVES occurred. In the entry subconscious states, through its boundless fantasy the soul forms spiritual images of living, gesticulating, independent persons, active in reason and will, to whom it lends its SELF, thus itself providing the foundation for these phenomena.

From the activity of the lower-order subconscious, the soul casts its living, almost materialized images and events into the esplana, from which they then pass to the threshold of consciousness. An interplay of the two mental activities occurs, in which the lower-order subconscious retains the leading role.

In this splitting of the soul, when subconscious activity often enters as far as the fourth degree, while being omnipresent within a certain space, it knows directly through itself, immediately, what has happened in various places and will happen in the coming days. In the form of living, talkative and lively figures of demons, it then astonishes conscious activity.

All these are hallucinatory fantasies of a vivid dream, processes of the soul’s divided activity.

The activity of lower-order subconscious processes is impressed and represented in the esplana, from which it enters weakened consciousness, which finds itself in the position of spectator and serving slave.

(878) We can similarly explain the apparition of Mr. B.’s deceased mother, with only the difference that three people saw the same phenomenon.

From experiments we have learned that psychosis is contagious; the stronger carries away the weaker. Mr. B.’s sensitive wife succumbed to the mental images of her very sensitive husband. Their daughter belonged to the group of sensitives too. Through the activity of their subconscious, in expectation of a vision of the deceased woman, all three oduší drew together into a common body, in which subconscious activity could then easily create the unity of a vision shared by all.

I myself could see nothing, because the activity of my soul did not form a psychic unity, a unified body, with the family in the subconscious. Had a sensitive been present in my place, he might have been carried along and seen the deceased woman too.

The following case will make clear that this is the correct view:

(879) I have been present at countless experiments. In Nová Paka, before the First World War, I was invited by the school headmaster from Nemojov into a gathering that wished to hold a spiritist séance that evening.

All eleven members formed a common circle, a chain. I was young then and little initiated into their subject, so I asked to be allowed to observe the phenomena passively. The culmination of the experiments was to be that an as-yet-unidentified force would lift all of them, together with the table and chairs, from the ground.

First two mediums took turns speaking at length about the visions of their trance, after which the chain was formed again and levitation awaited. I watched everything closely and vigilantly. There was complete silence. I saw many of them begin looking sideways at the floor, then all began bowing their heads toward the table until even their noses touched it. The entire gathering remained in this position for about six minutes, after which the members of the circle slowly raised their heads and then broke the chain. Almost all felt the tops of their heads and straightened themselves.

I was asked whether I had observed how long their heads had been pressed against the ceiling, because the force of levitation was extraordinary that day.

Their question astonished me immensely, because I had seen that they remained in their places on their chairs, did not levitate and were not at the ceiling. Only their heads had been bowed until some touched the table. I told my companion the truth and the company laughed at me. He dismissed me curtly: “You were asleep!”

(880) I began to reflect more upon these phenomena. This first experience of mine was a blow to faith in spiritist phenomena. On the way home we debated it. I already had personal experience from my own experiments at that time, so I knew there was one common substance, merged from everyone into one “body,” the energy of the oduší, which receives the leading central thought, the desired wish “to levitate”!

Because I was not included in the chain, I did not succumb to the deception. It was similar in Mr. B.’s family, where the principal thought was the image of the mother, whose death they greatly mourned and with whom they constantly occupied themselves in spirit. The soul needs a stimulus to unfold and realize the expected event through its astonishing dynamic activity.

(881) Let us return to the promised revenge of the demon Darnus. That evening I was conducting experiments on the stage of our theater hall. For the audience’s entertainment, I imposed upon one of three sleeping girls the mental image of a handsome young man, and commanded the other two each to try in her own way and with all her skill to win his favor. I myself sat on a chair at the side of the stage and thought more about Mr. Š.’s supposed demonic possession than about the experiment then underway.

The audience enjoyed watching the girls’ struggle for the self-confident handsome youth. After ten minutes one of them, who was a good subject, separated from the group, approached me with a firm stance and cried: “Do you remember dark-complexioned Darnus? Here I am!” To my question as to what she wanted of me, she answered: “I have come to take revenge on you!” As she did so, the girl writhed like a snake and hissed at me. I could have thwarted the supposed Darnus’s power at once, but an excellent opportunity to instruct the audience had presented itself. I therefore explained the cause of Darnus’s revenge to all the spectators, surprised by the sudden turn in the entertainment. Then I turned to the girl and asked: “For what reason did the demon enter your body?” “From hatred of you!” came the answer. “No one present, including me, believes that you are the real Darnus,” I again countered the girl’s manifestation. The girl laughed like a man and approached the second girl, saying: “Here my companion Irmis will testify to it!” There followed an unpleasant cackling from both girls. I thus had one more infernal guest on stage. I objected: “The fact that there are two of you here is not enough for me to believe you truly belong to the mysterious world!”

Darnus began showing his left hand, which suddenly began to redden intensely before the audience’s eyes until it was entirely swollen. I pointed out to him that my subject K., who was present, was still more capable. Someone in the hall called out that he had just received a good slap. At the same time a picture fell from the wall, whereupon both girls shouted out intimate matters and secret sins of those present. Most of the audience grew serious; many began to be frightened, especially when both possessed girls shouted for a woman who had been beaten by her husband the previous day to stand up, for he, Darnus, had caused it and incited her husband against her. Because no one rose and identified herself, Darnus rushed out and dragged a woman onto the stage, forcibly pushed up her sleeve and showed those present actual bruises on her arm. The woman began to cry and confirmed that it was true.

(882) Those present who were weaker in spirit grew nervous, and another hysterical woman saw an ugly black animal on the stage, which others took for the devil. Many began to grow restless and cry out, especially when a newly possessed man announced himself from the hall, with bristling hair, bulging eyes and foam around his mouth, striking out around himself and shouting for everyone to get out of his way. Darmus and Irmis cried triumphantly: “Look! Perkus is coming to help us!” Perkus roared loudly and rushed onto the stage among his own, flailing with his arms, so that I had to intervene through suggestion. [Translator’s note: the source here prints “Darmus,” elsewhere “Darnus.”]

Dr. L., a doctor of philosophy who was present, called to me: “You have landed in a fine trap! I declare to everyone that you are mistaken in your claim that these are only hallucinations arising through you. Whenever I go to observe these phenomena, I always take blessed chalk with me. The clergyman P., sitting beside me, has a rosary. The devil cannot tolerate these things; hand them to them and you will convince yourself of actual possession!” I took the chalk and rosary and handed them to the “possessed” girls. At first they drew back and writhed, but Perkus seized the chalk, hurled it to the ground, spat upon it furiously and trampled it. At the same time he moved away from the white mark thus created. He would certainly have destroyed the rosary too had I not protected it.

Belief in actual possession seized almost everyone present. They thought we were dealing with real embodied demons. They were confirmed still further in their belief when, alongside Darnus, additional demons, Arpold and Elman, took up residence in the girl’s body, thus Mr. Š.’s entire infernal gang. Yet it was a great, dark error of reason on the part of those present, unsupported by experience.

(883) Because the infernal evil was expanding with new members, a request arose from those present that I intervene against these phenomena in time. They also wanted to know how I would remove these five pretenders. I tore a page from my notebook and drew the likeness of a dog. At the same time, in strength of spirit, I vividly and firmly believed and imagined that the effect would soon manifest in the possessed as they barked at the audience. After all, I was connected with the sleepers through fluid into one body. Furious Perkus was the first to begin barking into the hall, followed by Darnus, who also varied his barking sounds into the expressions of Arnus and Elman. Finally Irmis joined in. Those present believed that devils were barking at them. [Translator’s note: the source here prints “Arnus,” where the preceding paragraph named “Arpold.”]

Meanwhile, however, I was forming a new mental image, which I simultaneously wrote on paper as evidence. I exerted influence so that the dogs would fawn upon me, which they began to do, enabling me to “stroke” them one after another.

In my mind I formed a new image, simultaneously recording it on paper, that the possessed were excellent singers. Darnus began first, and the song “Beautiful Bohemia, My Bohemia” sounded into the astonished hall. Meanwhile I handed the sleepers the remnants of the blessed chalk and the rosary, which they took reverently in their hands without showing resistance.

Thus the image of devilish beasts yielded to every new mental image of mine. After the song ended, I awakened them all by telepathic means, giving them an image of good health, and handed the doctor of philosophy present the slip with the drawing of a dog and the written record of all the further mental images I had applied, asking him to let the other spectators inspect it.

(884) It was confirmed that the cause of the unheard-of phenomena was not the devil, but my vivid interest in and mental image of the devils troubling Mr. Š., and also the image of the demon Darnus’s threat. All this had passed from the esplana into my consciousness, and during the experiments I vividly pictured both.

The effect had to manifest itself. The girls were in the third degree of hypnosis, when reason and will are in their lowest obscuration, and the subconscious SELF of this degree received every mental image of mine without resistance and personified itself in its SELF according to it.

Because a vivid image of demons had formed in me, the girls had to manifest themselves in their characters and power. These extraordinary faculties and forces, slumbering in the subconscious, were set in motion to astonish spectators through these manifestations of our soul’s hidden powers and faculties, unknown to many present.

If a subject enters the fourth degree of hypnosis, in which reason and soul assert themselves considerably, he readily distinguishes error and deception from reality. To obtain evidence, subject K. was also put to sleep, and my mental image of Satan Darnus was imposed upon him aloud in the belief that it would manifest in him. The subject responded that he did not see him here. It is evident that reason was already working in this subject. In the second and third degrees of hypnosis, reason does not assert itself, so the soul receives without resistance the mental image in which the subconscious SELF manifests itself outwardly. The entry subconscious in the third degree of hypnosis receives the diseased image of the devil so intensely and consistently that it cannot tolerate blessed objects, just as in actual possession.

Had these different degrees of the soul’s subconscious activity, its manifestations toward other people, and its astonishing strength and ability to govern matter, together with a thorough knowledge of the nature of clairvoyance and materialization, knowledge of languages and the uncovering of secret things, been generally known several centuries ago, humanity would have avoided many terrible errors in accusing innocent people of being in league with the devil, when people accused and denounced one another as having the devil within them. The punishment for those falsely accused in this way was torture and even burning at the stake. At that time the extraordinary powers and mental changes of the human psyche itself were not yet known.

(885) No authorities or judicial inquisitors understood such phenomena. They did not know the true reasons and attributed everything without exception to the devil. Naturally, they could not distinguish actual possession from false, diseased possession. The confusion of spirit among the inquisitors of that time was so great that, for example, the medieval judge Carpzow alone signed twenty thousand death sentences. Other judges, Bognet, Spina and Hopkins, signed eight hundred each, and Votz seven hundred. Judge Regimius had eight hundred people burned and finally denounced himself as having the devil within him, so he too was burned as a sorcerer. Judge Bodin said that during investigations he had constantly to struggle with the devil. Because they all believed in possession by the devil, they themselves caused many sensitive victims, whose entry subconscious readily awakened to activity, to receive their image of Satan so that he would personify himself within them. Thus they themselves actually sent the “devil” into their victims. The healthy entry subconscious of some victims then changed into the lower-order subconscious with diseased images of the devil. In these diseased complexes dwelt the personality of the lower-order SELF with images of the devil, together with its psychic faculties and powers. It was merely a splitting of the personality.

Someone may ask why I could so easily “exorcise the devils” from my sensitives. These were fresh mental images with little vitality, not yet anchored in the esplana, so my strong telepathic influence sufficed. Through it I actually acted upon the current diseased image to change it into a new, healthy one. I had to send it for as long as it took the sensitive to receive it. If these devilish images had been nourished more often and for longer, and the person had even become aware of them with the thought of truly being possessed by the devil, I would have had to act through verbal suggestion for several days, gradually destroying the entire diseased complex of esplana with mistaken images and bringing it to disintegration and dissolution.

(886) We have concerned ourselves with phenomena in the field of parapsychology, whose subject is clairvoyance and thought transference. Now we shall also acquaint ourselves with phenomena in the field of metaphysics. This is a more important field for natural-scientific concepts and the physiological practical scope of vital force, because that force appears to us more powerful than the forces of inorganic nature.

Phenomena of the ability to be a medium can be explained as advantages of the human organism under the action of unknown forces and faculties of the human soul. We know only that life is a cyclical development of physicochemical energy in matter, which thereby becomes protoplasm. What lies at the cause of that supramaterial force, radioactivity, proceeding from the human body and gathering into a living materialization will have to become the subject of a new science. We stand before experimental proof of the existence of the human soul. [Translator’s note: the source sentence about the cause of the supramaterial force is grammatically incomplete.]

(887) In the presence of headmaster Tůma, teacher Chráska, the clergyman Prudič and Mrs. Tislová, I was invited to ask subject Křeček to produce a materialization.

The subject in deep sleep asked everyone present to go into the adjoining room, where it was dimmer. This was done, and the subject entered a state of calm. I myself, however, remained with him. After a while Kubeček reported to me that he saw a transparent luminous mist gathering into a large circle, growing clearer and denser. Those present wished the subject to form Goethe’s figure from it. The subject received the command, and shortly I was told that the matter was thinning at the edges and that in the middle a clear three-dimensional image of the poet’s bust had formed. After a while we continued with the materialization of a horse’s head; again the result came quickly.

(888) In another experiment, in the presence of the same witnesses, the subject formed a materialization of himself, and to everyone’s great surprise this materialized figure itself rebuked the law candidate Pich for his inappropriate criticism of the reality of that materialization. [Translator’s note: the source gives Pich the historical academic designation “JUC.”]

Extensive studies of abnormal psychic states, of supernormal knowledge of reality without the mediation of known senses, knowledge of distant things, vision into the past and knowledge of the future clearly show that a person’s waking consciousness is only a tiny part of his total consciousness.

The objectivity of the phenomena depends only upon outstanding subjects and mediums, which, however, cannot be subjected to the physical laws so far known and universally valid.

In the deep subconscious, the soul has metapsychic faculties:

Kryptotezie: a cognitive faculty entirely different from the general abilities of our senses to create ectoplasm, that is, a peculiar misty, luminous substance. From it arise individual parts and whole bodies having every appearance of life. It is identical neither with the oduší nor with magnetism. It is a substance taken from the protoplasm of one’s own body, which the soul animates through subconscious activity with the aid of the oduší. [Translator’s note: the source heading “Kryptotezie” is retained; its definition appears to merge a cognitive faculty with the production of ectoplasm.]

Precognition: premonitions and dreams often verified down to the smallest details.

Telekinesis: movement of objects without contact, solely through the action of the psyche.

Psychometry: clairvoyance into the past.

(889) These securely established fundamental phenomena are sufficient in themselves to refute from its foundations the purely materialistic view of the essence of the human being, because the human being has not only material but also psychological resources, some of which we do not yet even know. The decisive question for the direction of metapsychic research is whether, from the physical, physiological and psychological standpoint, we know human nature with all the resources of its subconscious sufficiently to understand the phenomena arising from its activity.

A person’s closest and most personal interest will always lead him to investigate the significance and evidential power of these phenomena for resolving the greatest of all mysteries: personal existence after death. The desire for personal immortality is age-old in humanity, and we must believe that we are not merely citizens of the earthly world, that life upon it is only a passage into another, immortal life. Thus the whole of metapsychics is only an attempt by consciousness to come to terms with the fact of death and, against it, arrive at the result of new facts concerning the continuation of life.

The metapsychic phenomena known so far must be carefully investigated to establish their objective nature and clarify and explain the laws to which they are subject. It will then be possible to place these facts within a new and investigated system of knowledge.

(890) Few people have a firm will and can direct the course of their lives. Therefore do not be surprised that people poor in spirit, who often founder in life, are helped by various amulets, dolls in cars, horseshoes and similar rubbish said to bring good luck. Such people cannot be guided through life by healthy mental activity, reason and will, but by an amulet in which they believe childishly and which has an effect only in a sensitive. Faith in the amulet is the reason it awakens subconscious activity in its hidden forces and faculties, which sometimes protect a person from misfortune. Only a weak-willed person needs an amulet and seeks true faith in it. A person certain of his strength, reason, will and power, who can create and build through his own forces, does not need it. He arranges everything as he himself wishes, because he knows that only in consciousness do his reason and free will fully assert themselves. Such a person will ask God for help and not rely upon amulets or other inner instincts.

(891) The aerobatic pilot M. used to say to his acquaintances of his glass amulet: “If it breaks, I know that will be my end too.” Before one flight he discovered that his amulet was broken. He confided this to his relatives, while at the same time stoutly rejecting any misfortune. On his next flight he did indeed crash, burying his body beneath the wreckage of the burning aircraft.

The subconscious SELF, the soul itself, was the cause of the accident. Even the stoutest rejection is of no help. Faith in the amulet overpowered his subconscious, which itself had already prepared the catastrophe.

From the esplana of the upper subconscious, the defenseless subconscious SELF received this dangerous image, nourished in faith, of a broken amulet associated with the image of an aviation disaster. When damage to the amulet actually occurred, the subconscious, the complex of the lower-order subconscious, then itself had to wrest reliable control of the aircraft from the rule of rational conscious activity, so as to take command itself and bring about the catastrophe.

(892) In deep trance the soul often surprises us with various faculties. A company was enjoying piano music. I ordered subject Křeček to follow the performance with us. He began listening closely and became agitated that the lady was playing incorrectly. His acquaintances laughed, for they knew that the subject understood neither the composition nor piano playing. The subject, however, jumped from his chair, pushed the playing lady aside and, to our astonishment, continued masterfully himself.

(893) The manufacturer M. lost important documents. During an experiment the subject reported that he saw the sought documents in a chamber of a cottage several tens of kilometers away from us. He said that they were stored in a bag hanging on the wall. He asked for a car, saying he would fetch them. A car with a driver was provided, and the young manufacturer went with us. The subject determined the direction of travel, for he had not told us beforehand where we were going. He asserted that he would himself hand us the documents from the wall. When for the second time the driver asked at a crossroads which way to go, the subject became agitated, seized the steering wheel, took the driver’s place and drove the car onward at speed. In anxiety, fearing an accident, I ordered the driver to hold the wheel and help steer, because the subject did not know how to drive a car. The subject would not permit it, however, and disregarded our fear. He drove us all the way to the village of Ch., stopping before the gate of a little cottage. After stopping, he quickly got out, ran through the garden into the hall of the house, opened the door of a dark back room, jumped there onto a made bed and pulled an old bag from the wall. We followed him into the cottage, where in euphoric joy he handed us the bag with the sought documents. At that same moment the householder ran up and explained that he had found the documents on the road and kept them safe.

(894) During scientific experiments we were sometimes served refreshments. Usually I did not awaken subject K., so that he could rest peacefully. Only sometimes, to amuse those present, did I disturb him with a request to taste the food served beforehand from a distance and tell us his judgment. At that moment intense inner activity was visible in him. He told us: “In this bottle is sour white wine; in this second one it is sour too, but an old vintage of excellent quality. You will not like the sweet wine in the third bottle; it is artificially made. Among the nuts, seven are empty, without kernels, because they have dried out.” He also described the cake’s internal arrangement and its taste in detail. After the bottles were opened, the cake tasted and the nuts cracked, what the subject had told us beforehand was confirmed.

(895) During an experiment in a pharmacy, conducted in the dark, the subject described twenty medicines and what they were used for, bringing each into the hands of those present. Each person remembered how the subject described the medicine handed to him, and after the light was switched on, the correctness of the statement was confirmed.

(896) An elderly Italian sailor came to me, speaking poor Czech. He wished to know why he had been unable to sleep for many years. During the experiment, the subject answered words spoken in the foreign language, about half of them, in the same language. I asked what language they were speaking. “Our Italian; that gentleman knows it splendidly!” was the sailor’s answer.

(897) Similarly, during a French policeman’s visit, he spoke French with him, and to learn the content of the conversation I had to question the subject and ask for a Czech translation. With physicians he usually spoke Latin, and before witnesses he rebuked Dr. Šípek for an error through which, by failing to recognize an illness, he had caused a patient’s death. He explained the details of the error precisely. To the clergyman Prudič he described scenes from Scripture in Chaldean, which the reverend gentleman recorded in shorthand and afterward translated from the record.

(898) Subject K.’s subconscious faculties always astonished listeners at public experiments: subject K. is put to sleep and seated on the left side of the stage facing the proscenium. On the right is a table. I ask: “Is the teacher present?” “He is,” comes the answer from the hall. “Please ask one of your former pupils who disliked reading to bring a book from the innkeeper’s library and, without looking inside it, place it on the table on stage!” This is done, and I then ask the subject to penetrate the closed book that has been brought. At the same time I ask the teacher to choose one page of the book to be read. A voice is heard: “Page 147!” I encourage those present to pay attention and sharpen their memory, for they will need it. At the same time I ask the subject: “Read page 147 aloud!” At first the subject reads slowly, then more quickly; some take down his words in shorthand. After the page has been read, I ask the teacher to come onto the stage, find page 147 and read it aloud to the audience. Everyone confirms the subject’s astonishing performance.

(899) I ask the innkeeper present to scoop a half-liter vessel of rice, peas or barley from his stores and bring it to the table on stage. When this is done, I ask the subject: “Penetrate the contents of the half-liter of peas and tell me the exact number of grains!” In three or four seconds the subject announced 2,347. I ask four people to come and count the grains. They divide the contents and count carefully. Then they announce the same number as the subject.

(900) I place subject K. facing the audience and with his back to a prepared blackboard. I ask someone present to come onto the stage and write an arithmetic problem with several numbers on the board. While it is being written, I invite the subject to release himself and connect mentally with the person calculating, and tell us the result before that person calculates it. The subject always announced the result beforehand, before multiplication or division began. Only after a longer calculation was the subject’s result confirmed.

From where does the subject draw these unheard-of faculties? In the subconscious they are natural to him, his own, because the soul is created in God’s image and likeness. It received knowledge and understanding from God’s eternal patterns, though only to a limited degree, and even then only of those with which it can come into contact. The subject’s ability in the subconscious state therefore cannot surprise us; after all, he works directly with the soul. The subject’s soul can also draw knowledge of languages from the disposition of a person present. In languages no longer used, it draws from protonace. It can exercise the faculties of the senses directly, without using the sense organs, for example by penetrating matter intended for drinking or eating, which it tastes more perfectly than we do through a sense organ, our taste. In the closed book or the contents of peas, the soul is present through the material oduší, so that through its own being it can read and know at once the book’s contents, the number of peas and the arithmetic result. The soul, however, also has other, more perfect aptitudes and faculties that will assert themselves only in the second life.

(901) There are few subjects capable of such phenomenal experiments as subject K. The Italian physician Professor Lombroso conducted experiments for many years with the famous medium Eusapia Palladino. At that time, around the turn of the century, he could not explain that the extraordinary phenomena occurred through the power of the medium’s own subconscious activity, and unshakably believed that they were manifestations of beings from beyond the grave who used the medium as an intermediary. The Russian scholar Professor Aksakov and the French scientist Professor Richet, who traveled to Italy to attend the experiments and issue extensive reports on them, believed similarly. Nor could Professors Morselli, Porro, Motza, Vengi and others explain these phenomena in any way.

(902) Today’s science knows so-called prodigious calculators who can mentally solve complicated arithmetic operations in a few seconds, entirely surpassing an ordinary person’s ability and which even a trained mathematician could calculate only with the aid of paper, pencil and logarithmic tables.

The faculty of an awakened subconscious usually manifests itself from earliest youth. These individuals themselves cannot explain how they arrive at the results of their faculty. Sometimes the faculty disappears when the person reaches adulthood.

At least some thirty documented cases are known from the last two centuries.

(903) Jedediah Buxton, a dull-witted farmhand who could neither read nor write, performed the most varied and difficult calculations before the English Royal Society in 1754. To the accuracy of one English pound, he calculated how many times a farthing coin would increase if multiplied by 140. His correct calculation ran into thousands of sextillions. He further multiplied this enormous number mentally by itself, squaring it. [Translator’s note: the operation is described in the source as multiplication by 140, although the stated scale of the result does not follow from that wording.]

Zerah Colburn, 1804–1840, at the age of eight gave the same society answers to questions such as how many seconds had elapsed in any given number of centuries, how many grains there were in any given number of tons of grain, and so on.

George Parker Bidden, 1806–1878, already at ten as a prodigious calculator, answered questions during his European tour such as: If a wheel has a circumference of five feet ten inches, how many times will it turn in a journey of 800,000,000 miles? The answer was 724,114,285,704 times, and was given in fifty seconds. Another question: What is the square root of 119,550,669,121? The answer, in thirty seconds, was 345,761, and so on. [Translator’s note: the name “Bidden” and the numerical answers are retained as printed in the source.]

(904) In 1904, at London’s Hippodrome, the Italian Jacques Inaudi stood with his back to a large blackboard measuring thirty by ten feet, upon which his assistant wrote numbers dictated from the audience. Inaudi worked with the numbers mentally and immediately gave precise results. The audience tried to confuse him, but never succeeded.

Johann Martin Zachariah Dase, 1824–1861, an official in the Prussian civil service, worked mentally with immensely high numbers. When tested in Berlin by a commission of the Academy of Sciences, he was asked whether there were limits beyond which his abilities no longer reached. He answered that he was aware of no limits. He asked to be tested, calculated mentally, and his results were absolutely correct.

Another phenomenon, Datas, was, as far as memory was concerned, an absolute miracle who, as he proudly and truthfully declared, could give “the correct answer to any question that can be found in famous books…”

(905) Today’s science cannot answer what these extraordinary mental qualities consist in; it does not succeed in interpreting and explaining these phenomena.

We know that this is one of the great number of the soul’s faculties that has been recalled from the subconscious into consciousness.

In recent years W. T. Stead’s book “Letters from Julia” was published in England; the author, himself a writing medium, and his followers attributed the letters to manifestations of his deceased friend. The book was translated into many languages, including Czech. I take one of the letters, with the explanation that Julia had nothing to do with Mr. Stead after her death and that all the phenomena were manifestations of his own subconscious faculty.

(906) The author writes: “Several years ago I employed a lady of truly remarkable talent, but inconstant character and less than robust health. She became so unbearable to me that in January I seriously considered dismissing her. But Julia wrote to me through my own hand: Be patient with E. M. Within a year she will be here among us.

“I was astonished, for nothing justified me in supposing that she might die. I accepted the message’s instruction without objection, and the clerk M. remained in my employment. If memory does not deceive me, I received the instruction on the fifteenth or sixteenth of January.

“Then the message was repeated to me four times at monthly intervals. Each further communication was somehow a consequence of the preceding one.

“‘Remember that M. will die within a year!’

“In July M. inadvertently swallowed a small nail. It lodged in her intestines and she became seriously ill. Her attending physicians offered no hope of recovery. At that time Julia again wrote to me through my own hand. I asked her: ‘You doubtless had this case in mind when you predicted that M. would die!’

“To my astonishment I received the following answer: ‘No; she will recover from this illness, but nevertheless die within a year.’

(907) “To the physicians’ great astonishment, M. recovered and was soon able to resume her ordinary work. In August, September, October and November, the announcement of M.’s approaching death was again communicated to me through my own hand. In December M. fell ill with influenza.

“Again I asked Julia: ‘Is this the case?’

“‘No. She will not die in a natural manner, but however it may be, she will die within a year.’

“I was troubled, but knew I could do nothing to counter the event. Then Christmas came. M. was seriously ill. But New Year’s Day passed, and she lived. When asked, Julia answered: ‘I may have been mistaken by a few days, but what I said is true.’

“On January 10 Julia wrote to me: ‘Tomorrow you will see M.; take leave of her. Make all necessary arrangements. You will not see her on Earth again.’

“I went to the sick M. She had a fever with an ugly cough. They were just taking her to hospital so she could receive better care. Throughout that time she spoke with me about what was needed to finish her work. As I took leave of her, I asked myself whether Julia was mistaken.

(908) “Within two days I received a telegram reporting that in a fit of fever M. had thrown herself from a fourth-floor window and died on the spot. The event had been delayed by a few days, as I had already been told in the last communication.

“I can prove the truth of this account through the manuscripts of all the original communications and a certificate signed by both my secretaries, to whom I entrusted Julia’s warnings under a seal of secrecy.”

As Mr. Stead writes, M. did not have very robust health; she was therefore nonmagnetic and belonged among the sensitives. The writing medium Stead naturally belonged among them too. It is only in rare exceptions that two sensitives get along well. Stead therefore decided to dismiss his clerk because she was unbearable.

The awakened subconscious activity of automatic mediums assumes every personality it imagines and desires. Independently of the conscious SELF, it personifies itself in that personality as its second SELF. It was this that, in the sensitive Stead, accepted the image of the deceased friend Julia and acted accordingly. A splitting, schizophrenia, into a conscious SELF and a subconscious SELF occurred. Thus an astonishingly interesting conversation and encounter of the powers of both SELVES arose in a single person. A state of the fourth degree of subconscious activity was evoked.

(909) Intolerable antipathy toward the clerk M. caused the subconscious SELF in Julia’s personality, limited in the will’s free decision-making, to have to receive this lasting aversion. Stead’s decision to dismiss M. changed into a prophecy that M. would die within a year. The image of death originated in the formed image of the clerk’s unstable health, stored in Stead’s esplana.

The prediction of death changed in Stead into faith and created in the upper subconscious of the esplana a vivid image that gradually strengthened through repetition each month. This image, materialized in the esplana, acted unhealthily upon M.’s sensitive soul, her subconscious, with the cooperation of subconscious activity. It was under the telepathic influence of images of death and caused the incident of swallowing the nail. Through clairvoyant ability, Stead’s second SELF found that the nail was passing freely through the intestines, so his subconscious wrote that M. would recover. Only his constant curiosity and impatience roused his subconscious to confirm to him every month that M.’s death would certainly come.

(910) Constant interest in M. caused the two subconscious minds, Stead’s and M.’s, to enter into connection, and Stead’s impatient mental image prepared the clerk’s weak organism for a slow death.

The year was drawing to a close. Influenza came, but it was mild and did not lead to M.’s death. Stead’s subconscious SELF in Julia’s personality, under pressure from the material esplano containing the image of death, and the impatience strengthened in his consciousness, resulted in the prediction of an unnatural death. Thus Stead’s own subconscious SELF, in connection with M.’s subconscious, caused the sick woman to be induced to jump from the window. The intolerability of M.’s presence and Stead’s conscious curiosity thereby found satisfaction.

(911) The splitting of personality into two SELVES, conscious and subconscious, need not always terrify us with the idea of mental illness. If we have clear knowledge and healthy mental images of subconscious ability, cultivated reason and a strong will, this extraordinary ability can be used for the good and benefit of ourselves and of society as a whole. Many were aware of this.

The saint Don Bosco, already mentioned, had the gift of bilocation, doubling or materializing at two places simultaneously. He was an educator of wayward youth who knew that not all such individuals could be reeducated, because of the materialization of their ancestors’ crimes in the genes. His simultaneous presence at home and in the institution is recorded and supported by witnesses. Another case of his bilocation is attested by the director of the Salesian institution in Sarriá near Barcelona:

In 1866 Don Branda heard someone calling him by name at night. He recognized Don Bosco’s voice: “Don Branda, get up and come with me!” The director awoke, but told himself he must only have dreamed it, so he fell asleep again. In the morning he could clearly remember the sound of the voice that had awakened him during the night.

Eight days later the call was repeated at night. When he awoke, the room was full of light. “Do not sleep now, and come with me,” he heard as though from the adjoining room, where, as it seemed to him, the shadow of the saint’s figure flickered. He dressed and indeed saw Don Bosco. His face shone with light. He took his hand and kissed it. The saint pointed to the figures of four pupils of his institution. He wished three boys to be expelled and the fourth wisely guided toward reform. “Do not hesitate, and expel them from the institution as soon as possible,” he heard, and saw great pain in the saint’s face.

The director opened the door and went with the saint into the corridor. Everywhere it was as bright as broad daylight. When they returned, the saint repeated his exhortation. Then he disappeared.

(912) The trembling director entered the room and turned on the light. He looked at the clock. Only two minutes remained before the communal rising time. He began to read his breviary. He went to celebrate Mass and reflected on what pretext he could use to expel the designated boys. He had no reason. Two days later a letter arrived from Turin, from Don Rua: “Don Bosco told me that he visited you while you slept. He now again urges you to do what he told you!”

The director was greatly agitated. He did not know what to do. He did nothing. When the next day he went to celebrate Mass at the house of the patroness of the Salesian institution, she told him she had dreamed of Don Bosco. He quickly excused himself, saying he had to go to celebrate Mass, and withdrew for fear that she would tell him her dream. Scarcely had he finished the prayer and kissed the altar when he heard: “If you do not do what Don Bosco commands, this Mass will be your last!”

After Mass he immediately returned to the institution, called the prefect, and they summoned the designated boys and began to investigate. The proceedings revealed and confirmed that the saint really did have serious reasons for his emphatic recommendation.

Phenomena that cannot be explained are not supernatural; they are extranatural. The example described is evidence of this. Saint Don Bosco, who appeared at night to the institution’s director, was actually a materialization originating in the abilities of the human subconscious. It must be added, however, that God often sets people’s inborn higher subconscious powers in motion for His own purposes.

(913) Alexandra David-Néel, a professor at Brussels University and today already a famous writer, spent many years in Tibet, where for a time she was a member of a women’s monastery. She underwent the spiritual training of Tibetan mystics and adopted a critical position toward the metaphysical phenomena she observed on the spot.

Because she wished, in the manner of Tibetan monks, to create a living vision for herself, she shut herself away for a lengthy period in a hermit’s cell. To satisfy every condition, she concentrated her mind upon the subject of a small, innocent, fat, cheerful and good-hearted monk. After several months she succeeded in creating the monk. He became the traveler’s guest and took part in her journeys through Tibet. He walked as a member of the caravan and displayed natural behavior. He took an interest in everything, looked around and fulfilled the prescribed tasks. After a time, however, his good-natured expression changed; the monk became insolent and troublesome. All members of the party confirmed the monk’s presence. It took several months of strenuous effort, however, before David-Néel succeeded in ridding herself of this living materialization.

The traveler convinced herself of the truth and reality of many wondrous, unheard-of phenomena and believed. She voluntarily submitted to strict rules and conditions to test, according to the Tibetan system, whether she too could evoke the phenomenon. The Tibetan method really worked. The soul’s subconscious faculties were affected at their foundation, so that a splitting of the personality into two SELVES occurred. To her astonishment and that of witnesses, the subconscious SELF carried out an actual materialization of the monk with every feature as she had imagined him. David-Néel herself caused him later to become insolent and troublesome, because the change proceeded from her criticism and new mental image. For if the second SELF is subjected to the slightest criticism, it rebels against the conscious SELF.

Through the study of metaphysical phenomena and on the basis of practice and experiments, we shall uncover phenomena not seen in ordinary life.

Translator’s safety note: Do not reproduce the cold-exposure experiments described below or assume an unresponsive person is merely hypnotized. Seek emergency medical help; if the person is unresponsive and not breathing normally, begin CPR following the emergency dispatcher’s instructions. See St John Ambulance’s CPR guidance. The historical account is preserved without endorsement.

(914) The Tibetan hermit reflects upon the problem of his SELF and the investigation of sensory experience. Through his method he resolves various philosophical and metaphysical questions; he believes in the power of the spirit. Tibetan mysticism is not identical with the concept of spiritual piety of Western mystics, but corresponds rather to hidden powers that Tibetans master through their method and prolonged effort. Their entire attention is concentrated upon their own interior, so that they reach the foundation of subconscious forces, which become the property of the willing will of the subconscious. Their extraordinary physical achievements interest our biologists and physiologists. For example, through mental concentration and breathing exercises they acquire bodily lightness and perform prolonged journeys over incredible distances in a few days, although under normal conditions several times as much time would be needed to cover the route. Anyone who masters this ability, “lunggom,” runs so lightly that with light steps he almost floats as he runs. His mental state is fixed upon the goal to be reached. At the same time he is in a kind of ecstasy, a trance.

