Theos-Talk Archives (April 2004 Message tt00403)

	Part II -- PSYCHIC PHENOMENA in ISIS UNVEILED

Continuation of Subject from Part I

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ISIS UNVEILED Vol. 1, 474	PSYCHIC PHENOMENA DESCRIBED


We have in our possession a picture painted from such a Persian
conjurer, with a man, or rather the various limbs of what was a minute
before a man, scattered before him. We have seen such conjurers, and
witnessed such performances more than once and in various places.




475 LIFE INTENSELY ACTIVE IN DEATH.

Bearing ever in mind that we repudiate the idea of a miracle and
returning once more to phenomena more serious, we would now ask what
logical objection can be urged against the claim that the reanimation of
the dead was accomplished by many thaumaturgists? The fakir described in
the Franco-American, might have gone far enough to say that this
will-power of man is so tremendously potential that it can reanimate a
body apparently dead, by drawing back the flitting soul that has not yet
quite ruptured the thread that through life had bound the two together.
Dozens of such fakirs have allowed themselves to be buried alive before
thousands of witnesses, and weeks afterward have been resuscitated. And
if fakirs have the secret of this artificial process, identical with, or
analogous to, hibernation, why not allow that their ancestors, the
Gymnosophists, and Apollonius of Tyana, who had studied with the latter
in India, and Jesus, and other prophets and seers, who all knew more
about the mysteries of life and death than any of our modern men of
science, might have resuscitated dead men and women? And being quite
familiar with that power -- that mysterious something "that science
cannot yet understand," as Professor Le Conte confesses -- knowing,
moreover, "whence it came and whither it was going," Elisha, Jesus,
Paul, and Apollonius, enthusiastic ascetics and learned initiates, might
have recalled to life with ease any man who "was not dead but sleeping,"
and that without any miracle.

If the molecules of the cadaver are imbued with the physical and
chemical forces of the living organism,* what is to prevent them from
being set again in motion, provided we know the nature of the vital
force, and how to command it? The materialist can certainly offer no
objection, for with him it is no question of reinfusing a soul. For him
the soul has no existence, and the human body may be regarded simply as
a vital engine -- a locomotive which will start upon the application of
heat and force, and stop when they are withdrawn. To the theologian the
case offers greater difficulties, for, in his view, death cuts asunder
the tie which binds soul and body, and the one can no more be returned
into the other without miracle than the born infant can be compelled to
resume its foetal life after parturition and the severing of the
umbilicus. But the Hermetic philosopher stands between these two
irreconcilable antagonists, "master of the situation. He knows the
nature of the soul -- a form composed of nervous fluid and atmospheric
ether -- and knows how the vital force can be made active or passive at
will, so long as there is no final destruction of some necessary organ.
The claims of Gaffarilus -- which, by the bye, appeared so preposterous
in 1650** -- were later corroborated by science.




476 

He maintained that every object existing in nature, provided it was not
artificial, when once burned still retained its form in the ashes, in
which it remained till raised again. Du Chesne, an eminent chemist,
assured himself of the fact. Kircher, Digby, and Vallemont have
demonstrated that the forms of plants could be resuscitated from their
ashes. At a meeting of naturalists in 1834, at Stuttgart, a receipt for
producing such experiments was found in a work of Oetinger.* Ashes of
burned plants contained in vials, when heated, exhibited again their
various forms. "A small obscure cloud gradually rose in the vial, took a
defined form, and presented to the eye the flower or plant the ashes
consisted of." "The earthly husk," wrote Oetinger, "remains in the
retort, while the volatile essence ascends, like a spirit, perfect in
form, but void of substance."**

And, if the astral form of even a plant when its body is dead still
lingers in the ashes, will skeptics persist in saying that the soul of
man, the inner ego, is after the death of the grosser form at once
dissolved, and is no more? "At death," says the philosopher, "the one
body exudes from the other, by osmoses and through the brain; it is held
near its old garment by a double attraction, physical and spiritual,
until the latter decomposes; and if the proper conditions are given the
soul can reinhabit it and resume the suspended life. It does it in
sleep; it does it more thoroughly in trance; most surprisingly at the
command and with the assistance of the Hermetic adept. Iamblichus
declared that a person endowed with such resuscitating powers is 'full
of God.' All the subordinate spirits of the upper spheres are at his
command, for he is no longer a mortal, but himself a god. In his Epistle
to the Corinthians, Paul remarks that 'the spirits of the prophets are
subject to the prophets.' "

Some persons have the natural and some the acquired power of withdrawing
the inner from the outer body, at will, and causing it to perform long
journeys, and be seen by those whom it visits. Numerous are the
instances recorded by unimpeachable witnesses of the "doubles" of
persons having been seen and conversed with, hundreds of miles from the
places where the persons themselves were known to be. Hermotimus, if we
may credit Pliny and Plutarch,*** could at will fall into a trance and
then his second soul proceeded to any distant place he chose.