(During one experiment outdoors, I rebuked a subject for inattention during a similar manifestation. For, to the astonishment of the witnesses present, the clergyman Prudič and Mr. Kubeček, he rose before us to a height of about four meters and after seventy meters descended to the ground again.)

Psychic heat, the so-called “tumo,” which Tibetan adepts evoke through an autosuggestive image of intense heat, a fire proceeding from within and spreading through the whole body, acts so that, for example, while sitting on snow they dry with their naked bodies as many as seven wet sheets in a night, in which they are successively wrapped. This experiment can easily be performed with a subject brought into the fourth degree of hypnosis. Subject K. could evoke such strong bodily warmth that a wet shirt on his body dried in a cold room in less than an hour.

(915) In Mr. D.’s house, toward evening, I put subject K. to sleep with a request to carry out a certain act at Mr. Ř.’s, with which the subject disagreed. Before the experiment we locked the doors of both the apartment and the house. We placed the keys on the table. After carrying out the command, the subject was awakened. He lit a cigarette and, looking at me, suddenly said: “You are my enemy!” Then he fell asleep. I went to him to awaken him. The subject retreated to the locked door, which opened at his touch without a key, and fled into the corridor. In the same way he opened the house door and disappeared from us into the darkness. I had to pursue him through the power of mentally spoken suggestion: “Stand still!” I firmly believed that the thought sent telepathically would govern him. All of us present went in three directions to search for the subject. As I approached the square, I saw a man standing on the church steps. I ran to him and recognized subject K. I immediately gave the command: “You are in my power and are coming back with me!” At that moment subject K. rose into the air and vanished from my sight.

Through strength of will I sent the thought after him: “You will remain standing at the house from which you came!” I ran to Mr. D.’s house and indeed saw subject K. lying on the ground before the door. By strength of will I held him firmly in place. Then D. arrived and said he had not found the subject. I pointed to the subject lying there, and we tried to carry him into the house. It was impossible to lift him, however; he had increased his weight! Even with D.’s strength, repeated attempts to lift the subject failed. Meanwhile the others searching began to return and joined our efforts, without result. The subject defended himself through unknown forces, either by increasing gravitational attraction or by paralyzing our strength. I sought the cause of his resistance. It could be nothing other than that I had commanded an act with which his soul in the subconscious disagreed. I therefore acknowledged my mistake and asked the subject to allow himself to be moved into the warm apartment. After greater exertion we succeeded. We brought him into the room and again tried to lift him onto the bed. Our effort was in vain. We considered what to do next. I did not dare awaken him, fearing that he would again use some unknown force against it. It was decided to wait beside him until morning, when the given suggestion should be fulfilled, the one he always received from me at every awakening: “In the morning you will awaken strengthened, healthy and cheerful!” I sat in an armchair. Still connected with the subject, I humbly acknowledged my mistake and waited until morning for the fulfillment of the suggestion repeated a thousand times. In the morning it was fulfilled and the subject awoke.

(916) A trained, experienced subject such as K. had to carry out even a command with which he inwardly disagreed. It ran contrary to his moral feeling, and so he often punished me through extraordinary forces and phenomena outside the realm of physical laws.

Some members of international institutions in London and Paris concerned with metapsychics complain of a lack of good mediums. Such large countries with such splendid opportunities!

(917) Metapsychic research can advance only slowly and with perseverance. The researcher must be ambitious. If scientific ambition diminishes, scientists become indifferent. Critical assessment of acquired results, questions and phenomena requires difficult study over many years, because the human being has astonishing material and psychological resources that we do not yet know. A lack of continuity in research must necessarily slow this process.

Thought activity is not bound to the brain. Mental energy can act without its mediation as well. It is the radiation of human consciousness into space and time. A human being is above all a spiritual being. Under certain conditions the spirit is independent of the body and, even outside its body, has freedom of expression in space through the assertion of its existence, its SELF, and the possibility of looking into past, present and partly future time. In trance, the spirit has freer boundaries and can displace conscious intelligence, a supramaterial force, from the human body. Trance gives waking consciousness the possibility of freeing itself from the closed framework of the material body and asserting its extraordinary powers outside it.

In the interest of new discoveries, experimentation is necessary. For experiments good subjects are needed; they must be sought and educated. Every experimenter must have his own subject, whom no one else may use for experiments. Doing so would impair the subject’s awakened faculties.

(918) Young, sensitive, pale, yielding and obedient people, who tend to be nonmagnetic, are suited for experiments. Let us choose those who have brown eyes. These indicate a sensitive, good-natured and good character with an inclination toward frivolity. People with light-blue eyes are generally unyielding but firmer in character; take this circumstance into account in bringing up children as well.

During an experiment we seat the sensitive in a comfortable armchair opposite us and awaken in him the idea that he is asleep. During hypnotizing, the subject must himself strive to enter passivity and receive the image sent by the hypnotizer that he will fall asleep. A mere look into his eyes then suffices, or some suggestive formula spoken in a low, monotonous voice may be used, for example: “You are calm; you feel pleasant; you look forward to sleep; think only of falling asleep; you notice slight fatigue; your eyelids tremble; your eyes are already tired; your head is becoming heavy; you feel fatigue throughout your body; you feel neither arms nor legs; you are very tired; your vision is clouded; your eyes begin to water; they are watering already; they grow heavy and close; your eyes are closed; you are falling asleep; you are asleep; deeply; more deeply; still more deeply; you cannot awaken; yet you still hear my words!”

It is then possible to induce the sleeper to speak and begin the experiment. The subject’s name, however, must not be spoken! We address him, for example, as “friend.” After the experiment ends, let us awaken him with faith and energetic certainty. We may then also speak his name. Never forget the final suggestion against fatigue and the assurance of good health. Everything ends with the suggestion that after awakening he will remember nothing of the experiment.

Skepticism, uncertainty and ignorance during experiments inhibit the expression of subconscious activity, because they act telepathically upon the subject’s subconscious and confidence. The experiments then fail.

(919) For scientific experiments to succeed, one must experiment daily and continually with the same subject. This awakens and deepens his faculties, and the subject gains experience by mastering and using his oduší for spatial release with the participation of the conscious SELF.

Many disappointments arise from choosing unsuitable subjects. With those who fall only into the first and second degrees of hypnosis, we merely waste time.

During experiments it is necessary to observe proven procedures. Of course, the experimenter must never lack a sound and critical spirit.

To obtain mediums, we must not confine ourselves merely to theory, but must know how to experiment and educate the subject. Sensitives with inborn faculties are best for this. One must know how to enlist subconscious activity for experiments. In educating a subject, it must be remembered that the subconscious SELF is pushed back if, during experiments, scientific reasons for explanations that succeed with a trained medium are in mind. It is similar when scientific instruments are available during experiments. Doubt and curiosity are harmful as well. One must know how to engage and permanently win over the subconscious SELF like an innocent child. Why? Because it lacks the fullness of its own self-criticism that could assert itself in reason and will.

(920) Let us remember that subconscious processes like pleasant things. We therefore activate the subconscious SELF only through a friendly, sincere desire for a pleasant experiment, as we ourselves also experience it in our minds. During trial experiments we must know how to cultivate and nourish this approach within ourselves through sincere intention and imagination. Only when we have prepared the subject through good education can we begin experiments.

(921) The leader of the experiment is in constant connection with the subject. It is better for him to be completely nonmagnetic, but able, when needed, to awaken magnetism artificially within himself. In the case of magnetic leaders, their bodily magnetism is more of a hindrance to direct connection and a good experiment.

If subject and leader are nonmagnetic, their oduší are exposed. When both are in mental accord, direct connection is achieved more rapidly through the fusion of the two fluids into one body, thereby facilitating the experiments.

(922) To evoke deep hypnotic sleep, it is not even particularly necessary to give strong suggestions. Rather, it is good through the will, in a vivid mental image, to bind the subject to oneself, so as to bring the two oduší together for a single thought, and to see him in a vivid image falling into ever-deeper sleep.

The leader must then also awaken the subject in the same mental image. I again emphasize the indispensable principle of providing final health suggestions, which the subject must repeat with the hypnotizer.

To achieve deep hypnosis, the subject must be put to sleep daily, preferably in the morning. In preparing a new subject this takes at least fourteen days, and each induction of sleep should last at least half an hour. During preparation, let us conduct no experiments! Instead let us always command that the subject’s sleep become noticeably deeper from day to day. In natural-born subjects we thereby attain the third or even fourth degree of hypnosis.

(923) The first sleep is usually of the first or second degree. If we proceeded to experiments in this light hypnosis, we would not attain higher hypnotic degrees in further work. For the entry subconscious evoked for experimental activity would become permanently anchored in the still-waking esplana, and in further experiments this superficial sleep would already assert itself of its own accord.

With daily induction of sleep, the subject’s ability gradually develops and improves. During practice experiments it is good to check his statements through other good and experienced subjects. Only after thoroughly verifying the subject’s faculties and reliability can we move on to actual scientific experiments.

74. Possession and Demonism

Editorial note: historical religious and diagnostic claims

This chapter presents the author’s religious beliefs and historical interpretations of mental and physical symptoms. Its proposed tests for possession are not medical diagnostic guidance and should not replace qualified care.

(924) Every rationally thinking person will exert himself to fill his soul with truth and reality. Anyone who relies only on his senses, however, to touch everything and see it with his eyes, becomes one-sided and superficial, noticing only the external material aspect of creation. Truth will then remain ever more distant from him.

It is certain that higher and more perfect spiritual beings exist. Besides good ones there are evil beings too, whose manifestations we may often encounter.

Evil spirits, demons or devils, are of a more perfect substance than human beings. They surpass them in wisdom and mental power, and are not subject to the laws of gravity, hunger and so forth. A demon is pure spirit, in itself a complete spiritual substance, living independently of matter. Our soul is also of a spiritual substance, but incompletely so. It is created to animate the body and form human substance together with it.

The existence of evil spirits is indestructible and eternal. They are simple, uncompounded substances and therefore immortal. Nothing can destroy or harm their being. As spiritual substance they do not occupy space or depend upon it; like a thought, they can be anywhere.

An evil spirit can occupy at once any space of limited extent. It occupies the whole of it, in every part simultaneously.

(925) An evil spirit has reason and free will, for these belong to the essence of spirit. It is a free, rational being, but changeable through the will; it does not go straight to the matter, is subject to errors and is inconstant. Its intelligence is higher than human intelligence; it knows everything directly, without the mediation of the senses, especially the spiritual world apart from God. It also knows the material world directly, more perfectly than we do. It therefore knows worlds still unknown to us. Yet its knowledge too is limited. It cannot know an inner human secret when a person is creating through reason and has not yet decided through his will, so that he does not yet know what he will do.

It can, however, know completed thoughts that have passed into the esplana, just as a clairvoyant can. Demons differ from one another in species: as many evil spirits, so many species. They cannot act upon human reason, only upon imagination. They can, however, also act through external aids to awaken various thoughts and feelings.

Evil spirits were originally good. They turned against God Himself and became evil because they sinned with the power of a spirit and the will of an angel. They remained irrevocably in rebellion and are damned for eternity. They did not remain in the state in which they were created, misused their perfection and did not remain in truth. They sinned through pride, from an inordinate delight in their own perfection, forgetting their final goal, beatitude. They wished to attain it themselves, independently of God’s will. Their damnation had its consequences. Their entire spiritual life was overturned through the darkening of reason and the hardening of will.

Because they sinned and are damned for eternity, they envy man his goal, eternal bliss, and thus have become his enemy. They lay snares for him and entice him toward evil.

An evil spirit tempts through external impulses: print, pictures and evil people who incite sin; or through direct inward action, without making itself known; or indirectly, acting both upon imagination, how to gain power over others, and upon a person’s lower instincts.

(926) It cannot act directly upon reason and will, so every person can decide and exercise his will freely. In precisely the same way, however, he can freely enter into contact with an evil spirit and ally himself with it. Let us not suppose that all temptations come from an evil spirit. They also arise from the flesh and are often suggested by sinful surroundings. Sometimes an evil spirit gains power over a human body.

Possession is then a peculiar and extraordinary phenomenon. It may be visible, and thus have recognizable manifestations, or invisible and concealed, acting chiefly upon mental images and imposing its thoughts. Possessed people are demonic because a demon governs them according to its will.

We have already learned that a strong-willed person can subject a weak-willed person to himself. All the more can a higher spirit do so through its more perfect power and stronger will, especially if it wishes to act upon the body. Thus it can evoke various illnesses as well.

A demon can act upon the body externally by restricting its movements. It can act directly within the body and then command its physical forces according to its will. From this arises a great mental conflict between the demon’s power and one’s own will. A demon can also bring mental activity to the point of derangement.

A demon can overpower a proud person by evoking a vivid imagination aimed at overthrowing the common just order. It also causes the evocation of serious crimes, the raging and malice of enemies, calculating immorality, insults, anger, vengeance, curses and the like. It can act upon the senses too and use them for its purpose. It also influences empty esplana, into which it impresses various mental images, impressions, pictures and thoughts. If a hypnologist can act in this way, all the more can the stronger spirit of a demon.

Because reason and will remain untouched when mental images and thoughts are imposed or evoked, a person can make a free decision in time.

(927) Through its power and will, an evil spirit can act upon the possessed with the same psychic forces as our soul or a hypnologist when the activity of the pure subconscious is evoked. It mostly evokes identical phenomena.

Experience and knowledge are required to establish actual possession. What appears to be possession through the evocation of extraordinary and wondrous phenomena is not always possession.

A person who falls into the third degree of hypnosis, as far as the boundary of the fourth, can by the same route and through the same forces as a demon or hypnologist evoke extraordinary phenomena: knowledge of foreign and more vaguely identified languages; knowledge and uncovering of secrets hidden from people; manifestation of extraordinary strength; uneducated people expressing themselves in the language of specialists and scientists; knowledge of distant and secret events; penetration of others’ thoughts; foresight of future events; disabling one’s own organs through muteness, blindness and deafness; movements of material objects, their displacement, levitation and materialization.

(928) If a demon wishes, it conceals its intention and influence in the same manifestations, so that one cannot say with certainty to whom the given phenomena should be attributed: to the sensitive’s own activity or to the demon itself.

The greatest caution is needed lest, through ignorance and lack of knowledge, we attribute everything to a demon. True possession is a very rare phenomenon. It can be recognized by its creating “something” from “nothing,” that is, material, visible things that remain permanently.

This happened, for example, in Illfurt with two possessed boys, the elder of whom plucked feathers from the body of a being visible to him. The feathers remained permanently in reality as well; a commission examined them and then declared them genuine and unlike any feathers anyone had yet seen.

The human soul too has in the subconscious the possibility of creating invisible things. For these phenomena, however, it can use only the matter of its own body. Such things soon disappear and do not remain permanently, because they were formed through transformation of the elements of one’s own body. The phenomenon ceases and the object created disappears too. Only a demon can, through its higher power, act directly upon the transformation and rearrangement of the elements of matter. Such effects, however, can remain and exist permanently. It can create them only to a limited extent. [Translator’s note: the source says “invisible things” here, although it discusses created objects and their disappearance.]

A demon poorly tolerates consecrated things, such as relics of saints, holy water and the like. I shall explain further why caution is necessary even in this case.

The human soul harbors extraordinary faculties and forces, as many of my experiments have finally confirmed.

In judging such phenomena we must realize the following:

(929) Among us live very sensitive, nonmagnetic people, people of weak will, people who give themselves over to mental emptiness, hysterical people, little aware in a conscious and full life, and people suffering under the influence of individuals or their surroundings. They incline toward their soul’s retreating, in its mental emptiness, from conscious activity into some degree of subconscious activity. Within it reason and will are then obscured until they almost completely disappear.

If I tell such a person, “You are a tree, a dog, an infant,” and so on, he sways like a tree, barks and the like. Subconscious activity accepts the mental image and acts according to it. In the second and third entry subconscious states, resistance and doubt of the command are impossible. The subconscious receives the mental image as it is given. In subconscious activity the soul lacks the ability to reason logically. The rational faculty emerges only, and even then only partially, in the fourth degree, so it appears rarely. If the soul retreats from consciousness into some activity of the entry subconscious, the demon recognizes it. It then does not exert its influence toward sin, because it knows that in this case it will gain nothing. This is because a person is responsible for his acts and decisions when in full, clear possession of reason and will, which corresponds to the situation described. [Translator’s note: the last clause is retained as printed, although it appears inconsistent with the preceding description of diminished reason and will.]

Through ignorance, much used to be attributed to the devil. I have in mind especially cases in which certain phenomena and possession were evoked artificially in sensitives and weak-willed people, for example through hypnosis and the like.

Even in the deep entry subconscious, the human soul preserves personality through a kind of inner instinct. It does not, however, recognize itself in its original nature. For our conscious SELF, the human “I am” becomes materialized in the esplana. Especially in the third entry subconscious, connection with the esplana almost disappears, so that the soul is left at the mercy of another person’s mental image and faith.

(930) It often happened that peculiar phenomena were observed in a sensitive that could not be explained naturally, so it was believed that they were a manifestation of the devil. The image of him and the address “Satan” had to create in the sensitive’s soul a transformation into the devil. In this altered person of its own, and through its many-sided ability, the soul knows from protonace everything attributed to the devil, and then through its own power and strength evokes, causes and creates everything that astonishes us.

Because we do not know the degrees of bodily sensitivity of individuals and their souls, such an image may be created by the sensitive himself or someone around him, from whom the subconscious SELF receives it telepathically. Through the resulting division of the soul, the sensitive’s second SELF then personifies itself in a devilish manifestation and copies the activity usually attributed to the devil.

I myself often demonstrated these phenomena experimentally, thereby confirming their natural origin. In this way I pointed to the diseased contagiousness through which the “possessed” person carries other sensitives toward the same manifestation.

When a person believes that the devil is acting upon or within him, although it is not true, some degree of subconscious activity receives this image from the esplana, and its SELF personifies itself as the devil, so that the person himself is responsible for evoking the extraordinary phenomena of supposed possession.

(931) In discerning both evoked and spontaneous extraordinary phenomena, it is always good not to believe in possession by the devil at all! It is necessary, however, to hand the “possessed” person holy water or a cross in the firm belief that the phenomena are evoked by the extraordinary faculty and strength of the subconscious. If the sensitive remains calm and does not become furious, though we must not expect his calm to be disturbed, since even that would evoke a reaction through transference, we are certain that it is a manifestation of the fourth degree of the subconscious. If the phenomena and manifestations are ordinary, they belong to some activity of the entry subconscious. If mockery, fury and abuse are evoked in the sensitive, however, we must repeatedly convince ourselves through observation and examination until we gain certainty about actual, true demonic possession. This is an important stage in distinguishing possession because, as I have already emphasized, in the third lower-order subconscious EVEN A MERE DISEASED IMAGE OF THE DEVIL hates consecrated objects!

The soul in the subconscious does not have rational faculties. If a diseased image of the devil has not been evoked, it accepts consecrated things calmly and does not become agitated even if it hated these things in ordinary life. For when the soul retreats into some subconscious activity, connection with the esplana disappears according to the degree in which it finds itself, so that this awareness of hatred disappears too.

(932) If the possessed person is irritated by consecrated objects, we must not immediately conclude that it is the influence of an evil spirit or a damned human soul. A guide to recognizing actual possession is the request that the supposedly “possessed” person bless us with the words: “I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The devil’s rational activity, which constantly hates God, will not pronounce these words. In evoked diseased possession, however, when reason does not assert itself, the received image of the devil, anchored in its SELF, can be broken down in the sensitive through persuasion to give a blessing, so that after prolonged resistance he finally obeys us. The devil cannot be persuaded to give such a blessing!

If the powers of the activity of the unimpaired pure subconscious are evoked, the soul of such a subconscious SELF always complies.

(933) I have stated that in subconscious activities the human soul, from its own instinct, although it does not recognize itself, assumes every personality we expect or imagine. Because of the weakening of reason and will, it never reflects upon itself in activity evoked in this way. If we ask who it is, it claims to be the nearest image of some person, read from protonace or from our esplana. If it receives a personality from protonace, it usually claims to be the spirit of a deceased person. If it receives a personality from stimulated esplana whose effect penetrates the entry subconscious states, it sometimes assumes the personality of a person still living. I have much evidence of this. From observation it is evident that in a passive state, despite all its astonishing psychic gifts and faculties, the subconscious SELF is deprived of the rational faculty and is therefore a plaything of the nearest causes.

Thus in spiritist circles, where people merely summon spirits and wait for which deceased person will manifest, the medium’s soul is compelled to assume such a personality. In protonace it has at its disposal the deceased person’s entire individuality, with everything needed for expression, and so copies the activity corresponding to that person’s life. Mental activity and all power and ability expand in the entry subconscious states only in relation to the question. If no new question is given, they cease and return to calm. Even a mere stronger, curious thought of one of the circle’s members can disturb it and bring it into activity, acting by telepathic means.

(934) If the soul is in surroundings where devout people are gathered, the medium, capable of the third or fourth degree of the subconscious, ecstasy during contemplation, may in this awakened subconscious state reach a diseased splitting of the personality into two SELVES. In such a division the conscious SELF has the ability to be aware of almost everything happening with the subconscious SELF. From protonace the subconscious SELF assumes a person close to the environment in which it currently finds itself, thus a saint. It often alternates among several saints. These then pronounce devout, instructive and admonishing words through the medium’s mouth, so that it seems saints are speaking to us.

If in such surroundings it is believed that the apparition was real, this diseased and unnatural ability of the medium increases and strengthens.

In an evoked deeper state of the fourth degree, the second subconscious SELF then pronounces splendid truths, for they proceed from the soul itself, in which heavenly contemplation is contained. They are pure and unclouded, for the likeness of divine nature exists in our soul, so that it seems to us that God intervenes directly and an actual holy being manifests itself.

Therefore even in these cases sober caution, experience and knowledge are needed, lest we intoxicate ourselves with deceptive phenomena.

(935) I have given the preceding paragraphs to prevent all confusion between manifestations and apparitions evoked pathologically or artificially, as distinct from actual apparitions by God’s permission. For in healthy people, during contemplation and ecstasy, God also permits true apparitions for His glory and the glory of the saints. He often confirms them through miracles, so that man, a limited being, may know the truth and more easily attain salvation without drowning in deceptions.

Whom can the devil possess? Anyone, by God’s will and permission, but most often people who are sensitive, nonmagnetic, weak-willed, hysterical, bad, immoral, proud and fearful. A demon will find it difficult to possess an aware person of high intelligence, vigilant, healthily and firmly believing in God, constantly awake in reason and will. It does, however, influence everyone by acting upon imagination and so forth, as I have already stated.

After reading this reflection, very many will be unwilling to agree with my view of demonism and possession, because they deny these phenomena on principle. If a person selfishly and narrowly recognizes only himself and what he sees, touches and examines chemically, this is one-sided, incomplete scientific activity that prevents the soul from taking flight toward truth.

(936) During experiments I often came into contact with phenomena so extraordinary and peculiar that they could not be explained in any way, because their power and manner of manifestation lay beyond the soul’s forces and faculties in the subconscious. Added to this were reports from people who came to me with inexplicable phenomena manifesting around them. They are understandable only if we attribute them to higher, more perfect rational beings.

Only a researcher constantly dealing with these phenomena can therefore speak about the existence of demons. So I exhort you! You who wish to resolve these deep problems through rational reflection alone and mere sensory observation, or even through an “I don’t believe” that explains nothing: stop not only speaking about demonism, but thinking about it as well!

Let us meet everything mysterious with the greatest caution and sober, sound reason. Let us not take refuge in phrases that explain and resolve nothing.

75. The State of the Soul in the Oduší

(937) The human soul is a depth of as-yet-unexplored and unfathomable forces of which we have no inkling. On the basis of experiments we can gradually acquire new knowledge and experience of its secrets, mysteries and depth. This is possible, however, only in the fourth degree of hypnosis, when the soul is freed as much as possible from the coarse matter of the body and the experiment takes place through the oduší. Very few people are aware of the soul’s mysterious powers. Fewer still can make use of them.

These wondrous powers can be used to investigate the soul’s secrets. The desire to know hidden things surpassing normal natural possibilities has always been and remains within the soul, asserting its rights. I would say that God permits the existence of the soul, which is His work and resembles Him, to be revealed to the world. By bringing the subject into the fourth degree of hypnosis, we almost draw the soul out of matter and the ordinary senses; an astonishing change in mental processes occurs. No pain or suffering, worry or fatigue, annoyance or fear. Everything life brings passes away. Only the soul, liberated from the weight of matter, lives its God-given natural life of spiritual freedom in elevation and peace, overflowing with bliss, unlimited liberty, lightness, contentment and inner happiness springing from itself.

Most of the phenomena described fall within the fields of metaphysics and metapsychics. Metaphysics is the doctrine of absolute being, detached in experience and thought from our earthly SELF. It concerns itself with problems of being, wishes to know what lies beyond the barrier of our senses and what this existence is like. It works to bring us as close as possible to this external reality.

Metaphysics is the doctrine of being in itself, of existence beyond the wall of our senses.

(938) We all long for immutable, infinite, timeless, absolute being; everyone feels within himself that mysterious wish that shakes and attracts us. Let us not close ourselves off from reality.

Mental life has three aspects: emotional, rational and volitional. Let us therefore wish to know and understand, for what is relative passes away, while what is absolute is eternal.

Through study, experimental trial and practice, an experienced mystic sees beyond the curtain of things, sees that metaphysical realm of events forming the foundation of reality.

Today’s modern person, even the biologist, dislikes speaking about mental manifestations because he does not know what to do with them. Yet they are just as “biological” as the heart’s work or the growth of seeds. The world of matter and the world of spirit form one whole, one system. Human metaphysics is a metaphysics of the whole and will become a common starting point for understanding the living with an immortal soul, the living with a mortal soul, and the inanimate. Whoever has no understanding of logic and closes himself off from metaphysics and philosophical systems readily falls into the depths of incorrect thinking, even if he relies upon common sense. Experiment leads us out of uncertainty. Metaphysics, in my conception experimental psychology, must be able to provide tangible signs of the existence of the spiritual.

(939) Without support in experiments, uncertainty rules in philosophical, metaphysical and subjective science. Without experiments a person gropes in both the material and the spiritual realm, although he belongs to both simultaneously. He does not, however, belong unreservedly to either and therefore never attains absolute peace. Apart from revealed divine truths, only the rational faculty and a convincing experiment give certainty, growth of knowledge, and the possibility of emerging from darkness and expressing oneself as a settled being finding happiness, truth and God.

During experiments with subjects, one must preserve undiminished physical and intellectual strength, great clarity of thought and zeal in seeking truth.

A person sometimes asks himself: “Who am I? Why am I on Earth? Why do I have constant unrest, elevating wishes, a desire for activity, a longing for something better and more perfect? Who will explain me to myself, calm me, satisfy and enlighten me?”

(940) It is the activity of subconscious processes, the awakened powers, properties and faculties attained through experiment in deep trance, that reveal truth to our being, conditioned by consciousness, show the path of life, and also the first cause of all things, God.

The certainty of reason fully coincides with objective reality, for the soul’s manifestation in deep trance is actual, real knowledge, not idealistic knowledge.

Today’s person does not strive for rational knowledge of higher principles; his life is no work of creation, for instincts and will occupy the leading place in him. Rational knowledge is only an accompanying phenomenon for him. It is up to the person himself to investigate everything, including the fourth degree of the trance of the pure subconscious, that kingdom of God within us, where there are wisdom, gentleness, power, justice, knowledge of God and love. Through this he reaches the conviction that the foundation is given beforehand, and that God, not man, is the starting point of all views of life.

Editorial safety note before paragraph 941

The following accounts are historical religious interpretations and unverified medical claims, not instructions for hypnosis, treatment or preventing death. Do not imitate coercive procedures or assume that an unresponsive person’s condition is spiritual. Seek appropriate emergency medical help; see St John Ambulance’s CPR guidance.

(941) I conduct an experiment with the subject Mrs. L. She is in deep hypnosis, and I ask her to immerse herself in the essence of her own soul and examine her mental state. After a while I ask: “What do you feel?” “I feel wonderful and am happy. I am experiencing something unprecedented, indescribably pleasant and blissful.” “What is the reason that I and others do not experience the same spiritual bliss as you?” The subject is silent for a while, then says: “You are bound by matter and the world. Your body is above all a burden and great suffering for the soul. It is matter living through changes, disintegrating and subject to illness. It thereby disturbs, irritates and torments the soul. The world wounds the soul through wrongdoing, malice, fear and worries. Your soul is surrounded by all this, so bliss, happiness and contentment are suppressed within it.” I command: “Look, the world also provides us with various joys that bring bliss!” The subject: “This shallow, superficial and fleeting thing cannot be compared with the bliss of a soul unburdened by the body.” I ask: “Would this blissful state of the soul suffice for you to remain in it eternally?” The subject, enthusiastically: “Release me completely from matter; I will be much happier. I long for a source of happiness and bliss that you can never experience!” I ask further: “Where and what is that source of bliss?” The answer: “The soul’s own essence and God.” (Note: the subject, Mrs. L., lives very much in a worldly fashion and serves God little.) I state categorically: “I cannot let you go; you have a body like me, after all, and your duties in this world!” (The subject’s soul in its entire essence dwells freely and spatially in the released oduší. During a similar experiment, it concentrates itself in its SELF in the oduší in a peculiar way about two meters from its body. From these subconscious processes it directly governs the faculty of communication!) The subject’s voice becomes serious and sad. She recognizes her body, refuses to obey, and answers that she will not go back into the body and does not want to be in the world. She shouts: “I don’t want to return; I hate the world and everything in it; you only want to torment me by it!”

(942) At this moment the hypnologist must show decisiveness of will in order to master the subject. A subject of the physician Mesmer refused to return and died. To prevent this, it is indispensable to magnetize the subject’s entire body and create a radiant magnetic envelope preventing the release of the subject’s oduší. The soul is then compelled to obey. I consider this and say: “Look into the brain’s esplana!” After a while the subject begins trembling, wailing and lamenting. In answer to a question she says: “I see bad acts.” The subject’s state of mental depression and misery increases.

(943) I command: “You fully animate your body and are in pleasant sleep,” and interrupt the experiment.

I very often investigated this state of spiritual bliss and misery in subjects’ hypnotic sleep. I also put a checking subject to sleep, who informed me about the truth of the statements and the experience of these mental changes. During the experiment, checking subjects were often carried away and captivated by the blissful state of the soul of the subject being checked. They saw how the soul sensed its origin and entered within it into the splendor of majesty, while freed from matter. They maintained that this is the true, inner, natural state of every human soul and that the body and a bad life rob the soul of this free bliss. As long as the spirit is still connected with the material oduší, it is an inner experience of a world full of bliss without rational concepts. It is a metaphysical, absolute experience. Spiritual things and supersensory mysteries are concealed beneath sensory images.

(944) In some pure individuals, rays of this bliss shine through as far as consciousness itself. From such a sensitive I receive, for example, the question: “No one has yet explained to me what ‘my musics’ are. I have heard them since youth, truly exquisite musics. Surely it is not a hallucination; it accompanies me throughout life, such a pure, unearthly world, with hundreds of moods and images. I call them ‘gardens of souls,’ and when I am too material, they leave me.”

Another subject maintains that the captivating musical compositions of the world’s composers are only partial products of fundamental patterns stored as a source of blissful states within their own souls.

They confirmed that this is the most perfect and most exalted life, elements of spiritual beauty, bliss and delight in every possible enjoyment, springing from the soul itself in various unknown inner manifestations, in ever-new, never-repeated forms that the soul experiences in its perfection and unity.

The joy, pleasure and bliss that the soul’s own essence provides are always different in their effect. They never repeat themselves in the same enjoyment. They lack human imperfection. They are an infinite source, resembling God’s beatitude.

(945) Subjects reasoned that psychic thought activity is a dynamic force in itself. The mental processes of the soul’s own thought activity develop from an eternally inexhaustible source in ever-new variations: the dynamic force of the soul itself, without the aid of senses, sensations, perceptions or association of images and impressions from the storehouse of the esplana. It is an independent, higher world of thought of great perfection in itself. The soul does not know the material world as it does in bodily life, but through direct presence, penetration and ensoulment. It knows everything at once, through a single pure act.

The soul’s intelligence and faculty are at a high degree of perfection; it is fully unified in its being. Through reason, through perfectly direct knowledge of its essence, it attains infinite joy, thereby reaching constant beatitude, because it moves in absolute freedom. In rational thought and in will it is perfection in itself.

(946) Subject K. points out that flashes of this natural bliss of the soul, joined with the lightness of freedom through detachment from matter, are felt by people who use cocaine. It causes temporary numbing of the endings of sensory nerves leading from the brain, which mediate the soul’s connection with matter. The soul partially interrupts its connection with matter and frees itself from it as in hypnotic sleep, when the sensory nerves are likewise numbed. Hypnotic sleep, however, acts far more perfectly.

A person dependent on drugs who has experienced these states of the soul prefers to kill his body by snuffing or consuming the white poison, thereby destroying his nervous system, rather than renounce this blissful state of the soul. Through repeated cocaine doses, a person deteriorates bodily and mentally and becomes an inferior person. His soul longs for feelings of bliss, so he returns again to his vice, cocaine.

(947) Parents came to me with their thirty-two-year-old son and begged me to reeducate him in hypnosis, saying that a psychiatrist had advised it because their son had already been punished several times for serious crimes.

When at the third attempt I succeeded in bringing him close to the fourth degree of hypnosis, I detached his soul as far as possible from the body’s matter and let it experience its own mental state. Then I asked: “In what disposition and mood do you find yourself now?” He answered: “I feel wonderful. I cannot tell you in a way that you would understand. You do not have or know these feelings in the world.” Question: “Do these feelings come from outside?” Answer: “They are not my own. [Translator’s note: The supplied Czech reads “Nejsou mi vlastní,” literally “They are not my own”; its wording is retained despite the surrounding discussion of feelings arising within the soul.] I am inwardly happy and blissful; they arise in me as a heavenly gift. I have various other feelings and joys too that you do not have.” I continued: “Look, beside me sits a sleeping man; look into his brain and tell me where you now find yourself in your SELF!” The patient: “Here, in the space near you.” I asked: “Tell me what this man has done!” He answered: “I see that he robbed, stole and killed a man; he is an evil person. Come away from him at once!” I replied: “We cannot; he is asleep, after all, and his soul is just now carried away by beautiful feelings that I cannot understand. Go and bring his soul into his brain, so that he experiences his deeds!”

(948) The sleeper began trembling and howled painfully like an animal. In answer to my question he said: “I experience terror and horror at the acts of my life. I condemn and hate myself; I try to escape all these living images that torment me; I feel deep disgust at my life. All of it belongs to the world and appears to me as hideous horror; it touches me cruelly.”

To give him relief, I command: “Go and permeate the body of the child playing beside us on the floor! Look into his thoughts and acts!”

The lamenting ceased, and one could see the sleeping man’s appearance taking on the joy, contentment and happiness of an innocent child. After a while I send his soul to Mrs. P., whom I know to live a proper Christian life, and command him to look into her deeds in the esplana.

I observe how he again revives mentally and ask what he sees. He answers: “Nothing but joy, chiefly from her good deeds, which stand in the foreground and shine like a tall structure. I see the beautiful results of her help to people.” (Note: he was reading from protonace.) I asked further whether he also saw bad acts in the woman’s esplana. “I do, but they are hazy, scattered and insignificant, for they are overcome by good acts and deeds!”

I commanded him to return to his own body, where there were only evil deeds. He reared up threateningly and answered that he hated this body and would not go back. “Very well, but it is of no use to you, for you will not escape your evil deeds. They will constantly pursue you! Look into the protonace of your actions!” In renewed terror and lamentation he answers that he sees more than before in his body’s cerebral esplana: he sees the troubles, pains, grief and other consequences his violent acts caused people.

(949) I interrupted him with the question: “How could you have done so much evil? Where was your conscience?” He answered: “I crushed the reproaches and voice of conscience within myself through false persuasion and counterthoughts, against which the soul had earlier defended itself from within.”

Conscience gives correct pronouncements only when reason too is properly educated according to God’s law. Incorrect ones, on the other hand, when reason is obscured by superstitions, delusions and mistaken opinion.

I interrupted further lamentation by commanding the soul to enter its body again and strive, through deeds similar to those he had seen in Mrs. P., to balance evil with good for as long and to such an extent as would bring him contentment and peace. The patient calmed, assented and promised to make amends for everything through good deeds. Upon awakening him, as treatment I brought to the threshold of his consciousness a great aversion and horror at the deeds performed, and also tried to introduce there awareness of feelings of contentment and spiritual happiness. These were only fragments, but sufficed to satisfy and soften the terror evoked.

From this experiment it is evident that when the soul looks into the esplana or into protonace, it condemns itself. Bad deeds gnaw at it; it is terrified by them and suffers. Good acts and deeds refresh, enliven and gladden it.

The cynical criminal changed and became a good person. Although he had previously been punished sixteen times, afterward he did not commit even the slightest transgression.

(950) Anyone who is a mystic, a meditating or contemplative person, surely understands this experiment. He has a clear conception of the higher states of mystical life and himself struggles toward the soul’s very essence. Through its light of eternal truths, which he knows directly, he perfects himself and becomes a representative of pure spirit. Meditation, reflection and immersion within oneself, provides a person with a special grace that seems to open the gate of eternity a little and allows a glimpse of eternal light even in this life, if sometimes only for a moment. The act of meditation consists in fixing one’s mental gaze upon a ray of unlimited light whose source is God. As we have learned, the influence of meditation can be established and confirmed by experiment, by bringing a subject into the fourth degree of hypnosis with the awakening of subconscious activity. In it the soul comes to knowledge of itself. In the light of contemplation it recognizes the extraordinary misery of its soul and its discord with the light of truth. It recognizes the truth and essence of its soul, tastes the delight of the future life, its freedom, fullness, perfection, beauty, joy, love and peace.

(951) A person would rather commit a crime than reflect upon the metaphysics of life, self-knowledge, the search for truth, and the purpose and direction of life’s manifestations.

The metaphysical order is the only one that defines the degrees and values of qualities upon which life and culture can rest. This certainty is of vital significance to a person. It liberates him both epistemologically, loosening the boundaries of knowledge, and morally from the vicious circle of relativistic uncertainties. It is an objective and creative path leading to universal, supra-personal truth, and through it to the only true humanity in the Christian sense of the word. This moral principle must be the foremost concern in the contemporary culture of life, for otherwise there will be no distinction between culture and barbarism.

Contemporary man is afflicted by spiritual poisoning. He has departed from God’s natural laws and prides himself on having mastered the world technologically and become the source of life himself, yet weakness, worry, anxiety and fear remain. He forgets that this is his lot on Earth and that without God’s support he can do nothing.

Life has a different reverse and face from what we suppose through knowing it by our senses and reason. We must look at life from another standpoint and notice what is fundamental and essential within it. We shall then see an entirely different face of it. We shall see how its roots are anchored in psychic faculties that in everyone are only in a potential state, that is, in the capacity to manifest themselves.

(952) The human spirit has three faculties: vegetative, sensory and rational. The sensory and vegetative faculties relate to the body and the world. Through their own instinctual power they announce themselves and compel the whole human being to occupy himself with his body, the sexual instinct and the search for the most varied pleasures, so that the appetites of body and senses may be satisfied.

Only the third faculty, reason and will, does not itself announce a demand for the growth of mental life so that a person becomes a whole human being; these remain only in a state of readiness and must be awakened to activity, development, maturity and adulthood.

The powers of the first two faculties are shared with animals and assert themselves in connection with matter in the intellect. The spirit’s most necessary power, reason and will, can be exercised only in thought. Rational thought determines life. Reason is reality, self-determining thought. It is the reason of truth and forms ideas in spiritual form, retaining them in the esplana and realizing them in practical life for its better existence.

If the intellect lacks the faculty of reason and will, the powers of the first two faculties expand. Passions manifest themselves, disturbing harmony and peace and destroying life. Insufficiently awakened reason and will come into the grip of the first two faculties, which have a strong relationship to matter.

(953) Anyone immature in reason and will, who has not awakened their powers through education and practice, pays for it in life, finds himself in a constant struggle among these three mental powers, and is incapable, in his own freedom of spirit, of commanding himself as to what he may and may not do.

Through neglect of thinking reason and will, the whole of life is neglected. Healthy thoughts proceeding from reason put themselves into practice. They secure health, prosperity and safety. Developed reason gives self-confidence, awakens talents and makes it possible to understand fundamental laws. Training in thought and higher education support mental development and determine the individual’s fate. They provide him with the strength to direct those unrestrained faculties. If the first faculties are given free scope, reason and will are in their grip and serve them slavishly. At the same time reason is obscured and the will weakens.

Education brings light into reason, awakens the faculty of higher knowledge and the power of a strong will. It makes it possible to think about what reason itself chooses to work out, rather than what its body and senses present to it for thought. Through this, from ignorance of himself, a person founders in life, for he is guided by bodily desire rather than reason. [Translator’s note: the source’s transition “Through this” refers unclearly to the preceding contrast; the wording is retained.]

The spirit frees itself only when it proceeds from itself. This requires self-education and reflection upon oneself. Whoever reflects upon himself and educates himself will have a pure life, astonishing in its knowledge. Life will almost forcibly lift him upward.

Through healthy rational activity we must change and refine mistaken views and habits, for they contradict the principles of human knowledge.

(954) On June 21, 1943, after six in the morning, the wife of my friend V. died. The following day at ten in the evening, forty hours after her death, I performed an experiment with the subject Mrs. L. In hypnosis I sent her soul to the deceased woman to ascertain the cause of death. The subject stated: “The deceased is severely tubercular. They have this disease in the family. She became ill through an illicit intervention, with sudden, violent pathological bleeding accompanied by fevers. The tubercle bacillus multiplied greatly, and the patient died from weakness of the heart.” To the question of whether the deceased woman’s soul was still present in the matter of the oduší, I learned that it was. In addition, the subject stated that it was already two-thirds released from matter, but did not yet have full awareness of its being. I asked: “Can you arrange for us to converse with her?” The subject: “I am trying, but there is a being with her that protects her!” “Do not believe it; her husband is beside the deceased, and he does not know what we intend!” The subject observes, draws back, trembles and says: “That is not an earthly being; it does not have a body like that woman. It is a spiritual, immaterial being, beautiful and noble in soul, more perfect than I am, and I feel great awe before it. It does not wish us to disturb the separation of the soul from that good woman’s body.”

I commanded: “Ask that being who it is!” The subject then answers: “I want to, but cannot; my connection with subtle matter prevents me, matter like that with which the lady is connected. But I can still speak with her soul.”

(955) “Very well, but you must find out why that being is present!” After a moment of silence, the subject answers: “I see how the lady’s soul is protected from the influences of other, lower evil beings and from our interventions, should we wish to harm her.” I therefore asked no further questions about the being present, but asked the subject to inquire of the deceased whether she had any wish we could convey to her husband. Also whether she knew what had happened to her.

“Yes, she is aware of it, but separation and death came so suddenly that she still had much to say; now, however, she feels so wonderful. She also knows that we have roused her to consciousness, consciousness being the activity of the soul awakened in the oduší, and knows that we are influencing her!”

“Then ask her whether she would like to return to our world!” The subject: “I am asking, but she says never again, that she lives in nothing but radiance.”

“Present her husband and children to her!” The subject: “She is interested only in her daughter, who still needs her mother’s protection. She is not grown up and is weak. She wants us to tell the father not to forget the daughter when he changes his life. She says that other matters are trivial, apart from love of God.” I commanded: “Greet her! We will disturb her no longer. Only observe how much longer the soul will remain connected with the oduší.” The subject answered: “I see how the soul now leaves matter more quickly than at the beginning of death. It will still be present at tomorrow’s funeral, however.”

After the experiment I concluded that the unfamiliar spiritual being could only have been an angelic being. Besides evil spiritual beings there are good beings too, also of spiritual substance, through whom God protects His faithful at death.

(956) As people were dying, subject K. often pointed out to me that souls which during earthly life had sought, respected and followed God’s laws and truths, even if they suddenly died in grave sin, still had an opportunity to repent of evil deeds. This opportunity is granted at the stage of dying when the soul has left the cellular system to such an extent that it now dwells exclusively in the oduší. This is during the deterioration and fading of the esplana, about twenty-five to forty hours after physical death. At that time the soul regains awareness of its SELF and the use of reason and will.

A soul that during earthly life followed moral laws, sought good and the true goal of life, adorned the esplana and its interior with eternal truths. It gained immensely from these eternal patterns, still existing in the fading esplana and in the soul’s consciousness through the power of their own reflection, drawing attention to themselves and to the possibility of salvation through a free decision for good or evil.

(957) In the fourth degree of hypnotic sleep, it is remarkable to observe the freedom of the soul in the sick. A young man severely ill with tuberculosis visited me and asked me to put him to sleep and use his own mental power, which would then itself act from the subconscious to heal the body. The young man wanted to save himself at any cost. He clung anxiously to life and therefore sought every possible path to recovery.

He was a natural-born subject. He interested me greatly because he easily entered the fourth degree of hypnosis. For his soul to receive my health advice and commands, it was necessary to bring him only into the second degree, at most the third. If I used the fourth degree and allowed the sleeper’s soul to experience spiritual happiness, that was the end of the health treatment. Experiencing higher feelings, the soul was no longer interested in the body. Let us look at the patient during one such sleep:

I ask: “I see that you are exceedingly contented and happy. How long should I leave you in this happiness?” He answered: “I am happy within myself and want to remain in this happiness always.” “That is impossible. Before being put to sleep, you asked me to remind you during hypnosis that you wish to revive and heal your body with the aid of the oduší. Therefore encourage your body and will to bring it to health!”

(958) After a while I ask about the result and receive no answer. To a repeated question he replied: “I see that body and will not heal it. Let it not live! Let us go away from it; it torments me and it is not good within it!”

I object: “Look into the esplana, where you have so much desire and wishing to be healthy!” He observes for a moment and says: “That sick person had a foolish wish. He did not know he would be better without the body. You know how well I feel now that I no longer have a sick body.”

I follow with a question about what body he now has. He answered: “I am still in a body, but another, more perfect one. It is made of lightly material substance, almost spiritual, adapted for my expression. It does not weigh upon me, causes no pain, and is as fast as my thoughts. Wherever I want to be, it is everywhere with me.”

(959) Asked where he obtained the new body, he says: “It is released and radiates from this sleeper, from a great quantity of corpuscles,” particles of cell nuclei. “Would you be content with the new body eternally?” He answered: “I shall separate from this radiant and material body in eight weeks, but I shall live eternally. I want to have a beautiful body. Yes, this radiant body is intended for that.” (Note: religion instructs us about the glorified body, provided, of course, that we deserve it.)

I interrupted the conversation with the objection that we must treat the sick body. The subject: “We will not treat this ordinary body. It is already too late; we will not heal it. Do not send me into it; I feel wonderful as I am.”

“You are mistaken; you must return to your body. You still live with it and have done much wrong with it. Look into the esplana and into protonace. You must atone for everything through a virtuous, exemplary and devout life, through remorse for bad acts and balancing them with good ones. Then, when you later leave the diseased body, you will be eternally happy.”

After a long silence, the subject: “Let me go; I have seen everything; I must return to the body. Help me.” He was frightened. He felt the necessity of timely purification.

(960) Eight weeks later, in my apartment, I put subject K. to sleep so that I could observe the detachment of the patient’s soul during his dying. The predicted hour of four in the afternoon arrived, when the patient began to die. I command the subject to connect with the patient, not leave him for a moment during his dying, and report the whole process to me. I had safeguarded myself beforehand with suggestions repeated together that he would never go with the patient, but would remain with me always.

The subject describes: “He feels only slight pain because his body radiates little; the oduší is mostly in the head and around it; the soul is afraid and terrified. It sees all its deeds, its whole life. It has concentrated itself in its center in the brain, so all the esplana radiate strongly. A priest is with him, and they are speaking together about all his acts. The priest tells him to repent of his sins. He obeyed, and the priest gives him absolution. The esplana no longer radiate so strongly. I no longer see his evil deeds so clearly. I am no longer afraid; it is beautiful; we will be with him. People are coming here.” (Note: they were allowed to enter after holy confession.) “The priest gives him the Blessed Sacrament. How happy we are; its nearness and light affect all of us. He no longer sees his evil deeds. I still see them, but faintly. It is beautiful here; I want to be with him always. The priest prays. He says that he is already dying. Everyone weeps. He is not dying, he is alive; he himself tells me that he lives, that we must both tell them. He is already telling them not to weep, that he is alive and among them. That he is very happy, that they should rejoice with him. Yet they lament all the same, do not hear his voice, and disturb and unsettle him with their weeping. His mother presses upon his eyes and lays a wet cloth on his face. He does not know it. Do not disturb us! We feel wonderful; do not weep, we are here!”

(961) After several commands I succeeded in leading the subject away from the deceased man’s soul. The following day after noon I put him to sleep again to observe the soul as it detached itself.

It was one o’clock in the afternoon. I ask: “Are you in the deceased man’s presence? Is his soul still present in the oduší?” “Yes, it is!” Question: “Does he know that we are with him?” The subject: “Yes, but he is no longer so interested in us.” I ask: “Is his soul still contented and blissful?” Answer: “I can no longer approach him so closely; he is little connected with the oduší. Just now I see his whole life in protonace together with him. He sees it well too, but is no longer afraid.”

“Is he still happy as he does so?” “Yes, he has beautiful feelings that I cannot convey to you!” I ask further: “Are these beautiful spiritual feelings the same as yours?” The subject: “His are different, more perfect. I cannot experience them fully, just as you cannot experience mine. He will still suffer a little, however, for he sees his earlier life in protonace, but the soul’s blissful peace will no longer leave him.”

(962) We saw and observed the soul as it detached itself from the body of a man who, as a consequence of his illness, had led a comparatively good life. I often observed the state of the soul during dying in people whose lives had impressed more wrongdoing and evil into the esplana and protonace, and who died in the state in which they had lived. Without my describing similar experiments in detail, the reader can surely imagine what misery and horror appeared to the dying soul.

The subject used to see how dying sinners felt spiritual hunger, how the consciousness of their souls awakened and everything from their earlier lives came into awareness. He observed spiritual misery and darkening, disgust and horror at the wrongs and wickedness committed. It is a terrible, dark movement of the soul, deadening within it everything that would lead it to bliss. It is a phenomenon acting in the first moments of awakening into the second life.

In protonace the subject sees the deceased person’s sins, which are a scourge not only to him but to all humanity. Everything in his soul is gloomy, dark and cold; nothing warming appears. In other cases he observes how deeds of innocence, suffering, humility, faith and surrender to God’s will weaken, overcome and thwart destructive activity. He sees how prayer spreads blessing around itself and what effective grace it brings for another soul’s salvation. He sees the miraculous working of grace, how rays of blessing act upon those present at the sacrifice of the Holy Mass. In the darkness of human misery he also sees bright points, people who love justice and virtue and spread around them the light of blessing and bliss.

(963) I awakened the subject and put him to sleep again that same day before midnight, thus thirty hours after the patient’s death. I command: “Connect again with the deceased man’s soul!” A long pause followed. Then the subject said: “He is now only slightly connected with the oduší. He is still here, but I cannot reach him.” “Does he still experience that bliss?” I ask. “He has already freed himself greatly from the matter of the oduší, so I cannot reach him. In three hours his connection with the oduší will end.” To the question of what will happen next to his soul, the subject gives no answer. He has reached a mystery he cannot penetrate; he can no longer read secrets from the consciousness of the deceased man’s soul. He can know only those living in the esplana, in protonace, and those manifesting themselves through the oduší. He can, however, receive what the soul itself wishes to communicate directly. [Translator’s note: the source states “thirty hours”; this does not appear to match the preceding reported times.]

I recall the subject’s words during the administration of the Blessed Sacrament: “… its nearness and light act through grace upon all of us.”

During one experiment I was walking past a church with the sleeping subject K. Suddenly he stopped at the place where the high altar was. I urged him to continue walking, but the subject said: “The grace of bliss and peace has touched us; let us remain here!”

During another experiment, when he was released toward the church during the elevation at Mass, he said: “The light of grace from the elevated Sacrament reaches even beyond the church. If a hardened sinner happens to pass by, the power of grace will cause many to be saved even without their own effort.”

(964) I had the opportunity personally, without a subject, to observe the release of the soul in dying people. For example, I watched the death of an eighty-year-old woman. The physician and relatives around her bed declared that mental life had faded, that she was in a death agony from which she would not awaken, and that she no longer knew anything of herself. Through strength of will and attacks upon her subconscious, I attempted to bring her back to consciousness and speech. I succeeded. To my questions she answered that she knew what we were saying and thinking, how we were preparing everything for her funeral, and that at moments she even saw us. Then she again fell unconscious. Six hours later, at one in the afternoon, I came to see the old woman. With great mental exertion I again brought her to consciousness. With an effort she told me not to disturb her any longer, that she was leaving and felt well, more wonderful than she had ever felt, that nothing hurt, but that she had one wish: at nine that evening her friend would come to visit. She wanted me to convey her remembrance and final farewell. She knew that when the friend came she would no longer see her alive. Less than a minute after these words, a death rattle began and the old woman died. She had been well prepared for death.

Toward nine in the evening I went again to the deceased. Shortly afterward Mrs. V. entered, thinking she would still find her friend alive. I asked at what time she had decided on the visit. She told me: “At about six I went shopping and learned that my friend was dying. I decided to visit her immediately after supper.” Yet the deceased had announced her visit to us five hours earlier.

From this it is evident that only the body dies. The spirit frees itself. In the released oduší it sees us, knows our thoughts, awakens in its faculties and sees events that are yet to occur.

(965) From the preceding experiments we recognize that the human soul, a reflection of God, is created for a happy eternity, for within it is a source of immense beatitude, and it longs for eternal and lasting bliss, happiness and union with God.

Its obstacle, however, is the present body and the world with its malice and troubles. Only the Bible gives us the explanation that the first human being failed the test and through sin deprived himself of the sanctifying grace of union with God. The consequence was the darkening of reason and will, death of the body and the world’s hardship. God, however, took pity upon man. He established and revealed laws, commandments, various graces and sacraments to him, so that through his free will he could happily lead his soul out of the prison of body and world. We must, however, clear this path to absolute freedom and bliss through our life here below.

The sin of the first parents, which passes to all descendants, can be observed both from a physical standpoint and in hereditary matter, its burden, nature and psychic properties. The primordial substance, this material element, came from the Creator’s hand and, in view of its divine origin, was sanctified by Him for the construction of the universe. From this matter the human body was made; man was the first, through his reason and will, to profane it by sin and thus burden it with a disposition toward evil.

The esplana and protonace, which preserve our thoughts within themselves materially and indelibly, teach us of the action of our thoughts upon matter. From the law of heredity we already know that the matter of the cell nucleus binds within itself the characteristic racial traits of nations, aptitudes, inclinations, characteristics, appearance and individual character, inherited from generation to generation. If they sometimes cannot manifest themselves, they do not disappear but wait, perhaps for whole centuries, for a suitable time to assert themselves. Thus the first evil remained inseparably bound to matter and is inherited from one generation of descendants to another, bearing traces in the body and causing a disposition toward personal sin.

(966) Many a reader is led astray by the thought that because the human soul possesses an inexhaustible source of happiness and bliss, no one can deprive it of this. He may also suppose that sometimes it is not a sin to shorten one’s life, for the intrusive thought of ridding oneself of unbearable bodily and mental suffering through suicide can arise only from the depths of the soul itself. For it is aware of the continuation of its state of spiritual freedom and bliss without the body.

Yes, the desire is there. The soul wishes to rid itself of the body, but this is only an uncontrollable desire without the guidance of reason. Reason and free will live in consciousness, not in the subconscious. In the subconscious, reason and will do indeed awaken in certain cases, but only partially, so that they are insufficient to master the powerful desires for the soul’s violent liberation from the body. For this desire often springs from the lower-order subconscious or from the soul’s subconscious itself, longing for absolute freedom. God subjects man to a test and wishes him to earn bliss only here, in this world, during conscious life.

(967) God’s ever-living notebook, protonace, in which our good and bad life will be reflected forever, will never pass away. Only the human notebook, a book, film, photograph or the esplana, disappears and passes away.

Subjects say that this mysterious substance, whose essence we cannot comprehend, was created even before primordial matter for the glorification of God’s work. Protonace is neither material nor spiritual; it is something between the two. It is energy as substance. Protonace interpenetrates and permeates primordial matter in all its transformations. It is throughout universal space in order to receive within itself the entire divine work of matter, which lives in constant changes. It is the same with the acts of spiritual beings and the varied life of animals and plants. In protonace God glorifies Himself eternally. Created things are a reflection of God’s beauty.

All good clairvoyants in the fourth degree of hypnosis prove that protonace really exists. They describe our past acts and thoughts. They say that in protonace they see every individual’s whole life more clearly and truly than we see our present. They see the lives of extinct nations, the evil and good acts of individuals, human works, the buildings of vanished cities, nations’ struggles with one another, and the like. In protonace they do not see flatly, but in depth and space, in likeness indeed, but in individual acts and living events.

(968) In the lives of saints we read that in ecstasy they looked into past time, seeing and hearing moving people who had lived centuries earlier.

Ecstasy, proceeding from mysticism, and contemplation are not merely activity toward creation and effective love in being good to people. Within them, looking into protonace, the mystic points to the philosophy of whence he comes and whither he goes. The world perceived by the senses is indeed real, but for the mystic there is something else, greater: God.

A true mystic gives himself to God, not in order to give God to himself. He knows it is an error to seek God within himself, that is, himself as God, as a part of Him.

The universe is visible, tangible protonace, knowable in ecstasy, the aspect of love and the need to seek and love God. Mysticism, however, requires caution. Through a difficult struggle, in self-denial and the mortification of the senses, it allows one to approach the soul’s essence, taste prematurely from its source and converse with one’s pure subconscious SELF, most often in the belief that one is speaking with God. It is natural that many mystics become mentally ill through ignorance, overstraining their powers and carelessness. Their life is not natural. God gave man healthy senses, reason and will, laws and principles. He placed and revealed moral law in the soul and gave means for cultivating spiritual life, prayer, contemplation and reception of the sacraments, but did not demand unhealthy, violent mysticism.

(969) Many phenomena regarded as private revelations of God are merely conversations with the pure subconscious, although God truly spoke to certain chosen people and saints. He revealed His will to them, so that they became extraordinary instruments of His purposes, or divine revelation was a reward for their perfect and virtuous lives.

Even in conversation with the pure subconscious, the soul cannot proclaim anything incorrect or bad. This may concern natural moral law, given directly to the soul through its dependence on God, or extraordinary aptitudes, faculties and supernatural gifts, which the soul also knows fully.

In certain fields of knowledge and understanding the soul in the subconscious is limited, so that it cannot deliver pure and complete truth. For example, it cannot know anything of the state of a particular soul in purgatory or of life on another planet, nor can it penetrate the mystery of the origin of the smallest particles of matter, the essence of life in a seed or grain, and the like.

(970) Most of my experiments were investigations and glimpses into protonace. I reflected upon it greatly and recognized that for a living soul protonace is the most terrible warning.

Protonace: what immortal, imperishable, astonishing perfection! Nothing escapes it, no one outwits or deceives it! Throughout eternity it faithfully preserves everything within itself. It is substance, and substance is that which is immutable. It is incomparably more perfect than film, an image in a mirror, the most faithfully captured paintings and three-dimensional scenes. It is unsurpassed in capturing living reproduction, so that a subject in a good disposition prefers to determine a person’s diagnosis, character and appearance from protonace rather than from direct, actual perception. He says that in it he sees everything more clearly, vividly and perfectly than we see one another in reality.

(971) The soul is ceaseless activity and loves variety: variety of form in architecture and sculpture, of meaning in poetry, of sound in music, and likewise in the natural changes of present and vanished formations and phenomena.

Consider what a captivating view into the past of the entire universe protonace provides to the soul in the second life. It is a view full of varied, enthralling interests, feelings, delight and admiration. With freed and unburdened senses we shall directly and fully see past events, savor the taste of former fruits, hear the sounds of animals that once lived, and smell the fragrance of former vegetation. Looking back into protonace will be fully natural to the soul and fulfill one of its faculties for attaining bliss. Besides its inner blissful state of delight in knowing God Himself, the soul will continue to take an interest in the Creator’s work, in everything still present and developing toward greater perfection, in everything already created but vanished. Are the present worlds not only a millionth of those that have already vanished and whose reality and existence we have represented in protonace?

(972) The human spirit has the power and ability to create spiritual values in the substance of protonace according to its mental image, which remain there permanently without change. To convince ourselves of this, I took subject K. and told him: “In this part of the room I will create a beautiful garden that will remain permanently for your lifetime. Whenever you enter it, you will be mentally free and unfettered. Pay attention! Here you see two cypresses and a bench before them. Before you is a spacious garden full of the most varied plants. It is divided by well-kept paths and secluded corners with groups of trees, shrubs and rocks. To the right you see the most varied fruit trees, whose fruits you may eat; to the left is a rocky cliff from which crystal water springs, and before it a little lake with water lilies, colored fish and six swans. A stream flows out of the lake, winding between banks full of flowers and fluttering butterflies. In the garden you see the most varied, brightly colored birds flying about and hear their joyful song!”

I created the garden according to an exact plan prepared beforehand, which I vividly and plastically imagined in my mind. It was interesting to observe the subject’s bodily and mental change whenever he entered this garden. With an expression of happiness on his face and in his eyes, he walked about, observed everything, listened to the birds’ song, fed the swans, picked flowers and intoxicated himself with their scent, basked in the sun and ate various fruits of delightful taste. It was a joy to watch him and ask about everything. He was allowed to enter the garden for about an hour every day. He left it very unwillingly; it was necessary to induce him to leave even by command. Every day he looked forward to that beautiful experience. The subject was not brought into hypnosis upon entering the beautiful garden. It was sufficient for him to enter the place in the room where I had created the imaginary garden. At that moment the garden’s entire spiritual world emerged before him.

(973) For two and a half years he entered the garden, which gave his soul captivating enjoyment and peace. During my checking through the subject, it was interesting that the plan of the garden did not change; everything remained according to the original plan, right up to subject K.’s death. Another checking subject, who entered the fourth degree of hypnosis, confirmed the existence of the garden, of which he previously knew nothing. What I had not originally created spiritually, the subject did not see. He often marveled at the spirit’s power in creating a spiritual work. He could not understand how that work remained uninterruptedly and unchanged in living form, and how a person in whom, through strength of will, I had brought my subconscious SELF close to consciousness itself derived greater bodily and mental enjoyment from it than from actual things of the concrete world. It follows that the spiritual world is evidently more perfect and supremely blissful in comparison with the material world. It is interesting that a stronger, more advanced spirit can give a weaker one certain values of goodness and happiness. Conversely, a morally corrupt spirit can lead others toward evil. [Translator’s note: the source’s possessive “my subconscious SELF” is retained; its intended relationship to the person receiving the experience is unclear.]

(974) At death only our sense organs die, but the higher sensory and vegetative faculty remains as an aptitude that awakens in full strength, as is evident from experiments influencing subconscious activities.

I have used the words “eternal, immortal, most perfect”; protonace truly is and will remain so. It thus demonstrates the Creator’s eternal wisdom, forbearance and justice, for in protonace the soul will see itself at every time in the constant present, in good and evil acts, in thoughts once concealed and realized as evil or good, both in its own acts and works and in those of other beings.

For a soul destined for salvation but burdened by sin, protonace is in the second life a baptism of fire and an ever-living bond presenting acts that will torment and torture the soul until it cleanses itself of them through suffering. The mutual relationship between soul and deeds can be compared to the relationship between mother and child. For the spiritually damned, protonace is an endless eternity in suffering.

(975) The existence of protonace ranks among the foremost human discoveries. Through it God warns us beforehand against evil acts, but at the same time honors us in advance with the record of good deeds, thereby giving us inner peace and calm. In it He shows how sins and their offshoots wither in the heat of truth and divine mercy when we do penance.

If we ask a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis to have his soul look into its life in protonace, it is terrified and laments if it sees its bad acts, and rejoices if, conversely, good acts and deeds are there. Sadness seizes it if it does not see atonement predominating over bad acts.

The soul wishes to see atonement for evil: remorse, humility, confession, good resolutions and deeds, gentleness, forbearance, love of one’s neighbor and the like. These are medicines for the soul that balance everything bad.

(976) How do I treat a mentally ill person? By balancing a diseased thought with a healthy one. Once good thoughts predominate, it is possible to speak of recovery. What agreement in one and the same remedy for a soul burdened with sins! The same law applies to the soul’s health in both the natural and supernatural orders.

Let us be wise and live virtuous, God-fearing lives. Let us beware of evil, for it is a sign of weakness of will.

Through grave sins the soul is dead to heaven and comes to life through forgiveness, penance, by God’s grace. Conversation with God, prayer, is compared to dew moistening the soul’s parched ground.

(977) At death we depart somewhere from which there is no return. We depart utterly alone, each by himself, without help or support. We separate permanently from our loved ones. On this journey of complete solitude, only helpers of good or evil go with us. On the path of good one can step forward upright and with certainty of a better existence.

Let us build the best record in protonace through good example and good deeds while still alive. What a consolation it will be when one day, dying, we look upon our entire past life and say: “God, I lived only for You!”

Let us constantly examine our life, mental images, sensations and acts through our higher rational light! Then death will be the soul’s life, and life more or less its death.

(978) All the souls of children who died before birth or soon afterward, when they could not freely use reason and will, experience and will eternally experience their own perfect blissful state.

God wishes the salvation even of dying unbaptized children. He did not ordain that they should die without supernatural regeneration when they cannot attain supernatural beatitude. If they are without personal guilt, natural beatitude belongs to them. They do not know of supernatural beatitude and therefore neither long for it nor grieve over it.

This state of full inner light, absolute freedom and knowledge of their own essence through higher reason will be for unbaptized souls the most perfect and most exalted life, full of spiritual beauty, bliss and delight.

(979) Through our way of life we can attain higher perfection and eternal bliss. In knowing and looking upon God face to face, we shall actually experience His most perfect bliss. God engraved moral law in our nature; He gave us conscience, which dictates how we should act. He intended us to observe ethical laws toward others and ourselves. The condition for fulfilled, true happiness already here on Earth is to have not even a shadow of wrongdoing in our soul. I mean happiness that is indeed fleeting, but is at the same time a condition of eternal beatitude, so that we attain participation in life with God, helping us to know Him Himself and His invisible divine properties. Thus the soul finally attains that highest happiness and imperishable beatitude.

Not everyone will have the same share in the bliss of God’s essence. My subject K. likened it by analogy to the great number of circles forming around the place where a stone strikes the surface of water. Each circle bears a different enjoyment of bliss. Some will share in the essence of the first circle, others simultaneously in the essences of four, fifteen or more circles. Their beatitude will increase according to the life they led on Earth.

(980) If we look into the mysteries of the realm of the human spirit, we must care for our soul’s salvation. It is not material; it is uncompounded, without particles, of a spiritual substance. It cannot be divided and is not subject to destruction. It is self-subsistent and has perfect activity within itself. It cannot enter a state of inactivity; it is immortal in being, knowable within itself, and knows all other material things directly. It can live both within and without the body. As spirit, it is not bound to space and matter. It follows that the life of a simple being is higher than that of a composite being.

The soul’s divine qualities are eternal. Of course, it is not like God. God is unreceived, unlimited being, existence itself. Everything else we see around us has received, contingent and limited existence; it simply need not exist. Man received existence from God. Only with Him will the soul attain perfect knowledge of itself. Human life is therefore an immensely precious gift from God. Here on Earth we can neither comprehend its scope nor imagine and think it through. A human being with a soul is not a phenomenon of chance. Chance is a word invented by human pride to conceal ignorance.

(981) There is no effect without a cause; every effect has its cause. If someone asserted that grain had not grown from seed, children had not been begotten, the will was not the cause of willing, and thoughts arose without a thinker, he would rightly be considered mad. What are we to think of those who say that the world and man arose by chance, of themselves, and do not believe that God is the cause of the creation of the world and man?

According to the unbeliever, there is no soul, only a brain that manufactures thoughts as a factory manufactures goods.

(982) A person whose view is solely materialistic philosophy is not reasonable. An immaterial thought cannot arise from matter, because it does not belong to the same order. Matter cannot be the philosophical foundation, for it can be transformed into energy. In a person whose first fundamental thesis is the dependence of all processes upon matter, it is evident that he denies God’s existence, the creation of the universe and the being of the immortal soul. The subject’s subconscious processes refute this philosophical error. Experiments in trance provide objective truths. They clearly demonstrate that material reality and spiritual reality exist. Both are perceptible through our senses and rational knowledge. The foundation of man is spiritual. Matter is subject to his powers. It is the spirit whose expression and activity bring knowledge of what matter actually is.

Through modern research, experiments with subjects, we obtain proofs, clear ideas and knowledge concerning the human soul, God and the world, corresponding to actual reality.

(983) Higher, educated reason, our thought, correctly knows the world as it is. A scientist’s reason can recognize that in nature there are order, law, purpose and perfection. There are the laws of Kepler, Newton and Mendeleev, regularities in the division of the chromosomes of cell nuclei, and the purpose and perfection of instincts in living nature. The instinctual basis of the construction of a honeycomb always has the same angular value in every wax honey cell, ensuring the greatest capacity with the least expenditure of material. Also astonishing are the universally valid, constant and immutable “universal constants.” These include, for example, the speed of light, the mass of the electron and proton, the electron’s electric charge, gravitation and the cosmological constant. All are a kind of boundary stones of relativity, foundations of world processes. Everything is in a state of coming into being and passing away, movement and change, except the fundamental constants. At every step, in a telescope’s field of view or a drop beneath a microscope, in a blade of grass or a person’s hip joint, in the construction of the heart muscle and the like, we find order. Order, law, purpose, perfection! Order cannot be explained without an ORDERER, laws without a LAWGIVER, or the universal mechanism without a MECHANIC! Scientific experiments and work actually bring God’s existence closer and confirm it irrefutably. Through experiments we arrive at the correlation of human souls with the universe’s eternal order. The meaning of the world, that which rules as eternal lawful necessity, manifests itself in the human soul and becomes present reality within it. From the soul proceeds the meaning of the world. The psychic is not limited by corporeality, for what rules within the soul is order. The best proof of the correlation of human souls with the eternal order of the universe is theoretical mathematical calculation applied to the world of reality.