The Abbe Tritheim, the famous author of Steganographie, who lived in the
seventeenth century, could converse with his friends by the mere power
of his will. "I can make my thoughts known to the initiated,"



477 BURIAL AND RESUSCITATION OF FAKIRS.

he wrote, "at a distance of many hundred miles, without word, writing,
or cipher, by any messenger. The latter cannot betray me, for he knows
nothing. If needs be, I can dispense with the messenger. If any
correspondent should be buried in the deepest dungeon, I could still
convey to him my thoughts as clearly and as frequently as I chose, and
this quite simply, without superstition, without the aid of spirits."
Cordanus could also send his spirit, or any messages he chose. When he
did so, he felt "as if a door was opened, and I myself immediately
passed through it, leaving the body behind me."* The case of a high
German official, a counsellor Wesermann, was mentioned in a scientific
paper.** He claimed to be able to cause any friend or acquaintance, at
any distance, to dream of every subject he chose, or see any person he
liked. His claims were proved good, and testified to on several
occasions by skeptics and learned professional persons. He could also
cause his double to appear wherever he liked; and be seen by several
persons at one time. By whispering in their ears a sentence prepared and
agreed upon beforehand by unbelievers, and for the purpose, his power to
project the double was demonstrated beyond any cavil.

According to Napier, Osborne, Major Lawes, Quenouillet, Nikiforovitch,
and many other modern witnesses, fakirs are now proved to be able, by a
long course of diet, preparation, and repose, to bring their bodies into
a condition which enables them to be buried six feet under ground for an
indefinite period. Sir Claude Wade was present at the court of Rundjit
Singh, when the fakir, mentioned by the Honorable Captain Osborne, was
buried alive for six weeks, in a box placed in a cell three feet below
the floor of the room.** To prevent the chance of deception, a guard
comprising two companies of soldiers had been detailed, and four
sentries "were furnished and relieved every two hours, night and day, to
guard the building from intrusion. . . . On opening it," says Sir
Claude, "we saw a figure enclosed in a bag of white linen fastened by a
string over the head . . . the servant then began pouring warm water
over the figure . . . the legs and arms of the body were shrivelled and
stiff, the face full, the head reclining on the shoulder like that of a
corpse. I then called to the medical gentleman who was attending me, to
come down and inspect the body, which he did, but could discover no
pulsation in the heart, the temples, or the arm. There was, however, a
heat about the region of the brain, which no other part of the body
exhibited."

Regretting that the limits of our space forbid the quotation of the



478 

details of this interesting story, we will only add, that the process of
resuscitation included bathing with hot water, friction, the removal of
wax and cotton pledgets from the nostrils and ears, the rubbing of the
eyelids with ghee or clarified butter, and, what will appear most
curious to many, the application of a hot wheaten cake, about an inch
thick "to the top of the head." After the cake had been applied for the
third time, the body was violently convulsed, the nostrils became
inflated, the respiration ensued, and the limbs assumed a natural
fulness; but the pulsation was still faintly perceptible. "The tongue
was then anointed with ghee; the eyeballs became dilated and recovered
their natural color, and the fakir recognized those present and spoke."
It should be noticed that not only had the nostrils and ears been
plugged, but the tongue had been thrust back so as to close the gullet,
thus effectually stopping the orifices against the admission of
atmospheric air. While in India, a fakir told us that this was done not
only to prevent the action of the air upon the organic tissues, but also
to guard against the deposit of the germs of decay, which in case of
suspended animation would cause decomposition exactly as they do in any
other meat exposed to air. There are also localities in which a fakir
would refuse to be buried; such as the many spots in Southern India
infested with the white ants, which annoying termites are considered
among the most dangerous enemies of man and his property. They are so
voracious as to devour everything they find except perhaps metals. As to
wood, there is no kind through which they would not burrow; and even
bricks and mortar offer but little impediment to their formidable
armies. They will patiently work through mortar, destroying it particle
by particle; and a fakir, however holy himself, and strong his temporary
coffin, would not risk finding his body devoured when it was time for
his resuscitation.

Then, here is a case, only one of many, substantiated by the testimony
of two English noblemen -- one of them an army officer -- and a Hindu
Prince, who was as great a skeptic as themselves. It places science in
this embarrassing dilemma: it must either give the lie to many
unimpeachable witnesses, or admit that if one fakir can resuscitate
after six weeks, any other fakir can also; and if a fakir, why not a
Lazarus, a Shunamite boy, or the daughter of Jairus?*

Footnote(s)

* Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in her "Night-Side of Nature," p. 118, gives us
the particulars of a similar burial of a fakir, in the presence of
General Ventura, together with the Maharajah, and many of his Sirdars.
The political agent at Loodhiana was "present when he was disinterred,
ten months after he had been buried." The coffin, or box, containing the
fakir "being buried in a vault, the earth was thrown over it and trod
down, after which a crop of barley was sown on the spot, and sentries
placed to watch it. "The Maharajah, however, was so skeptical that in
spite of all	[This Footnote continued on next page]
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479 WHEN ARE THE "DEAD" DEAD?