(984) The human spirit changes the world surrounding it. Science observes and measures things’ external appearance and determines their conditions through experience and hypotheses. The conditions of our happiness, however, are not physicochemical in origin; they always proceed from our conscience and moral and religious experiences. In the Gospel there are lights that complete our spiritual interior without necessarily conflicting with the findings of science.

(985) The ignorance of many is so great that they do not believe in the immortal soul, although on the other hand they accept the research of biologists who scientifically demonstrate that various kinds of bacteria exist that live for hundreds of millions of years. They were found in rocks and coal and revived sufficiently to begin multiplying in suitable soil, although they had spent so long several kilometers beneath the ground. Hundreds of millions of years, almost eternity, can be lived even by mere bacteria, an insignificant material protozoan composed of particles. A protozoan subject to division and destruction, yet capable of an almost endless life. [Translator’s note: the source calls bacteria “protozoa”; this historical biological claim is retained.]

Can the simple and uncompounded human soul, naturally incorruptible, not live an eternal and immortal life? What an awakening at death awaits all those who underestimate and deny its immortality!

(986) The attentive reader already knows that once a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis has known his own pleasant mental states, he has no interest in the recovery of his own body and resists returning to it. He is not interested in worldly pleasure, fame, property or the environment, which in hypnosis he understands as unrest, pain and suffering. Let us realize how perfect the soul’s state must be upon complete detachment from the body and its salvation!

In the lives of saints we can explain their disdain for life, property and the world’s joys: during devout contemplation they entered rapture, in which they experienced the same states of the soul as a subject in hypnosis. With this difference, however, that much of the bliss penetrated as far as the consciousness of their pure bodily life.

The mystic in ecstasy reaches the experience of that bliss through God’s grace, whereas the subject through a hypnologist’s help. The result is therefore different. The mystic carries his experience into consciousness, whereas the subject merely gives a report of the state of beatitude. After awakening he knows nothing of it.

Science has the opportunity to verify that mystics’ reports of their experiences are true.

(987) The soul longs for an absolute goal; it wishes to behold its being. Its inner glory, being and properties wish to be known and loved. God placed in the soul a longing for Himself. The soul recognizes that participation in divine nature awaits it, in a life immeasurably higher, supernatural. A person, with his immortal soul and insatiable longing for happiness, must have a sufficient goal capable of satisfying his desires adequately.

God is pure, infinite spirit, and therefore cannot be seen and known naturally. Knowing and beholding God is supernatural. Likewise the light of His glory is a supernatural, pure and lasting quality granting the blessed participation in divine nature. According to merit, it is lesser or greater. God strengthens the human faculty of cognition. It is only necessary for reason to be raised above those merits into another order of cognition, the one according to which God knows Himself… This supernatural power that God adds to reason is that light of glory. The vision of God is the soul’s knowing, its inner act.

To participate in divine nature means to share in its activity, to know God in a divine manner, as God knows Himself, that is, through direct vision. The light of God’s glory illuminates the reason of the pure, righteous and blessed, strengthens the faculty of cognition and is the foundation of human glorification of God.

Every person of goodwill who thinks healthily and rationally and knows clearly penetrates the mystery of reality. Revealed truths and Christ’s teaching are his helpers. Without them a person lives in uncertainty, feels his abandonment and life’s futility. He has no certainty about the knowledge and understanding he has attained.

The great philosopher, scholar and thinker, the righteous man Aristotle, who addressed life’s problems, did not resolve the meaning and goal of man. Before his death he spoke the words: “In uncertainty I lived, and in despair I die. Being of all beings, be merciful to me!”

(988) Human personality develops and arises here on Earth laboriously and with difficulty. When it has formed, death comes. What then? Is the mental personality destroyed too?

The idea of immortality is not a discovery of philosophy. For it is difficult to comprehend. On the contrary, however, through performing an experiment it is entirely simple and natural.

Between space and the universe, between time, form and body, time and eternity, life and immortality, there are peculiar, mysterious relationships.

What applies to space and its relationship to infinity applies analogously to time and life, to matter and form.

If space is destroyed through the disappearance of material worlds, however, it immediately enters infinity. When time has passed, it enters “eternity,” the eternal duration of the eternal present.

(989) When life is at an end, it enters eternal life, returns to immortality. Thus man has set out on his path, his journey into an adventurous and tearful world. Slowly, however, he journeys into the world of immortal eternity.

An aware and rationally balanced person does not resist the destruction of his apparent earthly reality. He knows that he struggles for knowledge of the final blissful reality, knowledge of God Himself, his Father and Creator.

“God exists” and “the human soul is immortal” must influence a thinking person’s life!

The soul, the likeness and image of God, reason and will survive their body, for by their nature they are immutable even after separation from it. What is composite perishes of itself. The human body disappears through disintegration, for it is composite, corruptible and changeable. With the earthly body, the animal spiritual principle of the lower order disappears: the vegetative and sensory faculty. It remains, however, as a higher aptitude in the faculty of reason and will.

The human soul perishes neither directly nor indirectly. It is incorruptible through its spirituality, and thereby independent of matter in its own being. It has self-subsistent and independent immaterial activity proceeding from its essence, in which it is aware of itself in its SELF.

(990) Science, spiritual strength and virtue perfect the human spirit and require a certain detachment from the body. Science is the work of abstraction. The more the spirit rises toward the immaterial, the more perfect its knowledge.

To die means to awaken completely healthy with all former faculties and memories, for our earthly life has passed into memory, into the soul’s consciousness.

To die is the blessing of the event called death. Let us therefore raise praise and sing a song of the death of this body, for our immortal and incorruptible life of the soul consists in its best activity, that is, in its perfect knowledge of itself, its spiritual essence, and in participation in the knowledge of blissful states flowing from its essence through participation in God’s love and nature. Thus a person reaches his goal.

(991) Earthly life is rather death, and only death is life. Death ends only the life of bodily matter. For the soul there begins the highest freedom and independence, the actual unfolding of full life. Its vegetative faculty, until the reception of an immortal body, has passed into a potential state. The sensory and rational faculties assert themselves directly and immediately, far more perfectly than in connection with the body or with the aid of the oduší in the fourth degree of subconscious processes. In true liberty and freedom, reason and will fully exercise their faculties.

A soul that followed moral laws, sought truth and good, and has not yet attained complete perfection gradually gains through punitive purification full participation in the source of bliss provided by its own nature. Its enjoyment increases through knowledge and the vision of the beauties, perfections and majesty of the Creator’s work, the entire material and spiritual universe. A spirit that has won a higher degree of perfection has still higher enjoyments of bliss and delight from participation in God’s essence and higher life.

(992) All knowledge and memory of life in this world are preserved for souls in the next world, for everything we have known has passed into the soul’s consciousness. In the second life everyone will recognize and see all those who once did him evil. He will see their suffering, they in turn his joy, but neither will any longer be able to help the other. Not because distance or an inaccessible place forms an obstacle, but because the souls of evil people live in the state of unfreedom they prepared for themselves.

The souls of the righteous will no longer have any pity for the misfortune and suffering of evil souls. Compassion, fear, pain and evil have receded. For the soul there will no longer be night or darkness, only constant light.

Righteous souls will know of all this world’s activity and see its further development, but nobler and more perfect things will take precedence and overshadow interest in it. They will also see all the acquaintances and loved ones whom they left through their departure, but an unfamiliar, morally more perfect soul will be closer to them than a morally lower one, even if it were their own wife, mother or child already exercising the freedom of reason.

(993) You ask where souls will be after death? Whether on planets or at some other place in universal space? Righteous souls that attain absolute freedom, liberty of spirit, reason and will, will be wherever their interest and relationship to the Creator’s work lie. Evil souls will not have such an interest, because they have lost it. Evil has limited their liberty and freedom; their mental state has taken on darkness, which is the place of all the bad deeds eternalized in protonace. But souls that have not attained perfection must also purify themselves in similar ways. According to the degree of their guilt they enter a state similar to that of damned souls. Their liberty and freedom are denied them for a certain time, which they comprehend in the next world too.

Spirit freed from matter is not dependent on space, time and matter. Astonishing distances and the weight of material bodies have lost their terror for the soul and become accessible. Through essential perfection, through a mere “I will,” the soul has entered into presence on any planet. Time has disappeared and become the eternal present. The soul has not, however, lost its inborn ability to comprehend matter and the time and space dependent upon it, for it has a sensory and rational aptitude for them.

(994) The soul does not depend upon created space. It need not fill it with its presence and does not need it for itself. It does, however, have the ability to occupy a large part of space at once and be omnipresent within it. All the souls our Earth has ever hosted can, through their faculty, all together occupy the smallest conceivable space, for example the space of a single atom, while having as much free room as though they occupied the whole universe. This means that time, space, weight and the size of matter have receded before the liberty, freedom and perfection of the spirit’s essence. For the soul can live, express itself and be blissful even outside created things.

(994a) The essence of the soul’s immortal principle has within itself an infinite and unknown source of aptitudes, faculties and properties, of which only a tiny part is exercised in life. Only experiment in the soul’s transcendent state brings us closer to the source of psychic faculties. What we discover through experiment directly astonishes us. We find that these psychic gifts are not intended for life in this world. Subjects say that through experiment we acquire only a tiny part of them. These gifts are given potentially and exist in a latent state for the soul’s activity in the periods through which life will pass. God is constantly active as Creator; the human soul too is therefore created in God’s image and must exercise its creative activity in eternity as well. Only there will it exercise and gradually develop its astonishing source of aptitudes, faculties and properties that God placed within its essence.

In its development and perfection, the soul will pass through a development of gradual contemplation, knowledge and exercise of its faculties, so that no developmental leaps occur.

(994b) God raised man into the supernatural order, so that his final goal is to behold God and know Him. As a guarantee, an admission ticket to this supernatural life, God placed sanctifying grace into the souls of the first human beings. Only in gazing upon God and knowing Him, in the soul’s participation in God’s very essence, lies man’s highest goal and also the source of all knowledge of the human soul. The first human striving must therefore be to live and also die in God’s grace. Christ instituted the sacrament of penance so that we might regain this lost grace at any time. Otherwise the human soul, in its essence and existence, misses its final goal, for which it was created and which is participation in God’s life.

(994c) In this life the immortal rational principle of the soul forms a unity, one soul, with the lower animal, instinctual psychic principle, whose foundation is matter, which in this unity it enables to exist organically. The vegetative and sensory souls are capable of existence only in connection with matter. In earthly life the immortal principle develops only a tiny part of its aptitudes, faculties and properties.

After separation from the material body and its animal soul, the rational principle, which is of an immaterial and nonenergetic essence, will unfold through gradual development. This will be a higher spiritual growth in purification and perfection, as well as a development of potentially given psychic aptitudes, faculties and properties toward more perfect activity and knowledge of itself and of created and spiritual things.

(994d) After the period of worldly life, the immortal soul, freed from matter, will enter a further period in which the soul is united with the immortal, glorified body, together with its vegetative and sensory soul, which will already be under the absolute rule of developed reason and will and enter into lasting unity with it.

Subject K. clearly recognized that matter too will pass through gradual development before union with the soul and the glorification of the body occur. In this higher life of the perfect body and of a soul enlightened in reason and will, a person will gradually develop and exercise further aptitudes, faculties and properties belonging to this glorified life. This life of a high moral level will share in the bliss and perfection of its own essence, in the Creator’s work, and gradually in God’s essence as well. The soul cannot be without activity; it will develop its potentially given functions belonging to this perfect and eternal life.

(994e) The human soul is a great mystery, with astonishing potential that can continually be perfected in the next life. The foundation for life after death is already given in this world. The higher the degree of virtues a person exercised and strove to develop and perfect, and the greater the number of morally good deeds, the greater the bliss and reward in the state of glorification. Those who neglected moral life and the striving for perfection will be surpassed by those who lived and died in a state of higher perfection.

Blissful life after death rests upon our inner willing and striving to be perfect. But it is also a striving for knowledge, a desire for art, understanding and creation. Whoever does not make an effort will not fully develop his psychic source either now or in the life after death. There are differences among people in both present and future life.

(994f) The elements of bliss lie in the freedom and liberty of the spirit, the development of the psychic source, participation in one’s own essence, relationships to the Creator’s material and spiritual work, one’s own creative activity and participation in God’s essence. The human spirit exercises its existence and activity in a space greater than our Earth, thereby fully developing freedom and increasing its bliss. Whoever lacks that admission ticket of having died in sanctifying grace will not receive these gifts. His psychic source will not develop in a natural direction, and relationships arising from spiritual darkness will turn toward his own torment and toward evil. The reward will differ for everyone, but will be just. Some will share only in the bliss of the essence of their own glorified body and soul. Others will increase it through their own creative activity and participation in the Creator’s material and spiritual work, or attain differing participation in God’s essence. Human life must be reflected upon seriously and secured. With proper instruction and enlightenment, free and voluntary transgression of the natural moral order and God’s law is a grave sin.

(994g) Man is the first fruit of all creation. His final goal is life with God. He can save himself only by knowing and fulfilling God’s truths, thereby fulfilling Christ’s redemptive mission. Ignorance and indifference toward truths are the cause of the loss of heaven and the root of all evil, a constant brake upon the exercise of the spirit’s development. If you wish to be reborn and find the right life, go into the depths of the spiritual source, Christian principles and truths. You will then know of the soul in the body and that you should have God in the soul.

Many believe that the human soul must reincarnate in this world and atone for the evil it has committed until it reaches moral perfection. They confirm their conclusion through corresponding connections among various visions of punitive purification for earlier transgressions. Subjects brought into the second to third degrees of trance interpret and illuminate these transgressions for them. This view, however, is mistaken. We know that our organism bears a phylogenetic deposit. Through experiment we find that various radiant particles of certain kinds of pyrotons, silotons and megatrons are released from the structure of the human cell, chiefly from the nucleus and protoplasm. Other kinds of pyrotons, through their movement from potentiality to actuality, are bearers of the embodiment of our ancestors’ entire lives.

(994h) Through its particles the human body is a microcosm of the entire human race. The particles activate the soul in the subconscious toward some activity through the power of reflection. The subject’s subconscious sees in them and draws from them whole lives of individuals, and, through a lack of judgments that the subconscious does not possess, does not distinguish the soul’s present essence from the former one. It describes only what it sees. It connects a previous crime with the affinity of existing evil or punishment.

Many subjects mistakenly interpret this supposed connection through insufficient depth of hypnotic sleep and insufficient rational judgments. Many thinkers defend this supposition too. It suits them for a freer and less responsible life, for they are convinced that through reincarnations they will attain a higher life. Life on this Earth occurs only once. Subjects in the fourth degree of hypnosis confirm it. It follows that we never return to the present material body. I maintain that reincarnation, metempsychosis, does not exist.

The description of life after death, of the activity, states and duration of mental personality, was provided in answer to my questions by the subconscious SELF of my subject K. itself, from truths it recognized and which are only a mere flash of reality, of immortal eternity.

76. Space, Time and Protonace

(995) From the preceding discussions we already know that protonace is something actual and objective, outside us indeed, but from which during experiments we draw information for our senses.

Protonace precisely distinguishes and gives effect to space and time, thereby granting them substantiality.

Objects cannot exist without space; space actually arises through them. Without bodies there is no actual space, and without the movement of bodies there is no time.

Reality cannot be attributed to space itself, except perhaps as a concept in thought. Space and time are not material islands floating in something outside them. The concept of space is external in nature, that of time inward. In protonace, however, both have the character of reality.

Like a painter outside the canvas, the Creator worked outside time and space. These are only parts of His creation. Creation was an act of thought. Time and space formed a framework for thought and necessarily arose as part of this process. God created the world not in time, but with time.

(996) Our thoughts are bound to space and time. Just as in mental processes we cannot comprehend the external objects of our sensory perceptions without space, so we cannot understand the succession of perceptions without time. As time is an interval between mental images or perceptions, space is an interval between external objects.

Many suppose that space is finite and limited. But this cannot be spoken of at all. Just as time in eternity is infinite and unlimited, so it is with space. Wherever matter arises, space always arises, without any prior coming into being.

(997) Astrophysical cosmic space exists wherever primordial matter is present, where celestial bodies arise and endure. If these bodies vanished together with primordial matter and protonace, space would become a mere empty concept.

The concept of space has meaning only when joined to a body of a certain dimension or to an event occurring in space. Only where there is some body and where forces radiating from it act does space occur.

For this reason matter and the material formations of nebulae can recede from us at enormous speeds into infinite distances, and yet the space of eternity will always be there. This, however, cannot happen to matter endlessly. Although matter expands in space for millions of years, the process is bound by the laws of the force of mutual attraction, so that after billions of years it will expand again and contract again. It is a kind of breathing of matter in space.

(998) Time is an eternally flowing stream; through the creation of protonace and primordial matter it is finite. Protonace and primordial matter are finite because they were once created. Because time and space depend on matter, they too are finite. The theory of relativity and a scientific experiment with the bending of a light ray confirmed that the universe is not infinite, but limited in space and curved upon itself like the Earth’s surface.

The Creator caused protonace to arise even before primordial matter, so that from eternity it might receive within itself His entire plan of the cosmic universe, thus including the creation of primordial matter.

There are as many times as there are stellar bodies. Every time is its own, local, and none has precedence over another. It is therefore possible to choose any measure for time without being bound to the time of our planet.

Time is something independent of matter and space. Time and space are in the closest mutual relationship.

With the same length of life, each of us can live according to a different time. Physiological and biological time differs from astronomical time, which always flows uniformly.

Time on our planet has no being of its own; it is our invention, for we derive it from things moving around us. It is an abstract concept necessary for our life.

(999) Alongside physical time there is physiological time, connected with our duration. Physiological time differs from physical time measured by clocks. Physiological time runs quite differently, and its course depends upon the organism’s states of growth.

Time arises in causal connection as a function of movement; it presupposes change, movement, in any sense. Movement in turn presupposes space in which it develops and acts. Normally the concept of time is connected with flowing time, which knows past, present and future. It is not, however, connected with stationary time.

After death there will be a single present, which will be the form of actual being in a constant now, even when looking into protonace.

Space is filled with a continuous, all-pervading, immutable substance of eternal duration, almost spiritual in essence, which has the foremost properties.

(1000) Just as we keep records and notes of our work, activity and achievements, write books, photograph and make films, the Creator does the same with His work in the most perfect manner, through protonace, adapted to this by its nature and properties.

Protonace is an “intelligent” force, as though animated by spirit, in which everything is in living motion. By bringing the subject’s soul into past time, to particular places and a particular period, absent, invisible objects and events emerge in an instant, as though transported here from the unknown, from the next world, and suddenly become visible. Knowledge of the world’s mystery in protonace becomes clear and disclosed for spirit, and partly for man; past, present and future are actually an enduring simultaneity.

(1001) The created material world does not exist without purpose. Its entire chemical and physical development is faithfully and uninterruptedly captured upon the “photographic film” of protonace, which fills the entire space containing everything created and permeates all primordial matter and bodies, everything alive. Divine providence cares for the world and maintains order within it. The law of probability confirms that there are no “necessary” natural laws, but that the whole universe is governed by order; it is care for the natural order.

Matter is characterized by constant movement. Its transformation and the formation of worlds and bodies, every change in them, occur at a particular time and in a particular space. In protonace it leaves a faithful record of permanent, fixed, temporally separated points, as they were physically formed in time at a particular place in the space of protonace’s substance and distributed according to their positions as bodies from their very origin.

Protonace thus provides spirit with fixed fundamental points. From them it will be possible at every moment to establish the positions of forming and moving bodies. Protonace gives matter a kind of foundation testifying to its actual being in all its transformations.

Just as objects are situated in space and time, so are all events. Our thoughts too are bound to space and time.

(1002) Events concerning humanity can already now be established and checked, in temporal sequence, through a subject in the fourth degree of hypnosis. We place the testimony of our lives into protonace.

For the time being, the insufficient dynamic power of the oduší prevents the observation of the matter of bodies in universal space.

Nature places its objects in the space of protonace. Our thoughts and acts likewise become materialized within it, so that they are truthfully and reliably situated in space and time. We already know that we can lead a subject in trance backward in time into a particular space, to uncover and reveal past things to us.

Every event is objectively situated in time and space. We thus understand space and time as objective reality, not as subjective mental images or products of an individual’s interior.

(1003) Protonace has become part of eternity. Within it, in time and space, lived processes and events of the mental and material worlds arrange themselves beside one another. It gives our senses knowledge that an event occurred at a particular moment in time, thus in its precise and clear position in time and space.

The temporal changes and courses of all events are stored in protonace as realities. These records are characterized by indestructibility, so that in our further life they will be confronted with our SELF again.

77. The Inner Life of the Soul

(1004) The human soul is an inexhaustible spring of longing for absolute truth, certainty and knowledge, for the absolute value of life, beauty, love and happiness. The innermost essence of man, the soul, is a reflection of God. It is of divine origin and has divine qualities. From divine perfection it received a certain part of each, so that it is endowed with spirituality, immortality, rationality, clarity and free will. Through these it reveals the features of the divine being. It is dependent, not Being in the proper sense, but an analogue of Being.

For connection with the material body, the soul is endowed with three faculties: vegetative, sensory and rational. Let us reflect upon these powers of the soul and try to analyze them, separate them from one another and observe them in their individual isolated states and manifestations. We are most interested in the rational faculty, which we shall now examine and analyze.

(1005) Man is body and spirit. The foundation forming human personality is already potentially given beforehand in both the material and immaterial spheres. From this foundation personality grows. Every person, even while resembling others, is unique. He has personal characteristics, character, aptitudes and faculties; he thus has activity of his own and is capable of giving it his own form. Activity receives its form from its bearer, the personality, and this in turn from the hereditary embodiment of genes and from the subconscious activity of the spirit and its laws.

From the material foundation of the soul of the lower order, vegetative and sensory, grow instincts, passions, impressions, feelings, inner impulses, sympathies, antipathies, desires, inherited aptitudes, faculties and talents.

In the order of spirit lies the realm of reason and will, thought and love, knowledge and truth: honesty, prudence, courage, justice and moderation. The awakened soul takes into its own hands command over its affairs, over its “fate.” Lawfulness is necessary in both thought and moral life. For the shaping of personality and formation of characteristics, there are parents, conditions at home, environment, social factors, bodily constitution and the endocrine glands.

Emancipated and unaware mothers deform children’s characteristics and create weaklings in character and reason. The modern world of reason has ceased to act reasonably. The nothingness of a badly brought-up person permeates his whole being. In such an existence there is no inner coherence or character, no inner continuity or any lawfulness. Such a person is determined only by his acts; he is what he does. He does not conform to morality, but is an absurd, abandoned being who does not know who cast him into this world. He becomes divided and double. The only proof of his own existence is despair, the illness of a person who wishes to possess the world precisely at the moment when an ontological, really existing, dizziness at the futility of this possession seizes him. The feeling of life in such a person who understands his condition is anxiety, fear, dizziness, solitude and abandonment. For he has no commands and knows no objective values according to which he might decide.

(1006) If reason is turned inward, it becomes an aristocrat of the spirit and shines as a source of light for itself. Through his wisdom, an aristocrat of the spirit sovereignly governs not only himself but also the slavish conduct of people only apparently wise. He creates perfect order within and around himself.

The human soul, coming from God’s hands, was beautiful and perfect, for it is the image of God Himself and resembles Him. It was not supremely perfect like God, for what is created is limited. At the moment of creation it acquired perfect awareness of its existence and essence. Through its own movement, by the inner light of reason, the soul experiences “at lightning speed” awareness of itself and its spiritual growth in knowledge of its advantages, perfections, aptitudes, faculties and properties. It recognizes that it is God’s creature, destined for eternal life, that it moves in absolute freedom and is blissful in and from itself. Every soul experiences this perfect life and knowledge of itself at the moment of creation through the light of unimpaired reason.

A change occurs for the soul when it joins the material body, that is, the embryo, which in its nucleus, in the genes, is burdened by the sins of its ancestors. Reason is considerably obscured and freedom greatly restricted, so that it can realize nothing or bring anything to its goal. The life of the will is dependent upon bodily radiant energy, in which, in the so-called subconscious, it has a certain freedom of expression, as experiments confirm. During bodily growth, the vegetative and sensory faculties assert themselves. The faculties of reason and will remain in the human body in a potential state, awaiting their development, full maturation and exercise in life. These faculties long for the fullness of free expression, but through insufficient upbringing remain unawakened. In their weakness they then serve the passions and desires of the healthy body, in which the vegetative and sensory faculties fully indulge themselves at the expense of the rational faculty.

(1007) In educating reason we must not forget the education of a strong will. Reason knows and deliberates; the will decides. Therefore even a rational and moral person may fall and serve the body’s hereditary desires. We then wonder that someone who was our example has fallen so low. His will was weak. If a strong spirit is not awakened to life through proper upbringing, it exercises its faculties spontaneously and one-sidedly, for example through poetry, music, painting, often confused instruction, prophecy, sometimes clairvoyance, doubling and the like.

All three faculties wish to find expression in human life, yet reason and will often atrophy. Although reason is intended for knowledge, there is still much darkness around us. We awaken spiritually only through upbringing, self-education and the desire for knowledge. In reason, the awakened soul has the ability to examine itself and penetrate metaphysical mysteries.

(1008) The soul, spirit, is the bearer of conscious activity. This is activity above time and space. The spirit reflects, seeks meaning and content, evaluates life and understands it and things. It reflects upon its own activity and upon itself. Through the spirit’s reflective activity it becomes aware of its own SELF as the bearer of all experience. It knows motives and reasons more precisely through deliberation. This activity is an expression of the spirit of freedom. It is the greatest lawfulness of life, both logical and moral.

The human spirit is characterized by constant movement. All its faculties relate to some activity. This inner movement proceeds from reason and free will, which, as stated, are in a potential state in man.

In reason’s faculties lies self-awareness. Reason is intended for knowledge and is capable of judgment. The will freely decides to perform an act. The rational faculty can receive forms of mental images into itself and express within itself everything it impresses into itself. The soul receives mental images of itself directly and preserves them in its rational faculty. In the human body it does so with the cooperation of the esplana.

(1009) Man lives a life of thought. The soul has a natural wealth of aptitudes, faculties and energy, inclinations and phenomena, passions and feelings, knowledge and willing. It bears concepts of moral law. It receives correct orientation through knowledge and the development of thinking faculties.

The human soul is the principle of life and is characterized by inner movement. The seat of life is in movement. From processes, perception, impressions and mental movement, it becomes aware of itself, seeks deeper meaning, and recognizes relationships, its purpose and goals. This is reason’s first perception of what it experiences as psychic. This first impulse of life toward activity comes from within the psyche.

Reason is the faculty forming sensations, concepts, judgments and conclusions; through this faculty we think. A person’s bodily organs, the sense organs, provide the material with which thought works. Through rational reflection and deliberation, it supplements and perfects knowledge acquired through experience. The elements of the personal SELF are psychic and continuous on the basis of sensations, concepts, impressions and mental images. Through these elements of things, a person becomes aware of himself. Through rational reflection a person determines true reality at first glance.

(1010) Because man has a life of thought, he thinks abstractly, that is, through an immaterial, rational and spiritual act of thinking. Thought activity proceeds through abstraction to the creation of universal, selected concepts for higher thought and abstract activity. The formation of concepts requires inner thought activity and its mental images. Activity and imagination exist so that the rational faculty has material from which to form concepts through abstraction. The creative abstract faculty gives a mental image a cognitive, spiritual character, so that it understands it.

Through this brief repetition of the spirit’s fundamental faculties, we have recognized that a person’s mental life depends predominantly upon the external world and sensory organs. For scientific understanding, let us try taking from the soul its sources that enrich its life. Let us imagine that we have removed its material body with its five sensory organs, and also the entire material world. As a consequence, thought activity has ceased receiving its stimuli from sensory perception. Let us further imagine that at creation the soul was equipped with no concepts. What would the life of such a soul be?

(1011) The human soul can exist as pure form.

The vegetative and sensory faculties, as well as passions, feelings, relationships, strivings, desires and wishes, all directed toward the external world, would pass into a potential state and remain ready for activity.

The soul is a spiritual substance, an independent being. It is its own principle of life. It has the aptitude of reason, which of itself has the ability to act independently of matter. Through spiritual acts it knows and wills. From this dynamic mobility would arise the first rational self-awareness. The soul would be dependent upon its own being, would know its essence through itself, and would participate in its inborn source of bliss and all its enjoyments. Through creation God made the soul a participant in all spiritual perfections, among which the source of beatitude belongs. It would recognize that it is blissful in and from itself and lives in absolute, eternally enduring freedom. It would know its own beauty and uniqueness and the aptitudes and perfections existing within it. The will would become the deciding and regulating activity of its own source of enjoyments, which it would freely determine in variations, for supernatural beatitude is not repetitive, but always original and continually increasing in value.

In the faculty of reason lies awareness and knowledge of oneself. It would love the perfection of its essence. It would be an inner, free, infinitely beautiful and blissful life of a high order, with the strength to express itself outwardly and exercise its rational faculty in contact with other souls for a broader rational life.

(1012) Let us, however, go further still and imagine away the source of inborn bliss provided by the inner essence.

What would the life of this soul be if the spiritual substance depended only upon the faculty of reason and will?

Even such a spiritual life, if it withstood the test and the fall, would be perfect and blissful. Reason stands above everything. Its faculty alone provides bliss. Thought activity can be perfect because it proceeds from the reflection of the spirit’s higher rational powers.

Reason and will are sources of driving forces for every life, for all the possibilities and faculties of the spirit of freedom.

It is the activity through which being leads itself toward rational awareness, knowledge, expression and adaptation. In the soul lies that primordial foundation of reason, absolute reason, which is the source of thought, knowledge, understanding, wisdom and certainty of itself.

(1013) The created soul’s inner movement would provide the first impression of itself. The first thoughts and images would arise from a conscious interest in “why and for what purpose I exist.” Reason’s first act would be to comprehend its own being; in this the soul itself would be an object of reflection and would thirst for truth, rational light and logic. It would be the free activity of knowing, acting, willing, knowledge and wisdom, in which the concept of spirit would realize itself. The soul would know itself, live through its beauty and purity, comprehend through its discriminating faculty the concepts of moral law, dependence upon God and His goodness, and in knowledge direct itself toward a supernatural goal.

The first thoughts, arising on the basis of observing and following its own movement, would form the first mental images and concepts, which would be elements of spiritual development and associate for further thought activity.

It would be the freedom of a spirit proceeding only from itself. The sum of spiritual processes would form the essence of its self-awareness and represent it; from it the spirit would proceed and within it live.

(1014) The goal of thinking would be knowledge, awareness and the need to know oneself, to be its object.

In the mental activity of images, reason would move only in spiritual good: love, joy, glory, beauty and happiness, with a relationship to its perfect essence and the love of it. Through knowing itself and abstract concepts, reason would penetrate ever more deeply into the mysteries of its own essence. Through the effort of reason and will, the soul would create inner order. From the reflection of the spirit’s higher powers it would have the possibility of thinking of how to attain the final goal. New concepts would arise through the abstract psychic faculty. Mental images of its essence and activity would be the soul’s principal activity. It would use them for further abstraction of new concepts in its thought activity.

Through knowing its essence, it would deepen its knowledge and attain perfection and high intelligence. Besides this free inner activity, it would also have a faculty for external activity toward rapprochement and communication with other similar souls, to know their spiritual growth and level, thereby improving the quality of thought life. At the same time the soul would proceed toward knowledge through thought. Concepts of moral law would become reality.

(1015) We arrive at the recognition that even the life of a soul dependent only upon the faculty of reason and will would be blissful and perfect.

Mature reason stands upon firm foundations. It is a source of mighty energies, commands immense power, develops, draws from its own interior and continually advances. It is the expansion and victory of immortal ideas, examines and reforms itself, does not worship the power of matter but binds it, tends toward truth, rejects violence, attracts existing good and creates new good, provides developed consciousness, builds a better life in which it does not flounder but grows, and knows how to find expression within it.

Reason respects moral law, can comprehend life’s value, recognizes its own distinctive qualities, and is blissful in and from itself. Reason is the power of existence, of being preserved by God. It is power itself, not succumbing to the fateful enticement of potential evil inherited from ancestors, freeing itself from it and transforming it into good. Reason governs all life. It knows how to fill it with the spiritual values of its own activity. This power does not need to be acknowledged, for it is power itself, proceeding from the movement of thinking reason, wisdom and independent free will. Reason is reality, self-determining thought. It is the reason of eternal truth, manifesting its forces to govern the world and itself; it is infinite power. It is for itself the infinite material of natural and spiritual life, the knowledge of reason itself. It is the source of spiritual beauty, infinite content, all essence and truth. It rejuvenates itself within itself, thereby becoming purer and higher reason. It is its own substance, which it multiplies, material that it works upon, thus rising toward a higher and more perfect life.

(1016) Through this reflection, this attempt artificially to strip away and imagine away spiritual and material substances given to the soul for its complete natural and supernatural life, we have found how perfect, replaceable by nothing, the soul’s essence is!

78. Is It Possible to Know God’s Existence Through Reason Alone?

(1017) To the question “Does God exist?” a subject in hypnosis always answered: “God exists!” The objection that he drew the answer from the esplana of the hypnologist, who believed in God, is mistaken.

All degrees of trance, the sleep of the material body, must be clarified.

The subject is capable of attaining the fourth degree of hypnosis. Within the scope of the question posed, his soul always directly and freely exercises its innate knowledge, faculties, extraordinary powers, aptitudes and properties, for the oduší enables its natural spiritual life and expression through its suitable essence and composition. We must not suppose, however, that the oduší is some specially created substance through which the soul acts upon the body, or one that directly animates the body. The oduší is part of the body, released and radiated through the disintegration of cell nuclei.

The soul longs for the free development of its faculties. The human body is a prison for it. Under favorable conditions it exercises its faculties directly, without the aid of cumbersome material senses.

(1018) The soul’s freedom consists in the exercise of its entire essence, faculties, powers and properties. Only in the first, second and third degrees of hypnosis can the soul not use the oduší. Its presence is still bound to the body’s coarse matter, thereby preventing the exercise of all its splendid faculties.

In the second and third degrees the soul’s expression is dependent upon human help, the content of the esplana, telepathy, imagination and its own fantasy. Otherwise its manifestations and descriptions of distant things and events are mostly incorrect.

In the third degree, the soul in its SELF dwells alternately, sometimes even simultaneously, in consciousness and the subconscious, that is, in the cerebral cortex or in the oduší; its manifestations are likewise unreliable.

At the boundary between the third and fourth degrees of hypnosis, the soul already dwells predominantly in the oduší. It is not, however, allowed to release its radiated body into space for a longer period. If the subject’s soul at this boundary of trance is asked about a distant object, it approaches it through ray-like bursts issuing from the brain, flashes of the oduší in which it is wholly present, and immediately returns to the body’s base through the ray’s retraction. Through this approach it has the opportunity to describe the object comparatively correctly. Yet what the soul has not perceived, if it is too lazy to return to the object through repeated flashes, it supplements from its fantasy. The subject’s statements often surprise through their correctness; at other times reality is for the most part distorted.

(1019) Only the fourth degree of hypnosis is most suitable for the soul’s free expression, because through the oduší it can remain for a longer time in a larger, distant space and exercise its faculties in response to our questions.

To occupy a certain space, remain within it at will and be actively engaged there belongs to the soul’s freedom and its free life; the space may be empty or filled with created material objects. In this freedom it knows itself, natural laws and the cause of all life, God. That is why a subject’s statements in the fourth degree of hypnosis are true.

In man’s dependence upon God we perceive the relationship we call religion. Whoever does not deepen this relationship or compel himself toward it loses faith in religion and thereby faith in God too.

God’s existence can be proved through reason alone as well. It is known that nothing can be proved through words, but only through experiment and action. Both layperson and scholar must therefore know how to abandon their hypotheses and enter the school of experience. Authority is insufficient even for positive philosophical truths; the matter must be investigated and made one’s own.

(1020) To someone without faith it is futile to prove God’s existence through mere words; it can be done only through rational and scientific justification.

Man is an imperfect psychologist. He often supposes that he alone is right in everything. Yet his only truth is that he has received “something” into the esplana, into the memory of consciousness, because he has found no rational and scientific justification. It is proud reason without light, and his truth looks accordingly. If he deepened his knowledge and reflected wisely upon it, he would receive light into reason and discover how many untruths still remain within it.

(1021) The great gravity and importance of the subject require everyone to attain rational and scientific knowledge of God’s existence.

A person whose reason is receptive and open to truths, rather than strained and narrowed, is free and, with all his knowledge, will correct his errors. Through strength of spirit he thus demonstrates the desire to know absolute truths and higher, immutable and eternal things.

Sensory knowledge and experience alone do not suffice for a free spirit. For actual knowledge proceeds from higher reason, not from mere experience of sensory perceptions and mental images. Sensory experience can be mistaken. Sensory impressions too are therefore often unclear and deceptive, so they cannot always guarantee truth.

Human life manifests itself in two different forms, material and ideal. The limited free spirit is not satisfied with sensory knowledge alone, with mere abstraction from matter. It wants more, longs for thought, actual life, eternity, great ideas, timeless truths and thoughts. It is the spirit’s concern to take an interest in things leading to deep reflection.

(1022) A person acquires his knowledge through the senses, abstracting from matter. Human thinking thereby has a predominantly material foundation. To abstract from matter and reflect only upon it does not suffice for a thinking person, because the world is subject to alternation, coming into being and passing away. These changes, however, apply only in the earthly world. Only God is immutable and imperishable, His eternal life and eternal essence. Our knowledge reaches beyond sensory experience. Being outside us relates to human reason; through rational activity it enters the mental world and becomes a realm of truth.

A person should seek the life of eternal and immutable objects. The human soul is indeed the body’s substantial form, but is separable from it and can continue to subsist by itself; it is therefore immortal. It is presented with a new life and should have knowledge of it. Only the vegetative and sensory soul perishes, because without the body it cannot perceive. Only a person of weak reason thinks that his life perishes similarly.

(1023) We long for experience and art, but little for knowledge and wisdom. We achieve the former through the progress of knowledge from sensory perception, from errors and failures. Perception shows only a thing’s exterior. Experience is a kind of unintended induction; it arises naturally when perception and observation are repeated.

Experience, however, is not yet knowledge. Knowledge does indeed arise from experience, for example when a general rule is formed from it, but knowledge requires understanding the essence of phenomena and their causal connection. Knowledge surpasses experience in certainty and completeness.

Experience is knowledge of particulars. Experienced people know only the facts of a thing, that something exists, and know how to describe them. A professionally educated scientist, expert and theoretician also knows the cause, why something exists.

Art proceeds from perception, imagination and knowledge. The form of a work of art flows from the artist’s idea as its pattern. Art is a great skill, a specialized activity methodically governed by theory with regard to the work’s practical use.

(1024) Scientific knowledge is also an art. Its object is activity and action, and through them the creation of the work is accomplished. Art and science are therefore knowledge.

Wisdom, however, means knowledge of all causes and the ultimate motive of all being: this is metaphysics. It also concerns eternal being, not mere subjective thoughts of reason. Metaphysics is a science of things, not merely formal.

Knowledge, understanding of first causes and wisdom are needs of human nature. Whoever knows the cause understands the consequences too.

(1025) Man lends all the powers of the spirit to the dialectic of nature, to matter. Yet he neglects the dialectic of higher realities, immutable objective ideas, truths, substances and laws. He cannot grasp an idea and distinguish the essential from the secondary. Dialectic is the knowledge of truth through discussion. It is the logical ability to divide a fundamental general concept into subspecies, examining concepts and seeking definitions.

Through logical reflection, the work of a wise person’s reason arrives at the fact that there exists an independent and self-subsistent foundation as the bearer of properties, from which everything material and spiritual receives its duration.

Clear knowledge and understanding of higher realities, truths and laws require cultivation of the powers of reason and will. This is the spirit’s victory over life, its mental and material misery, a victory founded on the ideal of right and the view of how to resolve a complex problem and master the forces of all the resources of spirit and matter, how to attain the development of active thinking, clear perception and knowledge.

(1026) An imperfect spirit, if it does not understand its greatness, does not find the right thing in which its unrest might rest. Whoever cultivates the spirit’s powers consciously tends toward truth and knowledge of the highest reasons for being, becomes aware and powerful, lives above time and masters life.

Most people live only concretely, through the actuality of reality with which they come into contact. They do not wish to exert themselves spiritually and intellectually or strive through the activity of reason to attain knowledge of primary reality, the foundation. People lend the activity of their spirit, reason, to the everyday and the transitory.

All the spirit’s faculties relate to some object with which a person occupies himself. The object and concept should always be universal, selected so as to provide good for life. All the more should we seek and know the first cause of good, goodness itself.

Man thinks abstractly, in selected universal concepts, through an immaterial, rational and spiritual act of thought. He alone has a life of thought and will that strives for a relationship to ideal good. He should become aware of all this and seek life’s deeper meaning and goal.

(1027) Many errors arise in human life from a deficiency of spirit and from a person’s blocking his own path toward knowledge and truth. Thus arise many breakdowns and feelings of inferiority.

Without God one cannot answer the questions: “Whence did movement arise?” “Whence this admirable purposefulness?” “Whence the laws of nature?”

Matter and the body lead a person astray, so they cannot kindle the spirit and give it flight. Such a person clouds the power of his reason and cannot give it clear answers, because his mind is oriented only toward the earthly. Truth is in being, and only afterward in us.

Through the power of our reason we can know objectively and naturally that God exists. Unimpaired reason is like light, for it is endowed and equipped with certain faculties through which we attain knowledge of being. Let us think with the highest power of our reason, as Aristotle did, arriving at knowledge of a single God through rational reflection alone.

(1028) Rational foundations are given to us for knowing God; we have thoughts and judgments from which we readily recognize that God exists.

Why do I accept something through reason? Because I perceive the thing’s inner truth. Everything that exists and is in motion must have a cause and reason.

Neither a car nor a clock will set itself in motion without a maker. Nor can our Earth and universe be without a creator. We arrive at this conclusion through thought, research and observation. From effect we infer cause, from property substance and being. It is a logical procedure.

The world is changeable and bounded and must have an immutable, infinite cause, for it has a lasting and complex order showing that it is the work of reason and the highest intelligence.

(1029) Everything around us, the growth of plants, worlds, planets and atoms, is in purposeful motion. By whom? By what? By energy? Who gave it laws? Clear reason says that a first mover must exist.

For movement to arise, there must be actuality, a first energy, activity. Movement is then the cooperation of potentiality and actuality. Actuality is an active force toward movement and contains purpose within itself. Movement is thus derived from actuality and receives direction from it. Actuality therefore manifests itself in movement; movement means the realization of the possible.

If we examine reality, nature, it appears to us as order resulting from a definite plan. There must, however, exist an imperishable beginning of all created things, subject to no change whatever. If this beginning were perishable, another beginning would be required, and for that yet another, and so on to infinity.

(1030) A rational person examines the causes of being, the beginning. Beginnings do not extend to infinity. Thus one arrives at the first beginning, the first cause.

The cause of coming into being and passing away must be sought outside the thing, in another thing acting upon the first. It is an acting, efficient cause, destroying the thing’s existing substantial form and creating from its matter a new substantial form, thereby changing it into a substantially different thing. This means that the cause of coming into being and passing away lies not in the substantial form of the thing that arises and perishes, but in another thing.

Nothing can arise from nonbeing, by chance. Everything arises from being, thus from what is possible. Everything changes as SOMETHING, THROUGH SOMETHING, INTO SOMETHING. That through which something changes is the first motive factor. That through which it changes is matter, primordial matter. That into which it changes is form, shape. [Translator’s note: the source repeats “through which” in identifying both the motive factor and matter; the apparent inconsistency is preserved.]

Coming into being and development are impossible from what is not. Coming into being and movement must have a final limit. One thing cannot arise from another to infinity. There must be something arising and something from which it arises, and this must ultimately come from something that did not arise naturally.

There is ultimate matter, primordial substance, but also ultimate form, because only through form is matter the stimulus for coming into being. If neither existed, there would be nothing. Primordial matter, indefinite substance, insofar as it has no form, is potentially everything but actually nothing.

(1031) At the beginning of all things is the highest immutable perfection. It is an eternal mover that is pure actuality. This substance, the active principle, is also the first object of thought and desire, pure truth and the highest good.

At the beginning of all things, in substance, is actuality, act. That substance substitutes for, replaces, eternal life; it is pure knowledge and beatitude. It is an eternal, perfect, living being. Life not only belongs to it; it is life. [Translator’s note: the unusual statement “substitutes for (replaces) eternal life” reproduces the source’s wording.]

The first mover, no longer set in motion by another, is unmoving and immutable as pure actuality. By being the first mover, itself already unmoving and with actuality as its essence, it demonstrates its perfection. It follows that it is at the same time the first object of thought and desire, the first truth and the highest good. The result of desire and thinking is order in nature, which thus manifests reason. Natural beings, whether unconscious through instinct or conscious through reason, tend toward a purpose that is beautiful and best. The cause here is not mechanical but purposive; movement passes into purpose and unites with it. Thus God, as active actuality beyond inner activity, freely manifested His effect: He created the world, which through His active providence He outwardly governs and preserves toward an eternal goal. The world is a small image of God. In everything we can see the trace of one of His properties.

(1032) Human thinking depends upon things; reason itself is passive. Its content is forms of manifestation. Actual and perfect knowledge occurs when reason unites with things and touches the system of thoughts, divine ideas, appearing to man as types and principles.

God does not think as man does. He thinks HIMSELF, thereby realizing the entire world. God is the most perfect and immutable being; His thought is perfect and essential. Human thought and knowledge change, because we depend upon changeable things. In God, knowledge and thought are perfect, for in Him the formal object is His essence with actual activity. Through this God guarantees the being, direction, purpose and unity of nature, so that movement accords with the world’s purpose. Natural processes can unfold because God always thinks the same thing, beautifully and perfectly, according to certain constant principles and laws. This also makes the certainty of our knowledge possible. And because God’s thought is immutable, it is blissful.

Through logical thinking and reflection we have arrived at the knowledge that if something moves, a motive agent must exist. There is always someone who moves things, who moves the universe and planets and determines their direction. There is therefore something that continually moves everything without itself being set in motion by anyone, something first, immutable and eternal, substance and actual activity at once, determining unified movement. That motive agent must therefore be unmoving. Eternal movement must proceed from the eternal, and unified movement from the unified. Its object of desire and willing is always what is good. It is moved by the object of thought and is independent life. The actual activity of reason and will is life, and that eternal movement is actual activity. Activity, however, is its perfect, supremely blissful and eternal life. This is God.

(1033) His faculties, lasting properties and states always produce good. There is no pattern of evil. Just as the states of health and illness cannot exist simultaneously, so good and evil cannot exist at once. Evil by its nature is always later, because what is from the beginning and eternal cannot be evil, mistaken or corrupted. All nature shows the highest good, for it is the Creator’s object.

The purpose and goal should be the good of every individual. If we always think only good, we become like God. In other words, substance itself, God, is above all existence. He is the bearer of all being. All other beings are something beyond this substance, merely a relationship to it. Knowledge of substance is also knowledge of cause.

The ultimate cause of all movement, being and good is an unmoving, immutable agent, form without matter, pure actuality, divinity.

The visible world is only the expression of reason’s thought. The world must be rational for us to understand it. Our thinking is therefore a matter of what has been thought.

(1034) Today’s person has lowered himself to a spirit of earthliness. He lives in confusion and has lost the right relationship to the highest GOOD, the value of values, to God. His relationship to values is the very clear evidence of intellectual and moral confusion. Good is worthy of human effort and beckons to be attained.

In today’s person’s thinking, however, the order of values is inverted. He is not determined and directed toward value, but prefers the lower to the higher. He seeks only useful values that make life pleasant: bodily strength, beauty, sport, skill, pleasure-seeking and entertainment. Everyone has something that is a value for him, which he prefers to others. For the farmer it is a good harvest, for the merchant goods, for the banker money, for the politician his party. For the time being these are their ultimate things, without their realizing that through them they reject the God of eternal truth, goodness and beauty. When a person flees from God, he rejects the absolute. Thus he does not live a religious life, but gives preference to the relative. In God’s place he sets idols that are only substitute and transitory values.

A human being, however, belongs to the realm of ultimate, imperishable values, and his goal is and should be God.

79. Life, the Soul and Its Goal

(1035) If we invite subjects in the fourth degree of hypnosis to give themselves over to observing their souls, they experience blissful happiness, wish to preserve it permanently, and resist vigorously if they are to lose it through various interventions of the hypnologist. From such a state they are unwilling to return to earthly life.

True happiness on Earth and spiritual wealth lie in fulfilling God’s will. Without love of God and one’s fellow human being, people cannot live peacefully together. If they realized their greatness and dignity, lived in brotherly love, loved one another, cast away all anger, hatred, envy, contempt and humiliation of their neighbors, and supported one another in good, lived in peace and friendship with neighbors and nations, resolved disputes through higher, educated reason and had a common goal in everything, life on Earth would be worthy of a human being. Peace is humanity’s task, a moral idea guiding it in life. It is a goal toward which a rational state of mind leads.

(1036) Today’s person is far from having matured toward his supreme task. He has forgotten that his spirit has a divine faculty of its own, reason and will, and adapts himself to other creatures rather than taking their place through his aptitudes. He does not seek the vital necessity of disciplined individual freedom. His life lacks meaning and finds insufficient expression. His character is undermined.

Character is defined in various ways. In essence, however, it is a sense of the hierarchy of values. A person without character gives lower things preference over higher ones. He thereby transgresses against the order of values and is therefore worthy of contempt. He has likewise forgotten that there is no culture without spiritual and emotional participation. A culture cannot be called high if it lacks mercy. To be merciful means to be good. He does not know that the best human quality is responsibility toward truth. A person is truly free only when he worships God and seeks the foundation, Christ, who calls: “I am the way, the truth, and the life!” Only then does the whole universe with all creation speak to him in a truly brotherly way; only then is it worth working and living, defending human dignity, freedom and other values.

We are not merely a body; we have a task, a mission and commandments. So that humanity’s coexistence might be tolerable, God placed moral laws in human nature. These moral truths are given to people, but they mostly reject and despise them.

(1037) Modern man does not wish to submit, evades the facts of moral laws, and expounds and explains that moral laws arose from reason and that a person is subject only to his own characteristics. He teaches that uncertain relative truth rules and does not believe in absolute truth. This is gambling, speculation with human existence and its undermining. Nothing is more dangerous than an error that becomes a principle. Awareness of responsibility toward the common good is then absent. Arrogance arises, blinding the person and leading him to ruin. The goal too is obscured. Goodwill and humility open the gates of actual life. Let us desire escape from human misery and spiritual blindness. Let us emerge from the world of confused concepts, phenomena, unrest and changing circumstances. Let us enter actual order and spiritual discipline, where we shall find lasting values: moderation, freedom, strength for mental activity and creation, life’s true purpose and meaning, and peace.

Faith, truth and knowledge are the foundation of life, and the highest thing is law, commandment and authority. Through rule without regard to right and outside moral law, everything great and bold perishes.

(1038) Moral order lives in man; it wishes to be observed, followed and exercised, not constructed. It speaks from the conscience of the acting person, is eternally the same, accompanies characteristics, and is our life. A good conscience is a continual feast.

Observance of moral order is a natural human characteristic.

(1039) Moral laws govern man; they pass through his sound rational judgment. They are natural to the human being, his own and inseparable from him. An uncorrupted human mind recognizes these laws, agrees with them and follows them. We therefore know beforehand what is just, correct, moral and honorable. Service to moral order is a natural human characteristic. Moral laws do indeed pass through reason, but they are outside us, above us, within us and for us. Life is built upon the idea of moral responsibility.

Where faith in moral laws weakens, confusion and disintegration occur; man combats man. This is a decline of character, reason and will.

(1040) Honor, truth, justice, morality, fidelity, love, devotion, friendship, charity, mercy and the like are within us before people formulate them through reason.

We can bring moral truths from our mind, our soul, to development and maturity, to honorable living.

Moral law was given before we were born. We merely discover its rule. It is the foundation of the divine order, which we do not establish but are born into. Moral authority speaks to us through reason, knowledge in faith and understanding. It necessarily leads to action, which is impossible without commandments and obedience.

Moral law is the master of people, not their servant. What could be better than to give the world a soul adorned with the addition of moral education?

(1041) Only a wise person is wise! To be wise, I must know and love God and proceed from Christian principles. Christianity has spirit and life. It is a new form of life, shaping every manifestation of it. The Christian commandment is the highest ethical principle.

Awakened and morally educated reason is a guarding light in the immense wilderness of mistaken truths. It guarantees certainty amid the changeability of every age and is a sign of hope in the darkness of uncertainty. Beyond education, the spirit may have religious and metaphysical interests. To avoid excess in anything, the whole of life, including religious life, must be guided by sound reason, which must remain in constant accord with historical and personal experience.

People, however, act on the basis of sensuality rather than according to moral law. So that the world does not become a scene of moral evil, it is the duty of all leaders to develop the capacity of the human being as a rational and morally aware being.

(1042) The principle of moral action is perfection. The highest moral ideal and moral norm are the ideal of a person in whom conscious powers proceeding from educated reason operate: feeling, love, nobility and courage. Goodwill is a constant capacity for love toward others; through this love becomes justice. Deep moral love can sacrifice itself. These higher feelings are of psychic origin. As long as the body acts, love is sensual; when the spirit frees itself from the body, spiritual love arises. Feelings can also lead us onto a wrong path, toward breakdowns and often mental illnesses. Only reason directing feelings is capable of bringing about a person’s moral elevation. Moral feeling is necessary for society’s harmony. Such is the feeling for understanding beauty, art and the like. There are also feelings for pleasure that satisfies the spirit. But pleasure constantly sought is detrimental to social benefit.

Every human soul is a moral being and is adorned with a striving for perfection. Through faulty upbringing and a coarse environment, however, it is often crushed. Every person must therefore defend his own human dignity. A person has dignity because, in the faculty of reason and will, he is God’s image, and because within him is the universal moral law, the source of human moral freedom.

The human spirit can be examined only on the basis of the principle of sound reason. The most important progress is the development of human knowledge, whose forms we acquire on the basis of inner experience, thus psychologically. Knowledge is formed by belief in facts, appearing in every rational judgment. Our knowledge is relative. We can cross the boundaries of knowledge of the absolute only through feeling, faith and higher reason.

(1043) For a person to become perfect, reason must be guided correctly and truth sought through knowledge. Reason, however, is a light inborn unequally in all people. It is unequal in strength and potential and depends upon inner dynamics. The foundation of all moral striving is the will, to will. For the will to be moral, it must above all conform to Christian ideas. We must strive for knowledge of humanity, enlightenment and mutual understanding. Moral humanity is the highest form of life, understanding one another and not destroying itself. In a person, eternal creative force is self-creation. The first task of knowledge is perfection, the transference of divine perfection into one’s own, for what forms personality in a human being is the most valuable thing in the world. Upbringing, self-education and experience create and regulate themselves. Where there is no upbringing, the will is blind, unrestrained and will not be led by reason. Values that we project upon ourselves form the foundation of developed human life on Earth.

All knowledge and understanding must be gathered in the interest of society and peace. We must seek the origin of all knowledge in experience, not only our own experience, but also that of family and nation, so that it passes through heredity from one generation to the next. Moral evaluation therefore also has its a priori, containing the family’s moral experience, which leads to a striving not to be guided by new hypotheses. Every new thought must first win its truth in practice, for the moral world has its existence in the struggle with evil. It must therefore first prove itself.

Personal reason unites the whole human being within itself. The foundation of his mental life is healthy activity, healthy instinct, a tendency whose satisfaction is accompanied by pleasure and displeasure. Only proven ideas show the right direction: to lead the spirit toward beauty and art.

Art is spiritual beauty, for in it the spiritual element predominates, depth of feeling and infinity of subjectivity. Its characteristic inner nucleus is creative activity. This is the active side manifesting itself in concentration for attention, association, creation, searching and so on. Both aesthetics and ethics must have content and draw material from experience.

Activity is progress, the strength to move forward. Progress should be not only cultural, but above all moral. It takes place through moral and cultural gains being transmitted to further generations while continually multiplying. For the development of knowledge we have reason.

Reason is endowed with an instinct possessing innate rational prerequisites. We know these principles through inner experience, intuition, so that they have intuitive evidence; intuitively we know both good and evil.

Intuition is more than intelligence. Intuitive knowledge is a higher, direct image of life. Intelligence cannot penetrate life. Its inner dynamics escape it. Intuition is awareness of instinct and can grasp inner vital dynamics. Through it we recognize that this is a living, concrete stream forming the unity of consciousness. Personal instinctive reason encompasses the entire human being within itself. A rational state of mind enables a person to free himself from habits, instincts and false instincts arising from neglected reason, and arrange his life on the basis of the freedom of sound reason.

(1044) People, however, do not concern themselves with their intellectual faculties. They do not follow reason, educate it or awaken its value and moral powers, aptitudes and faculties. They therefore fall into habits. Nature and instincts are stronger for them than reason. Habit produces in them a belief in nature’s lawfulness. In life people are led not by reason but by instincts and passions, by egoism. Yet clear and distinct mental images are produced only by sound reason, for only then does human willing reach its peak. The soul’s highest activity is a moral act, which can spring only from clear and distinct mental images.

(1045) Those whose justifications rest on clear knowledge and ethics should have precedence in leading society. Guided by reason, they can spread knowledge, for they want what benefits not only themselves but everyone. The first goal of the state’s existence is therefore moral: to create inner peace by uniting souls and lead people toward greater moral freedom. If laws are to have an effect, they must be the result of natural conditions.

A person brings moral feeling potentially into the world, but it can be fully exercised only through upbringing and experience. A person is what upbringing and his own active desire to seek and know make of him. The individual manifestations of instinct are not in mutual harmony in man. An individualistic ethics from inner strength is not possible for everyone. Only social power in the coercive form of reasonable laws leads toward morality. If this power is to counter natural egoism, it must be absolute.

(1046) For a firm scientific spirit and pure character to develop and gain greater definiteness and precision, one must strive for the perfection of reason, for the highest moral task of man is knowledge of truths. We must not limit ourselves to positive facts alone. Everything material and sensual is transitory. Only love of what is moral, eternal and infinite fills us with joy and frees us from all displeasure. The ideal of knowledge is a unity joining the human spirit with God and nature. A person has value only insofar as the metaphysical spiritual principle manifests itself within him.

(1047) Knowledge has its foundation in psychology, which is a natural and social science. The beginning of all knowledge is experience, on whose basis opinion arises. For experience to provide more precise knowledge, clear reason must join it, understanding and judging the matter and thus forming the foundation of knowledge.

Knowledge is also a creative act, a synthesis for which the senses provide material. Knowledge therefore follows the spirit, which determines knowledge of the material, the object.

We distinguish knowledge through synthetic judgments. Rational knowledge of truth, fact and experience depends on the principle of contradiction; of contradictory propositions, one is necessarily true and the other false. It also holds that everything has its reason why it is so and not otherwise.

(1048) In the development of knowledge we must take account of the hereditary foundation. We then find that mental life does not consist solely of entirely clear thoughts and images. It seems that we overlook the significance of small, obscure mental impulses that continually act in the soul and determine the spirit, whereas clear mental images develop only from them, later, when external experience has acted for longer. Hence there is a differing number of degrees of mental life among individuals. It is a gradual transition from awareness of darkness to awareness of clear knowledge. Because higher conscious states are not simple, but alongside sensory knowledge consist of small, unconscious impressions emerging from the subconscious, we differ through this fact in the degree of clarity of our images and in our entire knowledge. The senses alone do not serve knowledge; they exist only for practical purposes. Imagination, dependent upon senses and feelings, is the source of many human errors. True knowledge has its foundation in God. The summit of knowledge is metaphysics.

(1049) Knowledge is twofold. One kind proceeds from facts and originates in impressions, the other from the relationships of ideas. Mental processes have their cause in impressions. Their causes are sensory perceptions, sensations, feelings and manifestations of will. Thoughts are then merely combinations of impressions. All knowledge rests upon experience, for only the spirit can join, transform, enlarge and diminish the material it obtains through sensory impressions. Beyond this, through intuition and deduction from the relationships of ideas, the human spirit also knows how to create mental images from itself.

(1050) A person is indeed determined inwardly, physically and morally, but not metaphysically. His motivation is not absolute. It is only inner encouragement, not compulsion. Everyone can decide according to his own essence, which is metaphysical, and thus has freedom and responsibility in action. Because reason and clear thinking express this essence best, free action accords with moral reason and opposes the dark aspects, lower instincts and passions. Passions proceed from the lower psychic, sensory and vegetative faculty. They can be pushed back only by a higher passion, so that reason, recognizing true and proper self-preservation, must become desire, an active affect, in order to overcome all the other lower animal affects. Only healthily guided reason can prevail over unconscious instincts and forces.

(1051) Bodily and mental manifestations run in parallel and have a common foundation in the unity of substance. Both matter and spirit have an innate tendency toward movement. Natural changes arise from changes in the movement of atoms. The soul’s rational processes are also a phenomenon of movement and lead to the establishment of general concepts of causes. Only from these do we acquire further knowledge through the synthetic method. Just as matter is indestructible in its simple element of sitons, so the human spirit in reason and will, and its thought, are indestructible. Neither spirit nor thought needs a place or dimension, but they can enter into unity with matter and give it form. Spirit is then embodied in the human body, and thought in the esplana. Just as matter is never without space, so spirit is never without activity. Yet in many people the spirit’s activity is obscure through their own fault. Doubt concerning truths is imperfection; knowledge is perfection.

The goal and purpose of the existence of all creation is the glorification of God, which is the creatures’ beatitude.

(1052) God first created primordial matter: air, water and inanimate earth. In animals He adapted matter to cooperate with spirit; it bears God’s traces within itself. Then He created animated matter: plants, animals and finally man. Human birth is a rare privilege.

Before the material world, God created the spiritual world, the angels.

Nature is not merely an alternation of changes; there is order in its changes! It is not merely a sum of parts, but a composition, a system. Nature is an integral composition or a composite whole. The whole is formed by its parts, but the parts depend upon their whole at the same time. Neither is primary and superior. Nature appears as a whole in constant change, in development.

A plant has life, takes in nourishment, grows and reproduces. We call this process plant or vegetative life.

(1053) An animal has a higher life than a plant. Besides plant life, taking in nourishment, growing and reproducing, it also has senses, collectively called sensory or sensitive life, with which independent movement is connected. According to the law of heredity, a certain immutability of species persists, so the strongest beings do not develop at the expense of others.

God, the sustainer of life, gave every animated being a bearer of life, a soul. In both plants and animals the soul is the principle of life, meaning that as the bearer of life it is bound to matter. If vegetative life ceases in a plant, it withers. Its soul, having no activity independent of it, has thereby ceased too. It is similar with an animal. As soon as its vegetative and sensitive life, that is, its principle of life, the soul, has ceased, it dies. Vegetative life was bound to material life, to the body.

(1054) Like a person, an animal receives sensations, perceptions and impressions through its senses, maintains and preserves them; it has memory. An animal, however, does not process these impressions, form conclusions, judgments and concepts from them, because it lacks reason. An animal’s soul has no activity of its own independent of the body; on the contrary, it depends upon the body in everything. It therefore perishes with the body too, for everything dependent upon something in every respect perishes with that upon which it depends.

In thought, reason and will, the soul is perfection itself.

Reason is the property through which we think and form sensations, concepts, judgments and conclusions. Through it we examine the cause of phenomena, which an animal cannot do. It obeys only its instinct of self-preservation, which God placed in its nature so that it might preserve itself and its kind. It cannot think and deliberate; it has no reason. It cannot train itself for independent useful work, so a person must supervise it.

(1055) Man has reason, so he thinks, examines phenomena and draws conclusions. He recognizes what is useful, beautiful and noble. He advances in science, art and invention. His mental activity continually develops, and thus he makes life easier for himself. The human spirit is free in its actions, though its freedom is possible only within order.

An animal, although created before man and living with him to this day, remains at the same degree of development as at creation, because it lacks reason.

Wretched is the person who regards himself merely as a more perfect, more intelligent animal. Conscience and reason are proof of the immortality of the human soul, which is of divine origin. In this man differs from animals.

Above all creation stands the immense God. We sense His greatness and majesty from the visible world.

(1056) He gave us everything for our use by granting us reason and free will. Our body itself is a work of immense perfection, but only through the soul endowed with reason did man become ruler over nature and its forces, which he subjected to himself, and thereby God’s natural image. God created the world, and man completes His work in the sense of arranging the world for himself. Let us therefore praise God for the reason He gave us. Reason leads to civilization, and civilization to technological progress. If not illuminated by the culture of the spirit, progress and civilization lead to humanity’s destruction. Everything is from God, and everything must tend toward Him. As soon as anything created lost its dependence upon God, it would cease to exist, lacking the foundation of its being.

(1057) Man shares an immortal soul with the angel and animality with the animal. He is therefore neither angel nor animal. Human nature consists of body and soul; angelic nature only of soul, endowed, however, with much keener reason and a more powerful will.

An animal cannot participate in human nature, because it will never possess reason. It lacks reason, so it cannot share in human beatitude.

God exists in infinite beatitude; therein is His heaven. Man longs for it too, as is evident from ordinary life and from experiments with subjects.

(1058) How could an earthly creature participate in God’s beatitude? According to human nature it is impossible. Just as an animal does not understand human beatitude, so a person cannot fully comprehend God’s beatitude. From His goodness alone, God wishes to make man a participant in His glory. He therefore gives him a share in His life and nature by granting him grace.

Grace is a supernatural gift surpassing the claims, needs and merits of every creature. God gives it to rational creatures for a supernatural goal.

Christ procured supernatural goods through His redemption; natural goods come to us from the Creator. Our final goal is supernatural. Only acts that are impossible without supernatural grace are proportionate to it. Grace is an inner supernatural gift granted by God so that we may be saved and blessed. Sanctifying grace is thus supernatural life, a begetting from God.

(1059) Participation in divine nature thus consists in God’s forming His likeness in the soul as faithfully as possible. To obtain these gifts, we ourselves must help through our virtuous life governed by God’s commandments. A person possessing reason and free will is God’s natural image. Yet he becomes it only through acquiring sanctifying grace.

We recognize the soul’s immortality in the fourth degree of hypnosis. If we direct its attention to examining its essence through higher powers, it knows itself, its perfection and beauty, supersensory and spiritual, of which it is aware and in which it is infinitely blissful. Through sober discipline of the spirit we must make this beatitude our own.

There are various kinds of beatitude, and therefore with developed reason we must wish to reach still higher, so that through the light of glory we may participate in the immediate vision of God, His divine nature, immense perfection, holiness, beauty and beatitude. Also so that we may participate in the light of divine reason and the freedom of His will. God therefore placed in man’s interior a longing for Himself as something natural.

(1060) Our higher rational nature, if freed from sensory pressure, intuitively knows and feels in the metaphysical background that it belongs to a higher independent world, where the goal of freedom and bliss lies, which it also often experiences within it. Reason itself is free, but in this world it cannot attain absolute freedom; it is hindered and cast down by sensuality, passions, illnesses, laws and the like.

The importance of human life demands wisdom and strength and calls reason to reflection. The soul relates to a certain goal. The deepest lower subconscious gives us clear knowledge of the true and actual goal, and also that other, higher paths lead to it than those leading to the goal of our material world. Spiritual philosophy too restores our personality to us.

(1061) Through this, however, we must not overlook or combat within ourselves civilization, culture, humanity and the expansion of technology, which are flowers of the spirit and its practical, creative reason. The earthly goal is enlightenment and the rule of reason on Earth. Everything is created for God’s glory. Let us therefore wish to share in it and strive for the highest expansion of all our activity, elevating it through the creation of beautiful cultural works. These should proceed from the activity of individuals and entire nations alike. Even if in time they are destroyed and vanish, their reality will pass into the eternal view of protonace, in which we shall eternally see everything we accomplished through the activity of spirit and body. There are many who can create mentally but are too good; their goodness is afraid, hides in a corner, is cowardly, cannot cry out, only think and philosophize, and realizes none of it, while evil acts! If the soul ceases to realize its thoughts and desire values, it begins to age, falls into well-trodden forms of life, creates and improves nothing, and may even become an obstacle. Activity and constant creation are the expression of life, the fruit of the human soul’s maturity and greatness.

(1062) Activity is an emergence from within. It is free creation, not forced labor. It is the expression of a free spirit, without which there is no activity. Where spirit is regarded as a derivative of matter, only mechanism operates. In such an order there is no freedom, and human dignity disappears. Spirit survives the body, culture survives political formations. Creation, and with it artistic effort, necessarily proceeds from the individual. A person can do anything himself if he says how it is to be done. Creative freedom does not mean license, but the search for and realization of higher obligation and responsibility. Every license necessarily calls forth unfreedom. In cultural processes it is not the origin of thoughts and ideas that decides, but their content and capacity for life and creation. Only fruitful, creative ideas tending toward the perfection and improvement of human life spread and take hold generally and permanently. True culture is the work of man created in God’s image.

If a nation denies God, it denies human freedom, for human government without God is a government of unfreedom. The work of unfree people is not creative; it is the work of slaves, not culture but merely technical civilization. In every work only enthusiasm prevails, and only someone who believes in his cause has it.

(1063) We must make an essential distinction between technological progress and culture. It is true that they can complement one another. Yet technological progress and inventions in wars destroy man, killing him as the bearer of culture. Technological progress alone is by no means sufficient, for culture is more. It is a matter of the heart and the whole soul. Within a short span we can observe an astonishing expansion of technology, but culture can be observed only over centuries and millennia. Progress alone can mean death; progress with culture means the development of life, while culture is life itself. Civilization is a consequence of technological progress. Yet wherever we encounter it, we must also find culture.

Until humanity receives thorough spiritual education, technical civilization will never be culture in the true sense, for culture is in a way naturally Christian. Christianity is absolute truth because it makes man free. Truth liberates; ignorance and error enslave. Culture is created not by the collective, but above all by personality. Values cannot be discovered or realized except on the basis of personal freedom.

Freedom is the possibility of doing good. Modern man is an autonomous being who wishes to determine for himself what good is. Human freedom is threatened not by God but by man. He can indeed control matter but cannot control himself. Culture works for the nation’s eternity. The more perfect it is, the freer the nation. Creative activity, however, presupposes a perfect personality.

(1064) In the soul there is spiritual potential urging a person to build, create and think about life. Art and science belong among life’s highest manifestations; they are images of divine creation. Beauty is an essential element of being. All art, architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, music and so forth, is therefore an expression of life and should serve life and God. Genius is not due solely to the brain’s quality; a spirit of genius that educates and perfects itself must also be present.

A person is an inwardly independent being. In attaining his goal, however, he depends upon others. There must therefore be order among the relationships and activities of man as an individual and man as a member of society. For man as a person, this order is determined by his goal, God; in that person the goals of individual and nation coincide. If order is formed without God, it necessarily proceeds from egoism and causes disorder. If rule is exercised without regard to right and outside moral law, everything perishes. A rational spirit creates rational order and laws for the welfare of the whole. The state is a being whose reality is the ordering of relationships among people for the purpose of the common good. Freedom and authority complement one another; there is no conflict between private and common good.

Every form of civil community, government and political power must rest upon man’s rational moral nature. By the principle of freedom is meant a principle that regards the citizen not as a passive object of governance but as a co-creator of public welfare. The task of the political system is to support and increase the common good, whose guardian is legitimate, generally recognized authority. The spirit flourishes when the state provides freedom to express opinions and the opportunity freely to pursue a chosen occupation.

(1065) In this world human reason depends upon experiences and knowledge and, despite its education, never attains that highest degree of freedom in knowing profound experiences, beauty, pleasures and bliss. Worldly pleasure and bliss, proceeding from the beauty of created things and things made by people, do indeed give the enjoyments of this world, but depend upon rearrangement of elements and the lawfulness of matter. Matter lives in constant transformations. In beauty, for example, it is not constant but transitory, a certain kind of illusion of the brain. Yet immutable ideas of beauty exist: beauty is the very source of the essence of the soul of the divine image within us, in which are all beauties, pleasures and bliss, and the highest of these in the source of God Himself. We attain them through natural departure from this world, through freedom.

To know how to commune with one’s own rich interior, thirst for actual life, feel life from every side and taste it, be a person of the most real actuality of the sensory and Christian worldview, experience and know matter and spirit, body and soul, form and content as a unity, is the unfolding of all the bodily and mental possibilities of human existence in their highest and most complete unity yet.

To proceed only from the material, physicomechanical foundation of life and things perceptible to the senses, speak of absolute determinism analogous to what governs the world, and seek in the fundamental properties of the substances forming a living being and in their cooperation all the possibilities creating the physiological and psychological reality of a living being whose behavior results from the cooperation of inner and outer world, present and past, is the result of a blind spirit’s thinking.

We need not then be surprised that a psychophysiologist who examines only the material concrete and is captivated by the lawfulness of living matter proclaims confused theses to the world such as: “The hypothesis of the duality of living matter, carried over into the supposition of a soul independent of a material foundation and possibly participating in divine essence, is no longer today a fruitful working activity for the physiologist.”

Editorial safety note before paragraph 1065a

The historical account below minimizes invasive psychosurgery and presents character change as treatment. Do not treat it as clinical guidance. The Royal College of Psychiatrists distinguishes modern specialist procedures from historical lobotomy and leucotomy and requires expert assessment, ethical oversight, informed-consent safeguards and continuing care. See its 2017 statement on psychiatric neurosurgery. The author’s assertions are preserved without endorsement.

(1065a) By observing experiments we have convinced ourselves that the activity of living matter in vegetative and sensory expression is supramechanical and supraphysiological, determined by the foundation, the principle, of the soul’s lower order. Matter itself is nothing other than one manifestation of the lowest form of the spiritual, whose author is God. The foundation of thought life is spiritual. The soul of the higher, immortal order is the form of sensory expression. This expression, however, is neither direct, nor spiritual, nor bodily. Through being bound to matter it is unified with it; it is psychophysical. The distinctive character of knowledge is already a supraphysical and supraphysiological process. The central nervous system, the esplana, is intended to cooperate with spirit. Structural changes can therefore considerably influence the behavior, mental state or character of a living being. We achieve this through hypnotic suggestions too.

Damage to the central nervous system, as well as the intervention of suggestion, can cause abnormal feelings to arise. Suggestion, but also slight surgical interventions, can suppress considerable deviations of human character or behavior. Severing fibers of the central nervous system that form the functional connection between the thalamus and the cortex of the frontal lobe of the brain can immediately influence the manner of expression and the fundamental characteristic features of thoughts. An individual’s deviant, diseased behavior often changes through an operation into healthy behavior. Individual traits of personality, character and disposition are adjusted by interrupting nervous connections from the diseased embodiment of the esplana cells.

Reason manifests itself through what it is supplied with and how the cerebral instrument is modified. There is a unification of matter and spirit for the soul’s rational expression. Only the material instrument often goes wrong. If the nervous system is in order, a person is mentally healthy. We can observe the soul’s free and independent expression in damaged matter only in the fourth degree of hypnosis. This shows us that the soul of the higher order, endowed with reason and will, does not belong to the order of matter and is not fully dependent upon it either.

To assert the opposite would testify to an insufficiently objective level of reflection and a denial of science’s true meaning. Actual science creates a “connection” between the first Cause, thoughts and the real world. It works with thoughts corresponding to reality. Through the senses it examines nature, and through reason mental phenomena. The senses comprehend only matter, bodies. They do not comprehend immaterial, infinite, omnipotent beings. They do not comprehend faith, feeling, love, God and the like. Only the spirit of reason comprehends these.

A true scientist sees proof of God’s existence in the arrangement of the world, its unity and organic coherence.

To imagine purpose and order out of the world means unscientific prejudice, distortion of its actual image and limitation of the scope and power of our mind.

For example, water molecules have a so-called dipolar bond, explaining why water does not evaporate at ordinary temperature, although according to scientific findings it should. Life on our planet would then, of course, be impossible. But why does water in particular have a dipolar bond? Is predetermined purpose not almost tangible here? Whoever rejects purpose and order in the world, that is, God, on principle and recognizes mere nature as primary, the original source of all being, places himself among unscientific constructions.

There is no proof that life arose through physicochemical transformations of matter. Nature does indeed give us many examples of chemical processes confirming the transformation of multiplicity into a new quality, but wishing to explain the origin of life without an Orderer through some transformation of inanimate nature into a “new quality,” animate nature, is unscientific. Wishing to explain the origin of the higher order of the human spirit with reason and will through the transformation of the sensitive, animal soul into a “new quality,” a soul possessing reason, will, thoughts and consciousness and capable of reflecting upon its own activity, cannot stand. There is not a single clear scientific proof of this thesis that would provide any natural explanation, as is customary in comparison with objective reality. A wise spirit closes itself off from nothing. To attain comprehensive knowledge, it experiments, observes and examines both the material and the spiritual world.

(1066) Man suffers from a lack of respect for truth and conviction, for personality and human life, which are the principal result of personality’s development. The image of man is shaken and in crisis. Such a life is driven from its nature through deception and denial of the truth about itself. At stake are fundamental human values, without which a person becomes desolate. For a person to realize himself, he must not resist the order given by eternal wisdom. Whoever humbles himself in spirit finds wisdom and life. For a wretched personality, devastated in spirit and hopeless, the best support is a firm and immutable order. God has disappeared from many people’s consciousness, leaving only an unstable person helplessly seeking peace and quiet. The highest order of values has been overthrown and scattered. Mental peace is impossible without peace with God. This is the Christian worldview that raises and ennobles individuals and provides common immutable moral principles. A rational person ennobles his material essence through spiritual commands, the fundamental element of the dynamics of human processes. Science will not save humanity, because it does not suffice for the human spirit. There are moments when science loses its voice, when man lives in uncertainty and depression, the spirit is undermined and creative power disintegrates. Immutable order arouses individual initiative, for its author is the Creator.

The Christian view, however, requires faith too. This concerns things not of this world. It begins where reason can no longer act. Its act presupposes conviction of the limited possibilities of human reason. Whoever rejects this faith finds his future darkened. He then directs himself only toward matter as the foundation of everything to which he has bound his limited reason. A rational person draws experience not only from this world, but also from the credibility of the Christian worldview. Philosophy today is separated from truth. Law is separated from morality. Yet man longs for unity and perfect values, even if he seeks them in a lower realm and expects them from the blind play of natural forces. He forgets that true unity and value are the work of spirit.

(1067) Only through reason enlightened by faith in divine revelation do we know the truth about our Maker. Man, however, perishes within himself through superficiality, indifference and heartlessness, and dies through bodily or mental illnesses or wars. Absolute truths and moral values remain unnoticed by many people. Nevertheless they remain eternal, even if temporarily denied and buried beneath violence.

The development of technology has fettered the human spirit; its relationships have become one-sided. Its value has thereby suffered, so that it is undermined and disturbed. The moral foundation is shaken; the necessary virtues, character, justice, morality, fidelity, honor, respect, fellowship, gentleness, generosity, devotion, honesty and mercy, these powers and defenses against evil, disappear from the human spirit. In such a case evil must prevail.

A comprehensively educated spirit is master of life, its instincts, discoveries and technical inventions. Its will is the governing factor over instincts. It directs feelings, for it has command over itself. It is a right will, which can be followed as one’s own moral element and which is guided by sound reason, capable of properly evaluating and placing every reality of life.

(1068) To be active means to have the possibility of intervening, through one’s own powers of spirit, reason and will, in the realization of things. Only someone who can become aware of his mental faculty and SELF becomes a leading and creative agent. Someone set in motion only by the reflection of external things, food, entertainments and nature, is weak and unproductive and does not proceed from his own spiritual powers. He cannot give a thing form and realize it. He cannot even direct himself, is spoiled, and succumbs to fear and feelings of inferiority.

To realize something presupposes a bearer already realized within himself. The greater the presupposed realization, the more perfect the creative intervention into things and events. There is a mutual relationship between agent and activity. If the agent has nothing definite within himself, he cannot determine anything outside himself. A person whose activity proceeds from the proper order of faculties tends toward great things and thereby perfects himself.

(1069) Man is body and spirit. Human life is the coexistence of the material and immaterial spheres. Human history is a struggle for the primacy of matter or spirit, experience or thought. This fact cannot be denied. From the material foundation grow instincts, passions, impressions, feelings, inner impulses and sympathies, thus immediate and ineradicable animal states. The order of spirit is the realm of reason and will, thought and love, truth and honesty. The first, material values are an instinctive state. The second, spiritual values presuppose rational judgment, reflection and an awakening of the soul, which takes into its hands command over its affairs and life. This command, however, is not absolute. A series of dependencies binds man. He encounters the boundaries of values until he works his way to the First of them, which is their Measure, Source and Law. Lawfulness is necessary in both thought and moral life. Humanity, however, falls into religious indistinctness; life has lost its religious foundation, and tearing unrest and ironic indifference penetrate to its roots. Today’s person thinks he is an inexhaustible concrete reality, so he tolerates no standards and does not conform to morality. He believes he is the utterly independent creator of his SELF, which at every moment he creates through his acts of will.

(1070) A person, however, is morally responsible for his life, every deed and the ordering of his existence. Moral freedom does not abolish the law of purposefulness, but only enables its better fulfillment. It does not mean the possibility of any activity whatever, but the possibility of freely choosing good and better activity. Every other understanding of moral freedom distorts and abuses morality’s natural mission. The choice of activity provides spiritual happiness.

Happiness is something so great that it seems to be God’s gift. A truly happy life surpasses the ordinary human lot, for a person no longer lives as a simple being but has within himself something divine, the highest source of activity within him, surpassing everything else. This divine element in man is perfect reason and a firm will. A life led according to such reason is already in a way divine. As Aristotle said, one must make oneself immortal and at any price live according to what is most excellent within us, what surpasses everything else in power and dignity. Happiness culminates in the contemplative activity of reason. This is followed by active life in accordance with reason and virtue. Life’s goal is then the harmoniously ordered development of outer and inner living according to reason’s voice. Without virtue, honesty and tolerance, man is the wildest animal and tends in the worst way toward destroying his neighbor, devouring him, sensuality and insatiability.

The independence of human personality disappears, and mental growth is interpreted as a mere reflex of the sexual instinct, the instinct of self-assertion or the feeding instinct. From this arise various forms of slavery, for if the whole is made absolute, the individual is only a part of it and has neither independence nor freedom. If nature is made absolute, man is merely a part of it, its highest developmental link, a super-animal differing only in degree of development. The meaning of his existence is purely earthly; life after death is a mere illusion.

Man either worships nature, longs to immerse himself in its bosom, escape the bustle of civilization and find in it a remedy for his weary soul, or gives preference to eroticism and sex. Mental life is interpreted only as the activity of desire, resistance to which means danger to mental health.

(1071) Technology, radio, film, television, the press and so forth, through their rapid succession of information, greatly disrupt human thinking scarcely as it begins developing on some level. They create a psychologically momentary, defective person accustomed to living without a proper connection among past, present and future. He selfishly defends an idea that deceptively suits only him for the time being, without regard to the whole. A comprehensively educated person does not limit himself to the immediate present and nearest surroundings that have just struck his senses, but turns toward the wider space of past, present and future. He relies upon the experiences of other people, contemporary and earlier. He uses higher faculties of his spirit than mere senses and egoistic instincts.

The spirit’s constant activity is the flame of life for cultural activity, because mature reason is an eternally enduring value. Reason must not stop. It must advance in uninterrupted development. The highest disposition in the order of knowledge is wisdom, giving us knowledge of first causes and relationships. The desire for a stable, firm, sharply defined and immutable concept stands against the unbounded world of material transformations and phenomena. Therefore the power of the awakened spirit seeks and discovers truth about being that neither arises, perishes nor changes, is not many but a single immutable being, God. Dreamers, heretics, fanatics and the mentally lazy lose clear reason. Thinking reason has healthy wishes and evokes needs. Fundamental needs are material, food, clothing and housing, and mental, science, art and morality.

(1072) Life must not be interpreted merely as the activity of desire in gratifying passions, for indulgence in food, smoking, gambling, eroticism, sex, associations, sects and the like consumes and crushes. Situations in which a person is dragged by feeling and passions into chaos merely because reason has not taken command are not rare. Experience shows how reason leads a person out of this chaos, for it has sufficient strength to master the most tangled situations. Whoever seeks “wisdom” in these weaknesses loses life. Wisdom is the light of reason. A wise person strives to attain truth, for he is aware of its ontological character, namely identity with reality. A person realizes that his actual life consists above all in realizing moral order.

(1073) Mental processes are the resultant of all the forces hidden within a person. It is therefore not correct to break them into parts and explain each separately, because mental images, feelings and desires are in themselves material for the activity of reason and will. They acquire meaning only within the wholeness of mental life. The whole, however, is greater than the mere sum of its parts. We can know the meaning of the parts only if we know the meaning of the whole.

There is no doubt that man, as part of nature, is subject to its lawfulness. Yet he is not merely a part of it. It is therefore impossible simply to transfer every natural law to human life. As a spiritual-bodily being and as an evaluating subject and creator of culture, man stands above nature.

The principle that the meaning of the parts lies in the whole applies in nature without reservation. If this principle is transferred to human social life, however, if sociology is understood as a branch of biology and it is proclaimed that the whole is everything and the individual nothing, that man is merely a member of society and should therefore submit entirely to its interests, this is an error resulting in the suppression of the human spirit’s potential forces in its creative faculties, aptitudes and properties. Weakness of spirit, inferiority and various mental defects follow.

This thinking originates above all in the human spirit’s simplifying tendency and the attempt to explain the world, life and man from a single principle, either material or spiritual.

The human soul is a source of activity. What matters is in which of its faculties this power predominantly acts. If it is the sensory and vegetative component, a person becomes like an animal. If, however, it acts predominantly in the component of the rational faculty, the person becomes a truly rational creature.

Editorial note before paragraph 1074

The author’s claims that creativity prevents mental illness and that illness signifies inferiority or a weak spirit are historical judgments, not endorsed clinical standards. Mental-health symptoms should not be used to judge a person’s worth or character. NIMH describes schizophrenia in terms of interacting genetic, environmental and brain-related factors and explains that effective treatments can support functioning and personal goals. See NIMH’s schizophrenia overview.

(1074) Humanity brings up and educates its reason too little, leaves it in darkness, and thereby causes a disturbance of order in human society. Almost all humanity lives from the phylogenetic source, the endowment of cultural inheritance from ancestors and remote forebears. Very few create new things and values from their own mental powers and will. The creative spirit gains from this the benefit and certainty that it will not succumb to mental illnesses. The mentally ill cannot kindle their spirit for creative activity. They are a fading light, whereas they should be a beacon casting its light far and wide. Through a lack of knowledge and experience they are inferior and often suffer from it. Their instinct is captive to bodily passions. It is slavishly directed and guided from the bodily-material reserves of their ancestors’ mental experiences, in which evil always predominates.

(1075) A blazing spirit frees itself from this uncertain gift and uses the body in the service of the awakened spirit. From its own knowledge, acquired through education on a Christian foundation, it gives the body a new form and order. Only virtues and education are such an inheritance from our ancestors as we must and should accept, welcome and use from generation to generation. That inheritance is an entrusted possession, increased and bequeathed to further generations so that they may build upon it. Not only social training, but select education gives perspective and an understanding of causes and consequences.

The human spirit is not only reason and will, but also dynamic force and astonishing potential, an aptitude for faculties. The same spirit can assume various forms and in them fulfill its earthly life as a scoundrel, thief, swindler, mentally backward person, idiot and weakling, or, conversely, as an educated person, scientist, artist, poet, saint, moralist, martyr and so forth. A blazing spirit awakened in reason and will seeks and strives to know itself, free itself from blind hereditary deterministic influences, and has the strength to reshape itself, attain a more perfect form and become a creative agent for new values.

(1076) In its essence the human soul is no smaller or poorer than an angel’s spirit. Separated from matter, it is a complete substance and can live the life of spirit like an angel. The angel does indeed stand at a higher degree of intelligence and perfection through wisdom of reason and strength of will, but its essence lacks the natural faculties and aptitudes of its own for participation in the material masterpiece of the universe, where the human spirit stands higher in relation to the angel. The human soul that in the next life attains the supernatural gift of beatitude through direct knowledge of its spiritual essence and can reach participation in the goods of God’s essence, the highest bliss, both of which the angel also possesses, will additionally participate in the goods of all created matter. God created the world to serve man’s present and eternal bliss. He also made possible participation in bliss in one’s glorified material and immortal body, because the sensory faculty and the faculty animating the body, enabling its activity in supernatural life, will again assert themselves to a higher degree so that the soul’s life may be complete.

(1077) God is the highest good and wishes to share His goods with others. He therefore created the world, freely, from love and friendship, to reveal His goodness and manifest His perfection through gifts from divine perfections, which He grants creatures to make them blessed.

Man’s higher life will be the blissful experience of the actual freedom of pure higher reason and will. The human soul, tending through its own faculty toward glorified matter, will have a natural interest in the Creator’s entire masterpiece, which He made from goodness and for the adornment of His majesty. He created it according to the soul’s entire essence from nothing, from nonbeing into existence. The soul is governed by Him and tends toward perfection. Through this gift, participation in matter, it will reach further knowledge and an increase in the enjoyments of bliss and delight.

Reason demonstrates that because an angel lacks these splendid faculties for activity toward matter and its animation, it cannot be directly and permanently joined with matter. It thus also lacks that relationship to matter, innate and natural to man, and the constant interest in it through which it might attain higher bliss from matter’s properties and beauty, springing from constant transformation, and from its animation.

An angel is a spiritual being, pure spirit, and is above the soul. This means that it is an independent, complete spiritual substance with a life entirely independent of matter. Through the strength of its higher faculty of reason, the angel’s spirit knows that material things are, that they exist. It does not, however, derive from them the inner enjoyment felt by a person who depends upon matter and was created for it, to know the Creator’s work. In an angel, however, knowledge of God and the beatitude flowing from it are higher than in people. Although angels are of a higher, perfect nature, they are all only God’s helpers in the work of our sanctification and salvation.

(1078) A philosopher whose knowledge is deeper than sensory knowledge well understands the possibility of reflecting upon higher things and can gradually attain knowledge of truths and laws, that is, work his way beyond consciousness to the very nucleus of being, the pure subconscious. There he sees the world and soul in the light of first causes and motives, that is, where all truths and universal moral law have their seat.

Moral law in man proves that God exists. It is a great mistake that today’s person constantly corrects God in something, whereas through his reason and free will he should glorify Him.

With sober, educated reason I must always rely upon reasons and logic. I then have secure certainty of truth. In life, however, I must not exaggerate that spiritual side, for then it sinks to the level of an animal and animality discharges itself in the cruelest way. Whoever wants to play the angel will act like an animal. Only a pseudo-ascetic who wants pure, heaven-high angelic holiness in everything is scandalized by everything human. Nothing human and natural can stand before him; he persecutes it with cruelty and barbarity like a wild beast.

Suppressing one’s nature is therefore a misunderstanding. Let us suppress only what is corrupted in nature. Nature must be subjected to the supernatural, but must not be suppressed and destroyed. What would the supernatural then direct, fulfill and transform?

(1079) Part of the humility of human life is that man is not an angel. Let us remain what we should be in God’s will. In humility let us accept our weak humanity with all its deficiencies and needs, including the need for relief and joys.

Let everyone in his own interest examine his mental activity to see whether it has gone astray. The soul in its activity is constant movement. You have learned that its activity longs for pleasant things, experiences, beauty and good, which should be a noble selection from natural, worldly and spiritual enjoyments. If a person lacks education of reason and intelligence and, besides ordinary occupation, the soul is not given this selected healthy activity, base passions awaken. The soul seeks a substitute in them, and its activity becomes perverted: alcohol, smoking, games, masturbation, prostitutes, slander, tyranny, discord, intolerance, avarice, pride, envy and so on. If even this activity is unavailable to the soul, it replaces it subjectively, inwardly, by creating unhealthy complexes for which it has accepted an unclarified, repressed thought as the foundation. A division of the soul into conscious and lower-order subconscious activity then occurs; the person becomes mentally ill, schizophrenic.

(1080) Even in the noblest and most exalted person, all the baseness and vulgarity of human, even animal, nature lie at the very core, for he is the bearer of the phylogenetic living matter of his ancestors’ lower experiences.

Let us watch over ourselves and realize through reason that a beast slumbers in every person. In some it lies very deep, but once awakened it is difficult to bind. This predator within us satisfies its thirst for blood upon a chosen enemy and finally turns against its own and the innocent. It then becomes a beast with reason, to torment its victim in the most refined way while satisfying its lowest passions.

Only education of reason, moral laws and higher rational judgment can bind it.

An uneducated person cannot grasp and understand reality, has no sense for preserving values and is capable of destroying them. An educated person proceeds from human feeling and need, setting his will in motion to create new values. Only where an educated individual develops independently does he acquire the significance of personality and become useful to human society.

A person should strive to know everything, for even food and the kind of work have a considerable influence on the formation of his character. Plant food and work in fresh air strengthen the body and calm the spirit. Meat-based food and work in enclosed spaces undermine the body and make the spirit nervous. The country dweller is more contented and peaceable. The city dweller is restless and irritable; through innate unrest he allows himself to be provoked into conflict and, in his pride, egoism and desire for power, is an instigator of wars. His belligerence lacks prior Christian upbringing.

The inner person develops through the spiritual effort of the faculties of reason and will. He creates inner order for himself. Mental and moral discipline assists balance and leads to more perfect cooperation of all mental and bodily energy. The source of human action is reason and will, the human spiritual faculty. Few are those who find the right path.

I must know how to direct my will and subject it to myself, for it seeks only enjoyment. I must not pursue only myself and my body, for the sexual instinct remains the strongest motive and occupies half of one’s powers and thinking.

A person should not think, restrict and burden himself only humanly and only with transitory things, but should strive to be consciously immortal and do everything for this idea.

The life of those who have arrived at truth and know something is more joyful than that of people still groping. For realized knowledge provides delight, wondrous purity and, in God’s grace, duration, stability and beauty. Beauty exists in itself: the idea of beauty, heaven in a pure soul.

(1081) People of shallow and weak spirit lack education of reason and will. They seek external amusement instead of inner joy springing from the soul’s wealth and education. They are blinded and governed by material things instead of governing them themselves. Contemporary man’s life unfolds in constant flight from reality. This is an inability to perceive life correctly. Everything material in the world is being perfected; only the human spirit wishes to know nothing about itself.

The children of the world will always tend toward matter, so belief in the universal spiritual rebirth of all humanity is impossible.

Man loves life. People seek new forms of life’s manifestations. Within the human spirit there is a complexity of details and desires. The mystification of life reaches into decisions requiring thought, deliberation and responsibility. Fanaticism and mystification become embodied in forms of life and technology. Technology swallows man. It is forgotten that the soul should become embodied in all forms of life and work, so that everything is human and serves man. We should learn healthy forms of life.

With technological advance, man does not progress toward his spiritual liberation. Technology does not make a person happier if his inner attitude has become stagnant.

(1082) Materialism and spiritualism will continually struggle for their idea. These two concepts are philosophically opposed. The essence of spiritualism is spirit, while matter is merely its product, its consequence. Materialism denies the spiritual foundation; at the same time it denies all positive knowledge and rejects logic and reason in the formation of human understanding. Today’s person ceases to be spirit and begins to be merely an animal, for he believes that spirit is a mere emanation of matter.

According to this misguided theory, the matter of the human body would be the cause of a person’s thinking, and individual consciousness would inevitably disappear with the disruption of all vital functions and the destruction of the nervous system in which those functions occur. Thus, supposedly, no shadow of consciousness, soul, can exist without a material body, nor can traces of individual consciousness persist after disruption of the nervous structure, that is, after death.

(1083) Spiritualists believe in the immortality of the human soul. Materialists too must acknowledge the immortality of the human spirit, for they teach that matter has changeable properties and that thinking spirit is matter’s highest unified result of development. If this spiritual principle perceives and is aware of itself, then this “I am” cannot be destroyed by the disintegration of coarse matter. What is superior always has higher quality and existential being than what is subordinate. If matter has eternal existential being, all the more does spirit, which has reached the highest stage of existence, quality, value and self-awareness.

Material forces struggle against spirit. The struggle against it has been the fundamental force of recent decades. Concentrated attacks are directed against the world of spirit. It, however, defends its realm of values against the realm of natural, violent energies. The body is not wiser than spirit. The world cannot be understood through instincts, but only through spirit, reason and intuition. In spirit lie strength and truth. Spirit, morality, humanity, faith in the soul’s immortality and in God provide true life. Those who would liquidate the world of spirit destroy moral values, truths and ideas. Human life thereby changes into a mere biological process, the rule of natural forces that man masters through spirit. The materialistic endeavor is to base the world not upon moral-spiritual foundations, but upon biological and economic forces and technological achievements.

(1084) The world is becoming empty and deprived of spirit. Man leaves the spiritual sphere and returns to the vital, biological sphere, to instincts, passions and drives. Alongside this come new conquests of the brain and technology, deepening humanity’s terror and anxiety. Technology prevails over the soul, which has lost command over the world.

This destructive development is expressed in endlessly repeated slogans of the type: Man, you are a product of nature, society, conditions and material circumstances. Spirit, truth, goodness and freedom are only illusions. The sole meaning of life is your utility and society’s. Assert yourself, for you are master, arbiter over life and death. Your personality is only the result and combination of natural, social, productive and historical forces.

Are there, then, only unconscious forces, nature, matter, instincts and passions? Where, then, is responsibility? Modern man is sick; he has lost faith in the moral world and God. Man lives in rebellion, acknowledges no Lord above himself, and himself wishes to be lord and judge of his neighbors. Instead of spiritualism he worships materialism.

Reason, however, says that spirit and spiritual truths are more significant than the echo of natural instincts and economic interests. Personality is much more than merely the result of a combination of natural, social and historical forces. For above everything stands good, and it has supreme validity. Spirit, not matter, is endowed with reason.

(1085) Today’s person hurries and exerts himself to seize as much as possible of this material world for himself. He forgets that spirit and idea are life’s nucleus. Religion is not a theory, but the practical experience of life’s meaning, an endeavor toward higher values. The true world is the world of theology, metaphysics, philosophy, reason, knowledge and the understanding of proofs and ideas. For a scientist to evoke a strong movement of spiritual life, discover something and tell it to the people, and provide tangible signs of the existence of the spiritual, he needs liberty and freedom. Instead of understanding, however, we find only mockery of these truths. Yet whoever sees further arms his reason not only with worldly knowledge but also with knowledge of God’s truths; only thus will he radiate Christ’s ideas through his entire life.

Man has rebelled against the supernatural moral order. The foundation of moral life is to see reality with the mind’s eye, surrender to it, admire, believe and comprehend it; only thus can one live the fullness of one’s existence.

Material conditions of life cause man to be unwilling to awaken his sense for the exactness of actual and immutable truths. If he lacks the ability to perceive truth, he will never know deep, true life. Only people living under God’s gaze are firmly anchored and protected against the unrest and shocks of everyday life.

(1086) In the civilized world we work by the method of concepts constructed by reason so that they are clear in themselves. Constructed concepts are above all the foundation of technical thinking. In the moral sciences, however, they are unnatural, because moral things exist before their constructed concept is established, for example justice, love, beauty and purity of soul. Every person himself has the capacity for knowledge and certainty; he need only be led to it through upbringing and instruction. Knowledge of human nature existed before the birth of every individual.

In human history only one law of noble and exalted life holds. We therefore cannot make do merely with contingencies that arise and disappear. True reality is moral; it cannot be observed from outside, has content, goal and meaning, and governs human experiences.

Metaphysics comes closest to true reality. Its content, for which man longs, exists and is perfect and absolute. It is a science in which material interests and advantage have no place, only pure reality and truth.

(1087) Reason is the best human faculty, the most powerful component of human action. The highest state of reason in the hierarchy of knowledge is wisdom, enabling reflection upon the highest things.

Man is not merely an object of natural processes and instincts, even though he acts according to them and uses them. He is also a subject aware of himself, and thus according to free willing reflects or transforms those natural processes into means necessary for building his spiritual personality, so as to attain life’s goal. He must therefore have willing, acquire knowledge for healthy activity and the examination of moral reality, and direct his conduct so that it is morally good and virtuous.

In the subconscious, the soul longs for a perfect life. If I let a subject in hypnosis look into the esplana, he disapproved of his earlier earthly conduct, was terrified by it and regarded it with aversion.

(1088) Moral good perfects man. We attain morality through constant practice, repeated virtuous conduct. In all conduct we should be perfect in every respect and from this foundation seek the right meaning and goal in everything with which we occupy ourselves.

True human happiness lies in the best activity concerning itself with the best object. Such acts are morally perfect and virtuous, ennobling a person and bringing him bliss.

Conscience is an important helper to everyone: moral law engraved by God into human nature. It is a manifestation of one’s own soul, active through its precious faculties. All human lawfulness, composed of moral and natural laws as well as positively established laws, depends upon eternal law as its absolute foundation.

(1089) The foundation of human acts is reason and will. From them proceeds activity toward perfection and good. Before all other psychic faculties, reason has natural precedence, for knowledge precedes the will’s willing. Reason knows reality, and other concepts depend upon it. For example good, the object of the will, and beauty, in which almost all faculties participate.

Desires and willing are natural in man, for he longs for his fulfillment, for good and a goal. Yet no one can live without sensory joys. People need them as medicine against sadness and pain.

(1090) Earthly life does not provide sufficient enjoyments, so in this sense man suffers constant want. It is a want of happiness.

Despair is therefore a frequent phenomenon of modern life. Within a person it divides and devastates his aspiration, hope and courage. Such a person is oppressed by his own imperfections to the point of suicide. Only those with deep and rich sources of their own spiritual development within them survive in mental health.

The crisis of our age lies in life’s lack of spirit and in the absence of awareness of one’s responsibility.

Earthly life is struggle and evil, but also a stage in the fulfillment of good. Man attains his greatness only through resistance, responsibility and suffering. Pain itself is a sign of life and an impulse toward its reconstruction. It follows that man is created for achievement, through which happiness is attained. Dull contentment is unworthy of man. Spiritual strength, however, must not be lacking to help overcome difficulties. One must have before one’s eyes a great life goal upon which to fix one’s hope, which supports and awakens courage within him.

(1091) On the basis of experience acquired through senses and reason, we recognize that everything around us is subject to a certain order and lawfulness. Every event in the universe, every movement in the broadest sense of the word, tends toward a certain goal and has a certain intention. Man is part of the universe, so his life too, as a certain kind of movement, has a definite meaning and goal. That highest goal is immortal life, higher knowledge of good and beatitude.

Beatitude is the best good and goal. It is not incomplete, so it is above all what we desire. It is life’s goal.

God, as the most perfect being, the source of truth, goodness and beauty, is the best object with which the human soul can occupy itself and thus, through intense acts, attain knowledge of the light that brings bliss. Human soul, you are so great that God alone can satisfy you!

Only God can perfectly fulfill and calm the will. He is therefore the object and source of perfect beatitude. He has given us Himself already here on Earth, through reception of the sacraments.

(1092) Human life is only a path along which we go toward beatitude, which is actually spiritual activity. Perfect beatitude fills the soul’s entire longing and excludes every physical and moral evil. The highest beatitude is participation in God’s essence; it is the desire to see God. This, however, cannot be attained here on Earth. Nothing among created things suffices to calm the human will perfectly, for its object is universal good.

Human activity manifests itself through mind and free will. A person is therefore obliged to go toward his goal and find it, so as to attain the highest beauty, happiness and beatitude.

A sign of sound reason is the will toward truth. Truth is not where there are greater numbers and greater force. Man has caused the downfall of values and become the slave of his own limitation. Through the darkening of reason he has reduced himself to mere “human material” for armies or workplaces. He has distorted the meaning of his own life. Even if the whole world wished to be deceived, critical reason should preserve its clarity and independence. It should analyze realities precisely, order them logically and on this basis draw a synthetic conclusion and judgment. Even art cannot do without criticism, let alone life’s purpose and meaning, which should be both science and art.

(1093) The matter of the human body is indolent. Only spirit raises it. Spirit acts through its own power. The unity of mental life occurs through the cooperation of psyche, reason, will and memory. Metaphysical thinking is man’s proper goal and raises him above ordinary life.

Metaphysics examines and discusses philosophy’s most abstract problems: the concept of the world’s first cause, its purpose and meaning, and the meaning of life in general. Rationalist metaphysics proceeds from the conviction that rational truths are independent and that through reason we can even apprehend truths surpassing our sensory experience.

(1094) When reflecting upon a new view, one must grasp the idea, the pattern according to which it will be formed. Active thinking distinguishes the philosopher.

Philosophy is the science of truth. It is something active that must spring from the whole human being. If you philosophize about yourself or about something so as to benefit others in life through your thought, it is good to ask God for His cooperation. You must observe all important rules in doing so, so that you also reach your own joy and goal, good. Good and goal are eternally identical.

In research, logic is very important; through its use a person acquires freedom from doubt, certainty and an overview of the work performed and methods employed.

On this foundation a person can act in life and form a worldview. Higher reason, reflecting upon its own activity, creates a logical development of knowledge of truth, in which one thought carries another and each draws its truth from its connection with the others. Experience helps greatly. Pure experience is an abstraction and can be approached only through thorough analysis of consciousness.

(1095) The fundamental property of a mental state is a relationship to some object. Thinking too acquires a relationship to some reality or thing, for it always decides upon its existence.

Our free movement of reason creates new thoughts and a whole system of concepts, for the human spirit allows nothing but logic to bar where it may penetrate. In this way people usually form their truths. These, however, differ. It is always the personal view of an individual for whom what he knows is reality, and to which he then grants truth. This is not exact truth. He forgets that there is systematic, objective truth applying to everyone, which we call science. Even science is not yet all-encompassing, infallible, absolute truth. Many philosophical views, therefore, although resting on scientific findings from observation of matter and the human soul, have a mistaken foundation.

To reach the highest truth, rationalism, empiricism and determinism must not be your principal characteristic in philosophizing. Great caution is needed to avoid errors.

(1096) You must make use of every possibility: intuition, experience, scientific findings, experiments, metapsychic hypnotic experiments and finally the higher light of reason.

In experiments, in view of the relative standpoint, you must see truth not in an individual phenomenon, but in logical connections.

Science and reason form philosophy’s necessary foundation. If philosophy is sound, it must have roots in science and scientific method. You must attend to what is positive, what has been precisely established scientifically.

Instinct means a pre-experiential impulse, which can, however, be directed by the will.

Reliance on intuition leads not to general truths but only individual ones. Intuition means becoming aware of instinct and can act strongly upon inner vital dynamics.

Through intuition we recognize that mental life is not merely images and feelings, but a living, concrete stream. It is indeed characterized by immediate vision of a concrete thing and an instantaneous deeper insight, but does not provide clear and precise comprehension until the thing is knowable in psychic form. Only the thing’s psychic likeness penetrates to comprehension. For intuitive knowledge to be perfect, it would be necessary to “see” the thing’s existence from within, as it is, in its entire universality.

(1097) Through a metapsychic experiment in trance, we analyze a thing in its essence. With the aid of the released oduší and psychic presence, through its inner power and faculty of knowledge, the human spirit sees the thing’s existence from within, knows it almost exhaustively and as a whole and thus penetrates to the heart of the matter.

Attend to your intelligence and the growth of rational culture, for in expressing a thought it is not merely a matter of expressing a subjective mental state and suggestively transmitting, uttering, it, but of objectively and correctly naming the thought and justifying it through a rational method previously subjected to one’s own inner judgment. Rational judgment, however, must be practical and universal.

(1098) In scientific judgment there must be rigor and an extraordinary strength of reason organizing and directing all mental life and its manifestations. Then no revolutionary view or thought will founder through a lack of intellectual preparation; instead the morality of higher reason, pure will and radical freedom will prevail. Philosophy will then meet the worldwide standpoint and permeate national culture. Only then will it show the direct path toward man’s final and highest goal, absolute bliss and freedom.

80. Christ: The Greatest Hypnotizer and Magnetizer?

(1099) In the final chapter of my book I am obliged briefly and impartially to set out my view of Christ’s miracles. I am often troubled by the question: “What do you say about Christ’s miracles?” I am told outright: “Now you can explain Christ’s miracles,” or: “Christ was the greatest hypnotizer and magnetizer who ever lived. He required faith and acted through strength of will, suggestion, hypnosis and magnetism.”

Let us therefore analyze some of His miracles. Let us examine the very first: the transformation of water into wine at Cana in Galilee. (The Gospel of St. John 2:1–11.)

(1100) Among other things we read: there were six stone jars standing there, each holding two or three measures. Jesus said to them: “Fill the jars with water!”

At the word “water,” the image of water and nothing else must surely have arisen in the souls of everyone present. If, even while speaking that word, Jesus had evoked an image of wine in those present through the power of His will, His thoughts, the two images, would naturally have crossed, and success would have been uncertain; He would have hindered Himself. The hypnologist is aware of this. Furthermore, a word spoken by a person is more powerful and effective than a mere mental image suggested by the same person at the same moment. This sensory deception would not have succeeded.

The wedding servants knew what they were doing. They therefore filled the jars with water to the brim. It is natural that they must then have seen only water in them. The Gospel says: And Jesus said to them: “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it. Only at this moment could the miracle have occurred.

(1101) But in what way did it happen? Jesus used no verbal suggestion for it. It is therefore either an actual miracle or a sensory deception, which Christ could have achieved only by telepathic means after the words “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” I say “after the words,” for only immediately after them would Jesus have had to exert the power of His will upon everyone present. The Gospel continues: “When the master of the feast tasted the water made wine, and did not know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew, the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him: ‘Every man serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, the poorer. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Thus Jesus made the beginning of His signs in Cana in Galilee and revealed His glory. And His disciples believed in Him.”

(1102) As a practitioner I shall briefly discuss how a similar miracle would fare through any possible mental suggestion:

  1. Direct verbal suggestion was not used.

  2. If Christ wished to suggest telepathically to everyone present an image of wine instead of water, He would in that case have had to be able to exert His influence upon every person present. This is absolutely impossible, however, in a larger company unprepared for telepathic suggestion. It is impossible even with four to six people. Yet many more were surely present at the wedding. Jesus Himself alone brought His five disciples, and they too, like the others, did not yet know Christ’s power, and He would have had to influence them as well.

  3. Telepathic suggestion has absolutely no effect upon a magnetic person in the waking state. There were surely several magnetic people in the company. Even an image suggested verbally, without auxiliary impressions, would not affect the whole company, composed of both magnetic and nonmagnetic people. It is true that the psyche is contagious and sometimes carries away entire masses of people who are in some way predisposed and prepared beforehand. Yet this can never happen in such a calm, innocent and unprepared experiment as occurred at Cana. In such a case psychic contagion refuses to appear. You can try it!

(1103) 4. For Christ’s experiment through deceptive suggestion to succeed, the entire company would have had to consist of selected, nonmagnetic and tested sensitives, and all would have had to be completely sober, without prior consumption of alcohol. This did not happen at Cana, however, because the company had already drunk almost the entire supply of wine. Even if everyone there had been sober, in some the transmitted image of wine would surely have transformed in their minds into another image, as often happens in telepathic experiments. The cause is the subconscious SELF, for which such a perception is an opportunity and means to clothe itself in various symbolisms.

  1. A person “in high spirits” from wine will not receive telepathic suggestions. We would surely have found such participants in the wedding company, for Christ performed the miracle when the wine was already running short. Let anyone who can exert telepathic influence upon even the smallest company, every individual member of which has drunk half a liter of wine, introduce himself to me! At Cana many surely drank more, for we know that wine was native there, and through habit people drink and tolerate more. Someone may object that where wine is native it has no great effect upon a person. I maintain that it always acts, gradually poisoning and dulling the nerves through frequent and more abundant drinking. Telepathic suggestion then fails precisely in such people.

(1104) 6. If despite all obstacles Christ had achieved a deception of the senses through telepathic suggestion, it would surely have happened that for many wedding participants the image and impression of wine would have faded after a few days, or at least weakened, and the deception would then have had to yield to truth. This would happen because the eye of some participant would spontaneously smuggle into the upper subconscious the impression of water at the mere sight of it, despite white wine being very similar to water in color, and the fraud would thus be exposed. I myself, in a similar experiment through verbal suggestion, achieved a deception in fourteen sober subjects at once. After a time, however, some accused me of fraud, although in others the impression of the deceptive suggestion remained.

  1. The fraud would also have been exposed if a stranger suddenly appeared in the company who escaped Jesus’ attention. That person would surely have revealed the fraud, for a materialized thought impressed into protonace, by which Christ might have wished to safeguard Himself, does not affect everyone.

(1105) 8. There were six jars, each “holding two or three measures.” One measure, called a bath, amounted according to various sources to twenty to forty liters. Each jar thus held about forty to one hundred liters. Altogether, therefore, there were hundreds of liters of wine. This quantity was hardly drunk on the wedding day. Some must have remained for subsequent days for people who came later out of curiosity and were not included in the suggestion. They would certainly have uncovered the truth, and Jesus would have been exposed as guilty of deception and fraud.

As could hardly have been otherwise, Jesus’ marvel was surely discussed in Cana too. Even if all the wine had been drunk, tiny remnants would have remained in the jars, in which any skeptics would have recognized water.

  1. Finally, we must also consider that on this occasion Christ required no faith beforehand from those present. In the Gospel we read: “And His disciples believed.” This means they recognized that Christ performed the marvel through divine power, through being God. It was therefore a direct intervention of the divine power of Jesus Christ.

(1106) A person acquainted with hidden forces and frequently working with metapsychic phenomena will never succeed in a similar experiment under the same conditions and circumstances as at Cana. Contrary assertions can therefore spring only from complete ignorance of the matter.

Now let us look at another miracle: Jesus heals a man blind from birth. (The Gospel of St. John 9:1–38.)

(1107) I give the verses significant for our case:

Verses 1–2. He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked Him: “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Verses 6–7. He spat upon the ground, made mud from the saliva, anointed the man’s eyes with it and said to him: “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam.” He went, washed, returned and saw.

Verse 13. They brought the man who had been blind to the Pharisees.

Verses 18–20. They did not believe that he had been blind and received sight, and called his parents. They asked them: “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How then can he now see?” The parents answered: “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind.”

Verses 24–25. They therefore called again the man who had been blind and said to him: “Give glory to God by speaking the whole truth. We know that this man is a sinner.” The healed man said: “Whether He is a sinner I do not know; one thing I know, that I was blind, but now I see.”

Verses 32–33. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of one born blind. If He were not from God, He could do nothing.

(1108) According to the Gospel, therefore, it is beyond doubt that this man was truly blind from birth. He declared it himself, and his parents and acquaintances testified to it as well.

Is it possible to restore sight to a person blind from birth through the power of human will, suggestion, hypnosis or magnetism contained in saliva? I insist that it is not possible and never will be! Some specialists, however, hold the view that if faith was required beforehand, it is possible. Supposedly where faith was absent, no miracles occurred or succeeded.

(1109) Such assertions are not consistent. Many scholars seek, find and name hidden human powers, claiming that Christ’s miracles can be explained through them. We might suppose that, since they teach this so persistently, they have themselves tested those powers and demonstrated them through their own experiments, for it is certain that in the eyes of impartial and critical science, mere assertions without evidence cannot stand. Nothing of the kind, however, is documented.

It is all too well known that deeds are exchanged for words and phrases, which often destroy even the meaning of something fundamentally good. If the supernatural confronts the natural and there is an intense effort to erase the boundaries between them and cast man into a mass of errors and scientific suppositions without evidential force, this is inadmissible from a scientific standpoint. The spread of such teachings must therefore be prevented. If they contained anything justified, vital and beneficial, they would long since have become a subject of expert discussion to establish their validity. Only then could they be used in humanity’s interest and spread and further perfected through practical medicine. To that end, however, they would have to be clear, self-evident and demonstrable.

(1110) A blind person, if he were to be healed through suggestion, would have to be afflicted with hysterical blindness. As I have already mentioned, it is then indeed possible to awaken sight to activity through suggestion alone. In that case blindness consists only in a disturbance of visual attention. I myself evoked this state in sensitives before witnesses and again successfully withdrew it through suggestion. These, however, were only experiments. Psychiatry still has no record of even a single case of congenital hysterical blindness being cured through suggestion or hypnosis.

St. John the Evangelist, an eyewitness to the miracle described, recorded the healing of the blind man at a time when the other witnesses to the miracle were still living. If his record had not been true, the lie would have been exposed during his own lifetime.

(1111) Finally, it must be stated that Christ did not ask the blind man for any faith beforehand. Only after the healing, the Pharisees’ investigation of the miracle, and the subsequent expulsion of the healed man from the Jewish religious community do we read: Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and finding him, said: “Do you believe in the Son of God?” He answered: “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him: “You have seen Him. He is the one speaking with you.” Then he said: “I believe, Lord!” and fell to his knees and worshiped Him.

This is proof that in this and other cases Christ did not require faith necessary for healing, but religious faith necessary for salvation. He required it for moral reasons, not therapeutic ones.

It is also known that Christ sometimes required faith not from the sick, but from those who came to plead for them.

Christ also healed at a distance. Without speaking with or seeing the sick, He healed even people far from believing in Him. He also healed people prejudiced against Him, for example the high priest’s servant Malchus, whose ear Peter cut off.

The miracle of healing a man blind from birth lies beyond all the possibilities of psychological science; such a patient’s sight cannot be restored through suggestion, hypnosis or magnetism.

(1112) The curse upon the fig tree.

This event is related by two evangelists, Matthew and John. St. Matthew 21:18–20: In the morning, returning from Bethany to the city of Jerusalem, Jesus felt hungry. He saw a fig tree beside the road. He went to it and found only green leaves upon it. He said: “May no fruit ever grow on you again.” Then the fig tree withered. The disciples marveled and said: “How is it possible that it withered?” [Translator’s note: the source names Matthew and John here, then cites Mark in the following paragraph; the discrepancy is retained.]

(1113) A question arises. Was the fig tree’s sudden withering a visual deception caused by suggestion? I answer no. Besides the twelve apostles, Christ also had seventy-two disciples. It is certain that they would not all have succumbed equally to suggestion, and some not at all. The fig tree stood beside the main road between the towns, along which they passed several times. As St. Mark states, 11:13–14, 20–21, they noticed the withered tree the very next day, and other people who had not been present at the marvel surely also drew attention to it. Human nature is very communicative, and there are always people who recount the striking and extraordinary things they have seen and heard. Those who had not been eyewitnesses would then have had to see that what the disciples told them was untrue. Suggestion would also have faded in time in some disciples, and on some further occasion they would have seen that the tree was not withered. A quarrel would surely have arisen among them.

The objection that the tree was already withered and Christ merely aroused in the disciples a deceptive image of its green leaves does not stand, even if He withdrew it after pronouncing the curse; the fraud would surely soon have been discovered. Besides, it is impossible to smuggle something of that sort into a text expressly saying that the tree had leaves before Jesus approached it.

Even in this case, the best specialist could not cause a visual deception through suggestion under the circumstances in which Christ performed the miracle.

(1114) The feeding of thousands of men, besides women and children. St. Matthew recorded two similar events: the feeding of five thousand men, 14:13–21, also St. Mark 6:32–44, St. Luke 9:10–17 and St. John 6:1–13; and the feeding of four thousand men, also St. Mark 8:1–10. Both events are undoubtedly familiar to the reader from the Gospels, so they need not be described in detail.

What are we to think of them? I maintain that even the most advanced hypnologist cannot publicly create a deceptive image of thousands being fed with a few loaves and small fish, nor of several full baskets of leftover crumbs being gathered after the meal.

Neither of Christ’s miracles can be explained by deceptive suggestion for these reasons:

Such an immense crowd cannot be influenced through suggestion or perhaps mere thought so that everyone succumbs to a deceptive image. A contemporary magneto-hypnologist would carry away at most a quarter of the crowd with the first suggestion, and even then it would have to be known beforehand that he possessed such a powerful ability. If he exerted himself repeatedly, which Christ never did, I guarantee that more than half would remain seeing realistically and would laugh at those who succumbed to the image of bread and fish.

It is true that I can suggest: “You have eaten and are satisfied!” But of what use is that when the majority will be people who see no baskets of crumbs?

(1115) The specialists’ objection that in Christ’s time people were more suggestible and more readily succumbed to a shared hallucination is incorrect. On the contrary, the way of life of people then was not as poor as in our time, so there were not so many hysterics and epileptics. Christ performed His miracles among healthy country people, where the mentally ill were very few. After all, even today we say that country people are healthier and have good nerves.

(1116) Christ performed His miracles with such simplicity and complete calm as though they were the most ordinary things. He healed under all circumstances without any preparation. He often acted indirectly, without anyone suspecting what was about to happen. A contemporary hypnologist acts through direct suggestion, which already makes clear beforehand what is to happen.

If we wished to influence even the best sensitives by Christ’s method, very few experiments, however simple, would succeed. For mass psychic contagion to arise, something striking that captivates and carries away the soul must necessarily occur. Thus even Christ’s feeding of the crowds has not been successfully explained in a natural way.

How are we to explain Christ’s sudden disappearance from crowds that wanted to arrest and stone Him? We encounter this story in several places in the Gospels. Once Jesus escaped their hands in the portico of Solomon’s Temple. At another time He vanished from the sight of Pharisees and scribes while teaching at the temple treasury, at the moment they wanted to stone Him. On another occasion, when they wanted to cast Him from the edge of a mountain into an abyss, Christ suddenly turned and walked calmly through their midst without their being able to lay hands upon Him.

(1117) This too refutes the objection that Christ could not perform a miracle without prior faith in its accomplishment. He never selected suitable company for His miracles, but performed them successfully in every chance situation. I maintain that even the most advanced hypnologist sometimes encounters failure. Christ never did.

It is true that a present-day hypnologist also knows how suddenly to vanish from a company’s sight. I myself have done it several times. But what kind of company must it be? All good sensitives! With them I can perform this experiment with complete success. No hypnotizer, however, will succeed in a chance gathering under the conditions and circumstances Christ faced.

We can never rely upon a mass, general hallucination; it will not succeed. Whoever claims otherwise should demonstrate it before my eyes! He will have to act through direct verbal suggestion to attain even a quarter-success. Christ, however, never used spoken suggestion in His cases, never said even a word beforehand indicating that He would disappear.

According to the specialists’ view, He must have acted through thought alone. I assure all these hypnologists that in such a case they will fare still worse than when using suggestion. A similar marvel of disappearance may succeed telepathically for a good hypnologist in a group of up to ten people, provided he first wins them over and adapts them to his technique. Even then, however, success is incomplete. Usually one or two people will not succumb despite the hypnologist’s greatest effort. During Christ’s miracles, however, the company was accidental and far more numerous, often numbering thousands.

(1118) The objection that Christ, as a hypnotizer, evoked a cataleptic state, rigidity, in His opponents is still more senseless, because that is much more difficult. If a mass, general suggestion through thought alone does not succeed, indeed is almost impossible, how can something much more difficult succeed?

The fact that orators, great commanders or agitators could through suggestion sweep entire crowds into action has no connection with Christ’s marvels. For a crowd lets itself be carried away by forceful words, then succumbs to enthusiasm, which acts suggestively upon the others. The crowd is stimulated by external impressions, and heightened suggestibility arises all the more easily. The speaker appeals to the crowd’s feelings and often evokes its evil passion, for human nature is more inclined toward evil than toward good. A crowd reacts without reflection; there is no time for it, and it is occupied by a single thought. A command suffices and the crowd rushes after its instincts and fights to the utmost, heedless even of blood. Often it does not even feel the blows it has suffered itself. This is through excessive excitement of its feelings, for it is in an abnormal psychological state in which reason ceases to work. I acknowledge that a crowd can be controlled and swept away in this manner. But what happens when the crowd discovers it has been deceived? It then turns upon the leader. Let him try to evoke a visual deception that he has disappeared, or walk freely through its midst! He surely cannot do it.

Christ could. In the Garden of Gethsemane He calmly said to the armed crowd, “I am!” and everyone fell to the ground. Immediately afterward He voluntarily surrendered Himself to them for death. You see, we are again where human power and knowledge have reached their limit.

(1119) I return once more to the objection that Christ could not perform a miracle without people’s prior faith. This is an untrue assertion; it is written nowhere, and nowhere is there any proof. It is incorrect to appeal to that passage of the Gospel saying He could not perform signs and miracles in His hometown of Nazareth because its inhabitants lacked faith. The truth is that just as everywhere else, He performed marvels in Nazareth too, although they did not believe in Him there. He performed few, however, because the people there underestimated and humiliated Him and were therefore unworthy of Him. Let us look more closely at the matter.

In St. Matthew 13:58 we read: “And He did not perform many miracles there because of their unbelief.” It follows that He performed miracles in Nazareth too, but fewer than elsewhere. In St. Mark 6:5 we read: “And He could perform no miracle there, except that He healed a few sick people by laying His hands upon them.”

The people of Nazareth surely did not deserve miracles. Although they did not believe, He showed them His power by healing a few sick people. This was not through magnetism, however. By that means one cannot heal people afflicted with various illnesses through a single laying on of hands. It succeeds only in isolated cases.

(1120) In St. Luke 4:28–30 we read: “When they heard Him, all in the synagogue were filled with anger. They rose, drove Him out of the city and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, to cast Him down. But He passed through their midst and went away.” It was precisely there that Christ performed a great marvel everyone felt within themselves: He showed them that their unbelief, anger and strength could achieve nothing against Him. He let Himself be led calmly to the edge of the abyss, but suddenly turned and passed through their midst, so that everyone was held by His divine power. They stood as if petrified and could not lay hands upon Him. This miracle affected them more powerfully than if He had healed all the sick in Nazareth. At the same time they were put to shame.

Unbelief was so deeply entrenched there, yet the great marvel succeeded fully, although His opponents’ entire minds were occupied with the thought of casting Christ into the abyss. Yet He did not attempt to appease their anger and resistance or gain their favor. He left them in their malice and walked calmly among them.

(1121) The best hypnologist cannot accomplish such a thing under the stated conditions and circumstances even with only five people in a chance gathering, because he would have to influence them through thought alone. A mere thought of making them rigid would be equally ineffective. I insist upon this and do not retract my words!

(1122) In many places in the Gospel we learn how Christ healed lepers. In St. Luke, chapter 17, we read that ten were healed at once. Is such an act possible through suggestion alone? Does anyone wish to claim that hysterical leprosy exists and that such a person can be freed of suppurating ulcers merely through suggestion or magnetism? Nor can this miracle be explained by autosuggestion, for Christ told those healed to show themselves to the priests, to confirm that they were well. I also maintain that suggestion, hypnosis and magnetism cannot suddenly heal a person with dropsy, as we read in St. Luke, chapter 14. A storm at sea cannot be stilled at once through a mere word. Here Christ could not have caused a suggestive visual deception, for at that time great crowds were on the shore and marveled together with His disciples, asking: “Who is this, that the winds and the sea obey Him?” Suggestion cannot raise a dead body that has already lain four days in the grave and stinks; we know that the cell nucleus dies on the third day, and so on.

We further know that experiments fail in a company of skeptics, or if they succeed, it is only in exceptional cases. Precisely during Christ’s miracles, many such people, Pharisees and scribes, were present, but this did not hinder Christ. It is beyond doubt that Christ healed neither by suggestion, hypnosis nor magnetism, but that a power entirely different from these disciplines intervened. Besides, nowhere do we find an example of Christ inducing hypnotic sleep.

(1123) There are people who wish to explain Christ’s miracles naturally and thus place Him in the category of ancient Indian and Persian magi, Buddhist yogis and Siberian shamans, who can exert suggestive influence upon people.

Magnetizers’ healing abilities rest upon the gift of subconscious activity. When laying hands upon diseased places, the physician is connected with the patient through the aid of the oduší and, through the activity of subconscious psychophysical healing powers, gives an impulse toward reviving the tissues’ impaired functional activity. The physician achieves success only through repeated laying on of hands, and even then only in certain people. Christ healed everyone at the first attempt. It is true that wondrous things can be accomplished, but always only in a smaller circle, certainly not in crowds of thousands. Today, when we ourselves command suggestion, hypnosis and magnetism, we speak of their influence with considerable reserve.

If at some time a certain witness wrote what he saw with his own eyes, I believe that he wrote sincerely. But the same happened as with my subjects, who cannot be persuaded that it was not true that from a mere little seed a tree grew before their eyes, blossomed and bore fruit, which they themselves picked and ate together. At the same time they maintain that they had not been put to sleep. It was actual suggestion in the waking state.

In many places in the Gospel we read that Christ cast out unclean and evil spirits. It is generally supposed that epileptic-hysterical attacks were involved, because in this materialistic age possession by evil spirits is not believed in. For people do not believe in the existence of any spiritual beings at all, nor in God.

(1124) I hold that if I acknowledge the existence of God and the human soul, then consistently I also acknowledge the existence of intelligent spiritual beings independent of body and matter.

Besides divine revelation, the following reflection leads me to this belief. God created various kingdoms: mineral, plant, animal and human. There is no sharp boundary among them. Everywhere there are certain transitional, connecting forms, not only between individual kingdoms but also between their orders. At the same time, everywhere a constant progression from the less perfect to the more perfect is apparent, as the natural sciences also confirm.

The most perfect creature on Earth, man, belongs through his body to the animal kingdom. Through his soul, however, which resembles God, he approaches Him and belongs to the spiritual kingdom. Let us realize, however, that between the soul bound to the human body and the absolute, supreme, most perfect spirit, God, there is a great gap. From this I infer by analogy that this gap must be filled by some intermediate, connecting realm of spirits of various degrees of perfection, independent of body and matter. I therefore believe that spirits exist, and divine revelation confirms what I infer through reason.

(1125) My spirit, my soul, if I wish, can during magnetic connection govern, I would say possess, a sensitive through a mere telepathic thought. I cause the spirit to rage until it makes us uneasy. Why, then, could a person not be governed by an evil spirit, more powerful because its essence is more perfect?

We sometimes encounter this phenomenon in spiritist circles, where there is a suitable opportunity for it. In many mediums consciousness is entirely absent and subconscious activity waits to make use of this. If the circle wishes it to happen, they wait to see which spirit will manifest. This is a direct invitation for a spiritual being to manifest within the medium. I do not maintain, however, that some alien spirit, perhaps a soul from beyond the grave as spiritists suppose, takes control of the medium. For what is usually involved is the medium’s own subconscious activity, not the manifestation of souls from beyond the grave; these are not destined to appear to us through a medium. I do believe, however, that it can sometimes be a higher evil spirit that takes control of the medium. I judge from what happens to the medium, because evil can be expected only from an evil spirit.

(1126) An evil spirit takes advantage of such a case and manifests itself through the subject, whom it uses for expression in the same way as a hypnologist, namely by acting upon the esplana, protosplana and oduší. The spirit cannot act directly upon the subject’s, the medium’s, soul, just as a hypnologist cannot.

It is very interesting that when I free a subject from such a bad influence and subject him to my will, he usually rejects his earlier communications entirely and advises us not to believe them. From what did he draw his earlier knowledge?

Christ encountered similar phenomena of possession. He knew well when an evil spirit was involved and therefore addressed it directly.

(1127) In the region of the Gerasenes, Christ healed a man possessed by unclean spirits. This man stayed in tombs, and no one could bind him even with irons; he tore chains apart and broke fetters, cried out and struck himself with stones. That possession by evil spirits was involved is evident from Christ’s permitting these spirits to enter a herd of two thousand pigs, which then rushed into the sea and drowned. The evangelists describe the event. That it actually happened is also confirmed by the people from the town who came out to meet Christ and begged Him to leave them, for the loss of the pigs had caused them great damage.

This phenomenon cannot be explained or performed through suggestion, because testing its power on pigs is nonsense. It is evident from the event that Christ’s supreme power intervened, having nothing to do with suggestion and hypnosis.

(1128) We see another case of possession in the boy whom his father brought to Christ at the foot of Mount Tabor. The boy was deaf and mute and suffered epileptic seizures, manifesting themselves especially during the waning and waxing of the moon.

In answer to Christ’s question, the boy’s father said that his son had suffered from the illness since childhood. Christ first indicated to His disciples that an evil spirit was the author of this terrible illness. He then commanded the unclean spirit: “Deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” The spirit cried out and left the boy.

(1129) It is remarkable that the boy had been deaf and mute since childhood. How could he have heard Christ’s suggestion? Yet he was healed. It is utter nonsense to maintain, and only a layperson could say it, that through a telepathic thought one can rid such a patient at once of all his illnesses, deafness, muteness and epilepsy. To say that these were hysterical attacks associated with demonism is nonsense too. During hysterical attacks consciousness is lost. Yet the possessed people Christ encountered had clear consciousness during their attacks. After all, they threw themselves at Jesus’ feet and worshiped Him. In the sudden healing of the possessed, we again recognize Christ’s miracle.

(1130) Through suggestion and hypnosis, only illnesses that arose psychically can be cured suddenly in a single moment. Physical illnesses, diseases lasting from birth and prolonged chronic difficulties, however, cannot be cured suddenly and all at once through a mere human word, suggestion, hypnosis or magnetism.

Christ performed marvels in inanimate nature, in man and in the evil spirit, thus in the realm of matter, the realm of spirit joined with matter, and the realm of spirits alone. These are marvels, true miracles caused by supernatural power. Even the best hypnologist, a mere human being, cannot accomplish anything similar. In Christ’s miracles His divine power is manifested, not the results of human training and knowledge of natural forces about which I have written in this book. We must regard Christ as God.

Břetislav Kafka’s Work in the Light of Speculative Psychology

An Expert Assessment

When I was asked to write a kind of preliminary philosophical reflection on Břetislav Kafka’s book, a wish of mine was fulfilled that I had formed more than eighteen years ago, when I first learned of Kafka’s work and results in a field still rather unusual within experimental psychology. These were recorded in his first book, Dawn in the Soul, which appeared in many editions through ČAT in Prague and elsewhere. I am aware that the results of Břetislav Kafka’s lifelong work deserve thorough consideration and evaluation, not only from the standpoint of a philosopher who is also acquainted with a body of knowledge from experimental psychology and, of course, from the field called, more popularly than precisely, the occult sciences, but also from the medical and natural-scientific standpoints. I hope that Břetislav Kafka’s work will arouse the interest of scholars in all the fields to which his results relate, an interest leading to critical studies far more detailed and thorough than this brief afterword.

Many modern scientific writings often emphasize that they approach their subject without any prejudice. Despite this praiseworthy endeavor, we see that the insistence on impartiality is often a cloak concealing the exclusion of any explanation of certain phenomena other than the one corresponding to the researcher’s favored ideas. These ideas and views are often neither objectively substantiated nor rationally possible. Mechanical materialism, for example, will seek to reduce all psychic phenomena to chemical and physical causes solely because recognizing any existence other than material existence contradicts some dogma. It is therefore unsurprising if a similar, dismissive position is adopted in advance toward Břetislav Kafka’s work by those for whom it somehow does not fit into their private cosmos, built in defiance of the fundamental laws of reality and logic merely to suit its creators’ favored ideas and way of life. Kafka’s book will not succeed among people who, for reasons both strange and transparent, deny one of the fundamental convictions of all humanity: that a human being, though forming a remarkable unity, nevertheless consists of a material body and an immaterial, immortal soul. This fundamental insight, often obscured among primitive and declining peoples by naïve details and conclusions, does not arise from some intuition common to all and beyond rational analysis, but from logical reflection proceeding from reality. Since rational principles and the perception of reality are accessible to all normal people, it may be said that the truth of the human being as composed of a material body and an immaterial soul is, like many other fundamental truths, dictated by rational human nature. Reliable prescientific experience and rational principles are therefore the highest natural authority to which all human knowledge, especially knowledge of the soul, must submit. But since philosophy is nothing other than a methodically ordered and logically soundly articulated system of conclusions from common experience, giving us a unified picture of all known and knowable reality, scientific knowledge too must submit to philosophy’s judgment, its subject and standpoint being less general, less universal, than those of philosophy.

This supreme position of philosophy in relation to all particular sciences, especially the natural sciences, does not, however, mean that philosophy can verify every concrete item of prescientific and scientific knowledge and experience. Certainly nothing can be added to or subtracted from such knowledge from a general philosophical standpoint. We may say that philosophy is in a certain sense indifferent to findings resulting from concrete research and investigation whose sole source is experience. Only when conclusions begin to be drawn from observed facts must philosophy sharpen its attention and examine whether those conclusions contain more than the established reality warrants, or whether some error of judgment leads them in a false direction. Every researcher must therefore be something of a philosopher and retain the ability to see things as a whole, in their general connections and dependencies. In this, philosophy does not encroach upon the fields of the natural sciences; on the contrary, it compels researchers to remain faithful to their field and to reality, rather than float in the vacuum of unjustified assumptions and conjectures. Even when philosophy takes a critical attitude toward various suppositions and theories that would like to pass for securely established truths, it benefits scientific research precisely by provisionally excluding such scientific theories, however ingenious, from the realm of certain truths until they are reliably proved, and by stimulating research that may later incorporate an existing theory into the scientific system of indisputable facts.

Thus philosophy, as ruler and guide of the other sciences, is very “liberal.” It rests upon the highest principles of being and thought, and therefore has another side as well, one often disagreeable precisely to those who refuse to recognize philosophy as the highest tribunal concerning first principles and the most general truths. This other side of the philosophical attitude we have called liberal appears in philosophy’s rather indifferent stance toward so-called laws of nature and its refusal to declare in advance excluded and impossible everything that might contradict those laws. Such an a priori position is often desired of philosophy precisely by those who otherwise are unwilling to acknowledge its superiority. Philosophy, however, first distinguishes between an actual natural law and one merely assumed, however reasonably. At the same time it distinguishes between physical certainty and possibility, corresponding to the actual natural laws of the material world, and metaphysical certainty and possibility, founded upon the highest principles of being, of which the first logical principles are a reflection. Hence philosophy cannot reject in advance even a “miracle,” an event that contradicts natural, physical laws but not the metaphysical laws of being, containing no internal contradiction, which is the sole condition of absolute impossibility. This liberal position follows precisely from the fact that no natural law is the only possible and conceivable arrangement of nature. It in no way contradicts the laws of being and thought for matter to possess entirely different properties and laws, which might compel water to flow uphill or cause an apple detached from its branch to rise into the clouds instead of falling to the ground. One can quite well conceive a universe arranged according to entirely different laws; one can even quite well imagine that it did not exist. What cannot be conceived, and must be absolutely excluded, is that something could simultaneously and in the same sense be and not be, or that something could exist without sufficient reason, without a cause. For philosophy, the existence of anything whatsoever, however insignificant, is a reliable and certain proof that there exists a supreme, absolute Being, the transcendent cause of all contingent and limited being, a Being containing all the perfections of finite things in a supreme and most perfect manner. For this reason philosophy cannot regard even a law of nature as something absolute, and therefore cannot exclude its possible suspension, which we call a miracle. For narrow-minded people whose outlook is wholly confined to the narrow slice of reality represented by a particular science, or obscured by the pseudoscientific spirit of popular pamphlets, not only a miracle in the true sense and not only the supernatural, but everything that in any way departs from conventional ideas and prejudices, is utter nonsense. Naïve faith that everything is possible for science often goes hand in hand with readiness to declare unscientific and impossible whatever contradicts the current state of human knowledge. Ignorance of philosophy’s fundamental principles caused even so acute an inventor as Edison to succumb to the naïve idea that his primitive carbon-filament light bulb was the final word of technology in that field. Such simplicity is undoubtedly connected with the fact that the great inventor was also a great opponent of the supernatural.

We encounter objections of a similar kind toward Břetislav Kafka’s work, because his findings both overturn widespread errors and lead to conclusions from which many flee in horror.

If I am now to turn to a philosophical evaluation of Břetislav Kafka’s work, I shall refer above all to what I have just written about philosophy’s attitude toward experimental scientific knowledge. The philosophical standpoint, to which I wish above all to remain faithful in this reflection too, therefore permits me a criticism more negative than positive. From a strictly philosophical standpoint I can only declare that the course of the research, its results and the conclusions Kafka draws from them contradict neither the fundamental laws of being nor the laws of logic, nor what sound philosophy can investigate by its own method concerning the soul, its substance and properties. I can further declare with a clear conscience and with pleasure that Břetislav Kafka’s findings, as recorded in his writings, contain nothing undermining their credibility. That credibility is further supported by the personal qualities of Kafka and the witnesses of his experiments, whom I have had the opportunity to know well. This is all that can be said about Břetislav Kafka’s work from a strictly philosophical standpoint, and all that is significant from my personal experience, so the reflection should end here.

I consider it appropriate, however, to add a few more sentences to refute certain objections and explain certain misunderstandings I have encountered even among people who otherwise regarded Břetislav Kafka’s work with respect and interest.

It gives me particular pleasure to be able to write about these highly interesting facts and perhaps thereby contribute to their correct understanding and evaluation on a basis beyond the mere reading of Kafka’s books. Although I have known Kafka personally for a disproportionately shorter time than I have known his books, it is precisely to our friendly personal contact and several long conversations that I owe the clarification of much that seemed obscure even to me in his books as written, or even somewhat suspect. I would not, however, consider it right to let my friendly relationship with Kafka influence me into overlooking certain shortcomings of his books, whether they have been removed in later editions or are still held against him. This is quite apart from the fact that some of those shortcomings, from another perspective, provide indirect but compelling evidence of his honesty and guilelessness as a researcher.

Some readers of Kafka’s books who are familiar with Thomistic philosophy, the endeavor to reconcile Aristotle’s and Plato’s philosophy rationally with regard to theology, found his manner of speaking of “oduší” difficult, because they inferred from it an intention to present oduší as some connecting link between the soul as substantial form and the body as matter. I myself did not have the impression that Kafka wished to assert anything of the kind. As I confirmed through detailed discussion of this subject directly with the author, he too wishes to describe the fluid “oduší” only as what could be designated in scholastic terms an integral part of the body.

Anyone aware that even in the normal waking state the soul carries on activities far exceeding the possibilities of matter, such as thinking and willing, cannot take exception to the soul’s remarkable abilities as manifested in deep sleep. I would nevertheless like the credibility of these findings, which I in no way wish to belittle, to be further supported by corresponding results from other researchers.

Some may perhaps be struck by Kafka’s description of how the soul, in a sense released in hypnotic sleep, feels the body as a burden. This would conflict with the substantial unity of the human being and the correlation of soul, substantial form, and body, matter, and could further encourage a mistaken understanding of the body as a mere instrument or burden of the soul. The answer to this question is not so simple, and we know that Plato already held a similar conception of the relationship between soul and body. It is not difficult to establish that no absolute harmony exists between soul and body, that “the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” Here philosophy alone does not quite suffice. Only divine Revelation teaches us about the Fall of the first human beings, which was the consequence of sin. Yet deep hypnotic sleep is not required for us to recognize that the body often rebels against the spirit, that we are weak and imperfect and that it could and should be otherwise. Chesterton rightly remarked that original sin and its consequences are the only article of faith that can be proved experimentally. Even this deficiency, however, does not alter the fact that the soul is created with the body and is oriented primarily toward knowing the existence of material things, from which it rises only afterward to knowledge of immaterial things. Divine Revelation is eloquent in this respect too, testifying to the resurrection of bodies at the end of time. Thus even in an entirely normal state we often painfully feel “the thorn of this body,” without thereby simply declaring our body a prison. This is also how the sleeper’s expressions reproduced by Kafka in his writings must be understood.

Besides these objections arising from speculative psychology, which can be removed by simple explanation and clarification of circumstances, some criticize Břetislav Kafka’s work for a formal lack of systematic organization and of what is called scholarly apparatus. It is often unclear how Kafka arrived at a particular finding, whether it is a conclusion or a communication from the sleeper; the origin of certain words designating new concepts is not explained. These are all shortcomings acutely felt by people who seek scientific character primarily in routine and precise citation of the literature used. Břetislav Kafka does not meet these requirements of a practiced scholar and author of scientific publications. He does possess, however, what many researchers equipped with formal education lack: genuine originality, keen judgment and genuine love of his subject. It is, of course, desirable that actual shortcomings be corrected in further editions, especially by adding a precise account of how the author arrived at particular findings and concepts. It would be a pity if in this respect we had to rely on mere personal communications, however completely satisfactory and credible. Such improvements, however, cannot add anything to the essential value of Kafka’s work.

All these shortcomings, whether actual or merely apparent, also have their positive side. Břetislav Kafka thus appears to us as a man who, without much prior education, entirely independently, alone and often persecuted, arrives through many years of work at results that in many ways supplement what had hitherto only been dimly suspected, disclose new connections and give a real scientific basis to everything that had previously been relegated somewhat uneasily to the periphery of science as occultism.

It is one of the decisive marks of true science that its individual findings and propositions fit precisely together and thus form a logical whole. There is no question that the results of Kafka’s research meet this condition. It is, of course, true that general acceptance and further extension of Kafka’s findings will require time and the work of many other researchers. Yet it is also certain that a new path to new knowledge has been opened, and Břetislav Kafka has the indisputable merit of having been the first to take it. His work represents an immense mass of material, and one can only wish that it be professionally examined and evaluated from the philosophical, medical and natural-scientific standpoints. If, in conclusion, I were briefly to express my personal impression of Břetislav Kafka, I could describe him no better than as a normal man in the best sense of the word. He is sober-minded, critical, anything but a dreamer or visionary. Only a man of his practical sense could introduce a sober research method, common sense and a sense of humor into a field that had hitherto often been the domain of morbid and superstitious people, which was precisely what deterred healthy and normal people from taking a serious interest in it.

The experiments that Kafka initially conducted merely out of curiosity led him to a true understanding of religion when he saw realities that are objects of faith receiving confirmation in a surprising manner in a field where he had neither expected nor sought it.

It is customary to say of someone who has taken a new path in a field of knowledge or activity that they were ahead of their time. Of Břetislav Kafka it could be said that he made up for what the age had neglected precisely in research into the human soul. Unfortunately this field remains closed to many by mechanistic-materialist prejudices and scientific superstitions. We therefore wish Břetislav Kafka many followers in his research activity, and hope that the scientific world too will find for his work at least a part of the gratifying interest it enjoys among broad sections of society in our country and abroad.

PhDr. Miloslav Skácel, philosopher — Prague, 1946

Explanatory Glossary

Translator’s note: These are the source’s definitions, retained in its original order. They include historical terminology, scientifically outdated claims and prejudicial descriptions; they are not modern medical or scientific definitions. Original Czech headwords are included for reference. Entries run together in the source have been separated where their boundaries are clear.

  • Abnormal (Abnormální): extraordinary, irregular.
  • Absolute (Absolutní): complete, unconditioned by anything, not determined by relationships.
  • Abstract (Abstraktní): detached, an immaterial act of thought.
  • Absurd (Absurdní): nonsensical.
  • Affect (Afekt): a sudden disruption of mental equilibrium, such as rage, anger or pain; mental excitement, an impression.
  • Agile (Agilní): lively, active.
  • Accidental (Akcidentální): contingent, nonessential.
  • Activity (Aktivita): action.
  • Amoeba (Améba): a unicellular animal, a protozoan of variable shape.
  • Amnesia (Amnézie): loss of memory, pathological forgetfulness.
  • Amulet (Amulet): an object protecting against harmful influence.
  • Analyze (Analyzovat): to carry out an analysis.
  • Anatomy (Anatomie): the study of the body’s structure.
  • Animate (Animovat): to enliven, encourage.
  • Animated (Animovaný): cheered, lively.
  • Analgesia (Analgezie): loss of the perception of pain.
  • Analogously (Analogicky): similarly, correspondingly.
  • Anesthesia (Anestézie): loss of sensation.
  • Animal (Animální): pertaining to animals, sensory.
  • Animalism (Animalizmus): manifestations of the soul of a living person.
  • Animism (Animizmus): the view that the soul is the principle of life; belief that spirits also act in natural phenomena; a cult of various conceptions of the soul.
  • Inorganic (Anorganický): nonorganic, unorganized, nonliving, mineral.
  • Anthropology (Antropologie): the study of humanity in general, its physical and psychic properties and the development of the human race.
  • Antithesis (Antiteze): an opposite, a contradictory assertion.
  • Apathetic (Apatický): indifferent, dejected, unresponsive.
  • A priori (A priori): knowledge derived from reason alone, independent of experience.
  • Apriorism (Apriorizmus): the view that knowledge arises purely through reason, a priori.
  • Artery (Arterie): a blood vessel of the arterial kind.
  • Association (Asociace): joining together; grouping sensations and impressions in thought; grouping elementary particles of positive and negative electricity.
  • Atheist (Ateista): one who does not believe in God and denies His existence.
  • Atom (Atom): a particle of matter.
  • Bacillus (Bacil): a rod-shaped microbe.
  • Bacterium (Bakterie): a unicellular microorganism.
  • Proteins (Bílkoviny): complex, amorphous compounds of various elements.
  • Biology (Biologie): the study of life processes in humans, animals and plants.
  • Cell (Buňka): the simplest, lowest organism, the basis of plants and animals.
  • Feeling (Cit): a state of consciousness characterized by pleasure or distress, caused by more or less clear mental images.
  • Clear (Čirý): transparent.
  • Deductive (Deduktivní): deriving conclusions.
  • Heredity (Dědičnost): presupposes that aptitudes and properties are things in themselves which, in organisms, group together in various ways by means of atoms of hereditary genes, but never lose their individuality.
  • Decadence (Dekadence): decline.
  • Dentroscopy (Dentroskopie): doubling; the possibility of being seen in two places because the soul can create a second body, or of seeing oneself.
  • Depress (Deprimovat): to oppress, dishearten.
  • Dextrins (Dextriny): carbon compounds.
  • Determine (Determinovat): to condition.
  • Determinism (Determinizmus): the conviction that everything in the world, including our will, stands in relationships to other phenomena, so that no absolute beginning expressing completely free will is possible.
  • Diagnosis (Diagnóza): identification, recognition of an illness.
  • Divination (Divinace): foreseeing, prophesying.
  • Dynamize (Dynamizovat): the ability to act through force.
  • Dualism (Dualizmus): duality; the existence of two different principles, soul and body.
  • Soul-fluid (Dušefluid): radiant fluid; see oduší.
  • Ectoplasm (Ektoplazma): substance situated immediately beneath the cell’s surface.
  • Element (Element): an element, primordial matter, a force of nature, first origin, original substance.
  • Electricity (Elektřina): energy generated by the transformation of vibrations.
  • Emanation (Emanace): outflow, radiation.
  • Embryo (Embryo): a germ.
  • Emotion (Emoce): excitement, being moved, a movement of the mind.
  • Empiricism (Empirizmus): the view that all our knowledge proceeds only from experience.
  • Energy (Energie): the capacity of forms of motion of matter to perform work.
  • Epidemic (Epidemie): an infectious disease affecting many people simultaneously.
  • Eroticism (Erotika): sexual love, the realm of sensuality.
  • Esplano (Esplano): a cell of the least material possible substance, radiant in character, the carrier of memory and intelligence.
  • Exact (Exaktní): precise, rigorously scientific.
  • Exaltation (Exaltace): emotional excitement.
  • Experiment (Experiment): a test.
  • Extrovert (Extrovert): the orientation of personality outward, toward the world.
  • Extrospection (Extrospekce): observation of others; an objective method, investigating psychic life through its objective manifestations.
  • Exudate (Exudát): a secretion.
  • Ecstasy (Extáze): rapture of the mind.
  • Expert (Expertní): knowledgeable, experienced, specialized.
  • Empathy (Empatie): the ability to feel oneself into another’s experience.
  • Ether (Éter): a substance filling cosmic space.
  • Ethics (Etika): the science or teaching of morals, morality.
  • Evolution (Evoluce): gradual development.
  • Evidentness (Evidentnost): obviousness, indubitability.
  • Fantasy (Fantazie): imagination, the capacity to form mental images.
  • Phantom (Fantom): a vision, illusion, apparition.
  • Fantasize (Fantazírovat): to surrender to streams of one’s diseased images and illusions.
  • Fatalism (Fatalizmus): the belief that everything is predetermined, not only through relationships but completely.
  • Phenomenon (Fenomén): an unusual occurrence.
  • Phenomenalism (Fenomenalizmus): the view that we know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves.
  • Philosophize (Filozofovat): to think and reflect deeply upon philosophical matters.
  • Philosophy (Filozofie): the science that, on the basis of the other sciences, seeks to construct a unified view of the world.
  • Fixed (Fixní): firm, constant; a fixed mental image or idea.
  • Physical (Fyzický): bodily, material.
  • Physiology (Fyziologie): the study of normal life processes in the human and plant body.
  • Ganglia (Ganglie): nerve nodes.
  • Genus (Genus): a kind or genus.
  • Genius (Génius): a creative individual, a person of extraordinary talent and psychic strength who discovers new truths.
  • Homosexuality (Homosexualita): sexual attraction between people of the same sex.
  • Hyperesthesia (Hyperestezie): increased sensitivity.
  • Hypochondria (Hypochondrie): a mental disorder, conviction that one is ill.
  • Hypothesis (Hypotéza): an assumption, conjecture.
  • Hypnosis (Hypnóza): a state of artificially induced sleep.
  • Hysterical (Hysterický): ill in the nerves.
  • Hysteria (Hysterie): a nervous disease based upon an inherited or innate inclination.
  • Semen (Chám): male seed, sperm fertilizing the egg.
  • Chronic (Chronický): prolonged.
  • Idea (Idea): a vision, notion, mental image.
  • Indeterminism (Indeterminizmus): belief in the causal unconditionedness of phenomena.
  • Individualism (Individualizmus): independence of the individual as an irreplaceable personality.
  • Identical (Identický): the same, matching.
  • Induction and deduction (Indukce a dedukce): reasoning from the particular to the general and conversely.
  • Infinality (Infinalita): the endeavor to make every end in turn a means to a new end.
  • Incarnation (Inkarnace): embodiment.
  • Intelligence (Inteligence): rationality, judgment, the ability to sort and assess thoughts.
  • Intelligent (Inteligentní): rational, educated.
  • Intellect (Intelekt): judgment, reason; the union of matter and spirit; a person intellectually active.
  • Intensity (Intenzita): strength, power, abundance.
  • Intuition (Intuice): direct knowledge without rational reflection.
  • Introspection (Introspekce): self-observation.
  • Introversion (Introverze): a person’s tendency to turn toward their own interior.
  • Instinct (Instinkt): an innate, natural impulse.
  • Internal (Interní): inward.
  • Immunity (Imunita): the organism’s resistance to disease-causing microorganisms.
  • Immanent (Imanentní): investigating phenomena from the standpoint of the relevant field.
  • Catalepsy (Katalepsie): pathological rigidity, stiffness.
  • Causal (Kauzální): pertaining to causes.
  • Collapse (Kolaps): failure of an organ’s function.
  • Complication (Komplikace): complexity, difficulty, the addition of another illness.
  • Concentrate (Koncentrovat): to focus.
  • Concrete (Konkrétní): actual, definite.
  • Contemplation (Kontemplace): beholding, meditation, reflection.
  • Contradiction (Kontradikce): a contradictory statement.
  • Crisis (Krize): a decisive turning point.
  • Cryptopsychia (Kryptopsychie): absolute memory.
  • Cryptomnesia (Kryptomnézie): recall of old memories.
  • Cryptoscopy (Kryptoskopie): seeing invisible, spatially distant objects.
  • Latent (Latentní): hidden, concealed.
  • Lethargy (Letargie): pathological sleepiness, dullness.
  • Levitation (Levitace): floating of objects or people.
  • Logic (Logika): the study of correct thinking.
  • Logical (Logický): rationally correct.
  • Lymph (Lymfa): the colorless, faintly yellowish fluid of the lymphatic vessels.
  • Maceration (Macerace): soaking plants cold to extract soluble medicinal substances.
  • Magnetism (Magnetizmus): animal radiant energy that can be transferred to a less magnetic person and thus act upon them by imposing one’s ideas for healing.
  • Materialization (Materializace): embodiment, becoming material through the soul’s subconscious activity by transforming elements into another body.
  • Materialism (Materializmus): explanation of the world according to the determining importance of the material principle.
  • Medium (Médium): an intermediary.
  • Megatron (Megatron): a building unit of matter of the pyroton kind, forming the radiant fluid of magnetism.
  • Melancholy (Melancholie): pensiveness, a depressed mood usually arising from organic disorders.
  • Mental (Mentální): pertaining to thought or the psyche.
  • Metapsychism (Metapsychizmus): spiritual research.
  • Metaphysics (Metafyzika): the science investigating the origin, nature, causes and purpose of being.
  • Metempsychosis (Metempsychóza): transmigration.
  • Microbes (Mikroby): microorganisms.
  • Molecule (Molekula): a group of at least two atoms joined by a chemical bond.
  • Monomania (Monománie): a mental illness, absorption in a single idea, such as arson, kleptomania and the like.
  • Morals (Morálka): the teaching or science of morality, moral conduct.
  • Moral (Morální): ethical, instructive in morals.
  • Mystic (Mystik): one who concerns themselves with mysticism.
  • Mystical (Mystický): mysterious, full of mystery.
  • Mysticism (Mystika): experiencing, tasting and knowing divine things, truths and realities; fixing one’s gaze upon a ray of infinite light whose source is God.
  • Sleepwalking (Náměsíčnost): somnambulism, a disorder in which a sleeping person unconsciously performs various actions.
  • Negative (Negativní): expressing negation.
  • Nervus vagus (Nervus vagus): the wandering nerve, an important cranial nerve supplying the heart, lungs and so forth.
  • Neuropathy (Neuropatie): a general name for diseases of the nervous system.
  • Neurasthenia (Neurastenie): nervous weakness.
  • Neurosis (Neuróza): a nervous disease without visible anatomical changes.
  • Noetically (Noeticky): acquired through knowledge, as a judgment.
  • Noetics (Noetika): the philosophical discipline investigating the presuppositions, validity and reach of our knowledge.
  • Object (Objekt): a thing or object.
  • Objectivity (Objektivnost): object-relatedness, factuality.
  • Oduší (Oduší): radiant fluid, a special compound of sitons of radiant energy.
  • Ontology (Ontologie): the study of being; see metaphysics.
  • Optimism (Optimizmus): faith in development toward the better.
  • Organic (Organický): organized, pertaining to living structures.
  • Organism (Organizmus): an organized living being, a living creature.
  • Pantheism (Panteizmus): the philosophical teaching that the universe is God and everything is God.
  • Panesthesia (Panestezie): direct perception.
  • Parallelism, psychophysiological (Paralelizmus, psychofyziologický): every psychic event rests upon a parallel physical event.
  • Pathology (Patologie): the study of morbid processes and changes in the organism.
  • Pathological (Patologické): diseased, unhealthy.
  • Pathos (Patos): a violent movement of the mind.
  • Periodic (Periodický): recurring regularly.
  • Permanence (Permanence): duration, constancy.
  • Pneumococci (Pneumokoky): bacteria causing pneumonia.
  • Sensation (Počitek): a perception.
  • Posthypnotic suggestion (Pohypnotická sugesce): an instruction given during hypnosis for subsequent unconscious action.
  • Poriomania (Poriománie): pathological wandering, a compulsive need to travel.
  • Potency (Potence): power, capacity, ability, strength.
  • Potential (Potenciál): the sum of possibilities.
  • Potential state of the soul (Potenciální stav duše): the soul’s capacity for activity, in germ.
  • Positive (Pozitivní): affirmative.
  • Positivism (Pozitivizmus): a school restricting itself to empirical experience.
  • Mental image (Představa): a recalled perception, impression, image, feeling and so forth.
  • Plurality (Pluralita): multiplicity, variety.
  • Principle (Princip): a foundation.
  • Progressive (Progresivní): ascending, forward-looking.
  • Proteins (Proteiny): substances composed of macromolecules, proteins.
  • Protoplasm (Protoplazma): the carrier of life in the organism; the substantial part of every cell apart from the nucleus.
  • Protoplast (Protoplast): the living contents of a cell.
  • Protonace (Protonace): a spatial element that takes into itself all psychic and physical activity.
  • Protosplano (Protosplano): a receiver of released thoughts.
  • Proton, positron, electron, neutron (Proton, pozitron, elektron, neutron): compounds of sitons, like pyrotons.
  • Psychasthenia (Psychastenie): anxiety neurosis with signs of indecision.
  • Psyche (Psýcha): the human soul.
  • Psychoanalysis (Psychoanalýza): treatment by a technique of uncovering unconscious psychic complexes.
  • Psychophysics (Psychofyzika): concerns the relationship between the strength of a stimulus and psychic contents.
  • Psychophysiology (Psychofyziologie): concerns relationships between psychic and neurophysiological processes.
  • Psychology (Psychologie): the science of psychic reflections of reality in human activity.
  • Psychometry (Psychometrie): vision into the past.
  • Psychoneurosis (Psychoneuróza): neurosis with signs of mental instability.
  • Psychopathic (Psychopaticky): mentally deviant, especially on the basis of a nervous disease.
  • Psychopathy (Psychopatie): every pathological deviation of psychic activity.
  • Psychosis (Psychóza): a mental illness with severe disturbances of perception.
  • Psychotherapy (Psychoterapie): treatment through psychic influences.
  • Psychiatry (Psychiatrie): the study of mental illnesses, their origin, course and treatment.
  • Pyroton (Pyroton): a cluster of sitons.
  • Rational (Racionální): reasonable, scientific.
  • Rationalism (Racionalizmus): a school regarding reason as the sole source of knowledge.
  • Radical (Radikální): complete, thorough.
  • Radium (Radium): a radioactive element, matter from which negative electrons escape as radiation; through disintegration it changes into helium.
  • Real (Reálný): factual, actual.
  • Reality (Realita): actuality.
  • Reincarnation (Reinkarnace): re-embodiment.
  • Reflex (Reflex): the organism’s response or reaction to an external stimulus, communicated through nerves to muscles and glands without participation of the will.
  • Reflection (Reflexe): consideration, pondering, contemplation.
  • Regeneration (Regenerace): rebirth, renewal, re-creation, restoration.
  • Regression (Regrese): a backward process or progression.
  • Convalescent (Rekonvalescent): a person recovering.
  • Relative (Relativní): proportional, relational, dependent upon relationships.
  • Reproduction (Reprodukce): renewed recall, restoration of impressions and mental images.
  • Sediment (Sediment): a deposit.
  • Sensitive (Senzitivní): receptive to sensations.
  • Sensualism (Senzualizmus): the view deriving knowledge and all other activity of the soul from the senses alone.
  • Sensuality (Senzualita): sensuousness.
  • Sensus (Senzus): a sense.
  • Serum (Sérum): a component of blood plasma.
  • Sexual (Sexuální): pertaining to sex.
  • Schizophrenia (Schizofrenie): splitting, disintegration of personality.
  • Siloton (Siloton): a building unit of matter of the pyroton kind, forming the fluid of oduší and released from esplanic cells during thought.
  • Siton (Siton): the smallest particle of matter.
  • Skepticism (Skepse): doubtfulness, distrust.
  • Skeptic (Skeptik): a doubter, a distrustful person.
  • Compounds (Sloučeniny): substances formed by the chemical combination of elements.
  • Sense (Smysl): the ability to receive sensations and become aware of external stimuli conveyed through the nerves to the brain.
  • Sociology (Sociologie): the science of human society and its life.
  • Somnambulism (Somnambulizmus): sleepwalking.
  • Spiritualism (Spiritualizmus): the philosophical theory that a spiritual principle is the foundation of the world.
  • Subject (Subjekt): a sensitive, a medium; a subject.
  • Subjective (Subjektivní): one’s own, personal, connected with our rational SELF.
  • Substance (Substance): essence, the foundation of every thing.
  • Suggestion (Sugesce): artificial instilling of a mental image.
  • Sympathetic nervous system (Sympatikus): the sympathetic nerve, a special division of the nervous system directing the activity of internal organs.
  • Symptom (Symptom): a sign, indication.
  • Synthesis (Syntéza): joining, summation, unification of several units into a new and more complex whole.
  • Synthetic (Syntetický): formed by synthesis, artificial.
  • Systematic (Systematický): methodical.
  • System (Systém): an organized whole.
  • Tabes dorsalis (Tabes dorsalis): a disease of the spinal cord following untreated syphilis infection.
  • Telekinesis (Telekineze): movement of objects through psychic influence, without touching.
  • Telescopic (Teleskopický): far-seeing, sliding inward, extending outward.
  • Telepathy (Telepatie): one person’s influence upon another through the transmission of their own thoughts and feelings without participation of the sense organs.
  • Therapy (Terapie): healing, a method of treatment.
  • Theory (Teorie): a scientific explanation, a body of rules.
  • Trance (Trans): a state of excitement leading as far as a change in the state of consciousness.
  • Transcendence (Transcendence): the conceived world of things in themselves, here the world of beings lying beyond the limits of experience: God, soul, atom, matter, force.
  • Transcendent (Transcendentní): that which lies beyond our knowledge from experience.
  • Transformism (Transformizmus): a body of ideas and views concerning the variability of organisms and the origin of some from others.
  • Transplantation (Transplantace): surgical transfer of human tissue or an organ.
  • Melancholia (Trudnomyslnost): melancholy.
  • Typical (Typický): distinctive, characteristic.
  • Theist (Teista): one who believes in God.
  • Carbohydrates (Uhlohydráty): organic compounds of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
  • Universality (Univerzalita): generality.
  • Urmings (Urmingové): homosexual people afflicted with sexual perversion.
  • Judgment (Úsudek): the fundamental act of thought, a conclusion.
  • The soul’s awareness (Uvědomění duše): of two kinds: in consciousness through the activity of esplana and senses; in the deepest subconscious through its own activity.
  • Vegetative (Vegetativní): plant-like.
  • Vegetation (Vegetace): plant life.
  • Vegetative organs (Vegetativní orgány): structures for the growth and nourishment of organisms, common to plants and animals: respiration, secretion, reproduction.
  • Vibration (Vibrace): trembling, oscillation.
  • Virtual (Virtuální): possible, potential, apparent.
  • Virus (Virus): the smallest and simplest known biological unit.
  • Vitalism (Vitalizmus): the doctrine of vital force, according to which phenomena arising in an animal organism are explained by the existence of a special principle of life, peculiar to living bodies alone and not subject to the laws of physics and chemistry.
  • Will (Vůle): a desire accompanied by the conscious SELF’s awareness that what we desire can be attained.
  • Displacement (Vymístění): an outflow of radiant fluid.
  • Principle of identity (Zásada identity): a logical principle.

Alphabetical List of Experiments and Examples

The number indicates a paragraph in the book’s text.

Translator’s note: Entries retain the Czech source’s order, repetitions and reference numbers, including apparent errors, rather than silently correcting them.

  • Lawyer charged with dishonorable conduct — 863
  • Amundsen at the North Pole — 361
  • Old Vokačka, a fortune-teller — 860
  • Bay leaves — 843
  • Back pain — 312
  • Boženka in Vienna — 358
  • Cells, a strange ability — 32
  • Path blocked by a thought — 341, 432
  • Sensitives and a mental image — 451
    • and earthquakes — 414, 450
  • Lemon, healing properties — 272
  • Church, the true — 190, 191
  • Brain activity in hypnotic sleep — 207
  • Darnus — 875–877
  • David-Neel in Tibet — 913
  • Heredity — 780, 781
  • Little girl with an amputated leg — 479
    • one year old, vengeful — 209
  • Demons and the like — 875–877
  • Diagnosis by a clairvoyant — 3, 363–366
    • of a nine-month-old child — 470
    • at a distance — 462, 476–478
    • confirmation of accuracy — 467, 468, 469
  • Girl in Prague asleep for six weeks — 513
    • seventeen years old, mentally ill — 564
    • cured of mental illness — 565–569
  • Girls exercising outdoors — 353
  • Don Bosco, materialization — 854, 911–912
  • Julia’s letters — 905–910
  • Inquiry about God and the Church — 190–192
  • The medium’s soul: where is it? — 447
  • Farmyard enchanted by grandfather — 433
  • Esplana — 193
    • in a child — 209
  • Ferdinand d’Este — 449
  • Photographs — 354
  • Hanuš summoned from his house by thought — 505
  • Searching for sensitives — 220
    • for Mr. Dudek — 359
    • for mushrooms — 401
    • for Mr. Libnar — 356
    • for objects — 355
    • for stolen money — 392
    • for hidden people — 394
    • for a drowned person — 391
    • for a missing soldier in Russia — 379–381
  • Matter of the body — 342–343
  • Dignitary and a warning — 451
  • Playing the piano — 892
  • Cups of milk levitating — 796
  • Music — 944
  • Hypnotist in Kostelec — 516
  • Mental illness in the merchant P. — 709
  • Mental illnesses, examples — 628–630
  • The wife of the Roman Caesar — 449
  • How to induce sleep — 917–923
  • Handkerchiefs — 256
  • Catalepsy, rigidity — 514, 515
  • Keys obtained through prayer — 407
  • Contents of books — 498
  • Horses and protonace — 430
  • The doctor’s skeleton — 845
  • Bullets on the forehead — 844
  • Treatment of an alcoholic — 313
  • Stunt pilot and an amulet — 891
  • Documents lost during a car journey — 893
  • Magnetism — 227–232, 239, 248–258, 266–267
    • proof of its existence — 237, 238
    • proof that it flows — 243
    • dead, with a lady — 258–265
    • of the sick — 301–306, 319–321
    • movement and outflow — 266, 267
    • taking over — 244–247
    • connection — 597–600
    • trace — 231, 256
    • shines — 230–233
    • harmful — 248
    • water absorbs it — 242, 256
    • conductor of thoughts — 232
    • preventing its escape — 241
  • Magnetizing meat — 233
  • Map drawn by a subject during the war — 856
  • Mars — 385–389
  • Materialization — 887, 888
  • Spiritist mediums, nocturnal visits — 869, 870
  • Mesmer, Dr. — 655
  • Young man
    • and psychoanalysis — 588, 589
    • with tuberculosis — 957–963
    • run over by a train — 429
  • Murdered miller — 441
  • David-Neel’s monk — 913
  • Flour — 271
  • Sailor
    • and an iceberg — 405
    • Italian — 896
  • The Blessed Sacrament and a subject — 963
  • The author’s illnesses — 821–824
  • Unrest of a dead man — 873
  • Weak nerves, a student — 311
  • Night experiments — 451
  • Orders induced by suggestion — 418
  • Oduší in a glass of water — 382
  • Military recruitment examination thwarted — 432
  • Malfunctioning theater curtain — 416
  • Epilepsy — 676–686
  • Woman falling into mental illness — 428
    • mentally ill, cured in five days — 597, 598
  • Sighting money — 402
  • Writing in foreign languages — 194
  • Prodigious calculators — 900–905
  • Subconscious abilities — 194–197
  • Child’s sex recognized by a subject — 462, 463
  • A debt claim from Slovakia — 867, 868
  • Moving objects by a subject — 291
  • Experiments with subjects without inducing sleep — 518, 519
  • Unjust fine — 865, 866
  • French policeman — 897
  • Derangement induced by suggestion — 804, 805
  • Diabolical possession — 875–877, 881–884
  • Recognizing things by their radiation — 268
  • Recognizing ships at sea — 395
  • Observing absent people — 353, 356, 357
  • Subject running through a forest at night — 344
  • Awakening
    • a sleeping girl in Prague — 513
    • a subject at a distance — 514
  • Protosplana — 212–216
  • Examination of breasts — 413
  • Various objects recognized by a subject — 458–641
  • Predictions
  • Translocation of objects — 290
  • Lord Dufferin’s case — 852, 853
  • Summoning a subject by thought — 512
    • the same, from Nové Město n. M. — 520–521
  • Stimulating a dog through oduší — 368
  • Automatic writing — 197, 455, 456
  • Coffins, manufacture in response to a sign — 839
  • Rochas — 655
  • Ch. D.’s novel completed by a medium — 448
  • With brother Vojtěch in Trutnov — 508
  • Satan in Illfurt — 928
  • Spiritist séance — 879–880
  • A doctor’s dream — 845
  • School Sisters’ vision — 427
  • Hidden objects — 355
  • Death of an old woman — 964
  • Vivid, prophetic and warning dreams — 831–837, 840–845
  • Sleep disturbed by mediums — 869
  • Spiritism — 452–457
  • Magnetic connection with a subject — 599
  • Student, nervous weakness — 311
  • Subject and doctors — 895
    • when the subject does not remember — 498, 499
    • tasting food in trance — 894
    • immersed in the soul’s own bliss — 941–942
    • levitating — 914–915
    • by the sea — 360
    • telepathically summoned from Nové Město n. Metují — 520–521
    • levitating — 914–915
  • Telepathic suggestion — 212–216
  • Telepathy — 413–425, 417–419
  • Heat produced by a subject — 914
  • Pierced artery — 515
  • Factory built on a subject’s advice — 862
  • Face in the window — 873
  • The Częstochowa incident — 408
  • Dying — 30, 31, 199–203, 397, 954, 955
  • Identification of herbs — 356
  • Inducing sleep at a distance — 220, 512
    • in a group — 507, 519
    • in a woman on a train — 517
    • telepathically — 515, 600
  • Seeing a roe deer — 404
    • an ugly man — 852
  • Professor Tureček’s visions — 871–873
  • In a pharmacy with a clairvoyant — 895
  • Pure and magnetized water — 273
  • Murder in Braník — 358
  • Drilling wells — 864
  • Rising from bed — 782
  • Strong will — 212–216
  • Upbringing, its importance — 438, 439
  • A subject’s levitation — 914–915
  • Killing animals by a subject — 292–294
  • People in love — 396
  • Radiation of raw and cooked foods — 269–272
  • Materialization — 887–888
  • Apparition of a deceased captain — 450
    • of a deceased mother — 874, 878
  • Apparitions of a chambermaid — 403
  • Criminal reformed — 947–949
  • A thief caught — 433
  • Change of taste — 319
  • Knowledge of languages — 896–897
  • Misuse of a subject, punishment — 915–916
  • Light bulb illuminated — 233
  • A reproving woman — 409
  • Bile and mood — 648

Note on the Alphabetical Subject Index for Searching the Book

One of Břetislav Kafka’s contemporaries and collaborators, the then headmaster of the school in Červený Kostelec, the sensitive Mr. František Ducháč, contributed to the popularization of New Foundations of Experimental Psychology as early as 1949 by preparing a subject index that raised the book to the level of high-quality study material. To make study easier to navigate, we reproduce his contribution in full.

Dear reader!

Before you lies a work unique in world literature, which will speak to you in language never heard before. To discover everything it brings you, you will do well first to read through this index, which I have prepared to enable you to study the book systematically when needed, for example in treating illnesses.

The entries begin with nouns. The numbers indicate paragraphs; they are given in parentheses at the beginning of each thematic block. Entries printed in bold draw attention to their importance. If you wish to learn about a particular concept and find the relevant paragraph in the book, read the following paragraph too, because the concept sought is often explained several times. See, for example, the entry “Shock,” paragraphs 125–129.

An important subject is recorded in the index under various entries, for example “Esplana: breaking up,” “Treatment of mental illnesses,” and “Breaking up diseased complexes.”

Read with a pencil in your hand. Many a paragraph will surely delight you or particularly interest you. Mark it in the index so that you can return to it easily.

In an attentive study of this work of life’s wisdom and light, you will surely experience many quiet joys in God’s greatest gift: the life of a free human being.

František Ducháč, school headmaster

Subject Index

The number indicates a paragraph in the book’s text.

Translator’s note: The index retains the Czech source’s order and reference numbers, including repetitions and apparent errors. The supplied EPUB does not retain the bold emphasis mentioned in the preceding note. References outside the book’s numbering are retained as printed.

Publication Information

Author: Břetislav Kafka

Title: New Foundations of Experimental Psychology

Edited by: Jaroslav Hofman

Language proofreading: Alena Dvořáčková, Ladislav Foret

Published by: Václav Lukeš

Publishing house: Poznání, Olomouc

Year of publication: 1999

Edition: First complete edition incorporating the author’s additions, sixteenth overall

ISBN: 80-902739-0-4

Version: 2015.06.05

Conversion: em

Footnotes

  1. Translator’s note: The relative clause in this sentence is syntactically unclear in the supplied Czech edition. Its wording has been retained rather than silently corrected. ↩

  2. Translator’s note: The supplied Czech places “in a healthy individual up to the age of forty-five” in parentheses after the statement about an old person. The apparent inconsistency is present in the source. ↩

  3. Translator’s note: The supplied edition uses the unusual or apparently corrupted names “stereotypní,” “prolaklin” and “vazoprescin” in this list. These have been retained in English form rather than silently replaced with modern hormone names. ↩

  4. Translator’s note: The source gives June 18 for the experiment and calls June 20 “the following day.” Both dates and the wording are retained. ↩

  5. The supplied Czech joins “rozumu je” (“of reason is”) as “rozumuje.” The words are separated here in accordance with the sentence’s grammar. ↩

  6. The source reads “finds nighttime rest” (nachází noční klid), although the surrounding sentences describe inability to rest. A missing negative is possible; the source’s wording is retained rather than silently corrected. ↩

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