And now, perhaps, it may not be out of place to inquire what assurance
can any physician have, beyond external evidence, that the body is
really dead? The best authorities agree in saying that there are none.
Dr. Todd Thomson, of London,* says most positively that "the immobility
of the body, even its cadaverous aspect, the coldness of surface, the
absence of respiration and pulsation, and the sunken state of the eye,
are no unequivocal evidences that life is wholly extinct." Nothing but
total decomposition is an irrefutable proof that life has fled for ever
and that the tabernacle is tenantless. Demokritus asserted that there
existed no certain signs of real death.** Pliny maintained the same.***
Asclepiades, a learned physician and one of the most distinguished men
of his day, held that the assurance was still more difficult in the
cases of women than in those of men.

Todd Thomson, above quoted, gives several remarkable cases of such a
suspended animation. Among others he mentions a certain Francis Neville,
a Norman gentleman, who twice apparently died, and was twice in the act
of being buried. But, at the moment when the coffin was being lowered in
the grave, he spontaneously revived. In the seventeenth century, Lady
Russell, to all appearance died, and was about to be buried, but as the
bell was tolling for her funeral, she sat up in her coffin and
exclaimed, "It is time to go to church!" Diemerbroeck mentions a peasant
who gave no signs of life for three days, but when placed in his coffin,
near the grave, revived and lived many years afterward. In 1836, a
respectable citizen of Brussels fell into a profound lethargy on a
Sunday morning. On Monday, as his attendants were preparing to screw the
lid of the coffin, the supposed corpse sat up, rubbed his eyes, and
called for his coffee and a newspaper.****

Such cases of apparent death are not very infrequently reported in the
newspaper press. As we write (April, 1877), we find in a London letter
to the New York Times, the following paragraph: "Miss Annie Goodale, the
actress, died three weeks ago. Up to yesterday she was not buried. The
corpse is warm and limp, and the features as soft and mobile as when in
life. Several physicians have examined her, and have ordered that the
body shall be watched night and day. The poor lady is evidently in a
trance, but whether she is destined to come to life it is impossible to
say."

Footnote(s) -------------------------------------------------

[Footnote continued from previous page]	these precautions, he
had him, twice in the ten months, dug up and examined, and each time he
was found to be exactly in the same state as when they had shut him up."
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480 

Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a
mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the only
difference between a living and a dead body is, that in the one case,
that force is active, in the other latent. When it is extinct or
entirely latent the molecules obey a superior attraction, which draws
them asunder and scatters them through space.

This dispersion must be death, if it is possible to conceive such a
thing as death, where the very molecules of the dead body manifest an
intense vital energy. If death is but the stoppage of a digesting,
locomotive, and thought-grinding machine, how can death be actual and
not relative, before that machine is thoroughly broken up and its
particles dispersed? So long as any of them cling together, the
centripetal vital force may overmatch the dispersive centrifugal action.
Says Eliphas Levi: "Change attests movement, and movement only reveals
life. The corpse would not decompose if it were dead; all the molecules
which compose it are living and struggle to separate. And would you
think that the spirit frees itself first of all to exist no more? That
thought and love can die when the grossest forms of matter do not die?
If the change should be called death, we die and are born again every
day, for every day our forms undergo change."*
The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed.
Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature
by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a long
and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time is
required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass. "Death can no
more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth proves the
preexistence of the being, as death proves immortality," says the same
French kabalist.

While implicitly believing in the restoration of the daughter of Jairus,
the ruler of the synagogue, and in other Bible-miracles, well-educated
Christians, who otherwise would feel indignant at being called
superstitious, meet all such cases as that of Apollonius and the girl
said by his biographer to have been recalled to life by him, with
scornful skepticism. Diogenes Laertius, who mentions a woman restored to
life by Empedocles, is treated with no more respect; and the name of
Pagan thaumaturgist, in the eyes of Christians, is but a synonym for
impostor. Our scientists are at least one degree more rational; they
embrace all Bible prophets and apostles, and the heathen miracle-doers
in two categories of hallucinated fools and deceitful tricksters.

But Christians and materialists might, with a very little effort on
their



481 NATURE SHUTS THE DOOR BEHIND US.

part, show themselves fair and logical at the same time. To produce such
a miracle, they have but to consent to understand what they read, and
submit it to the unprejudiced criticism of their best judgment. Let us
see how far it is possible. Setting aside the incredible fiction of
Lazarus, we will select two cases: the ruler's daughter, recalled to
life by Jesus, and the Corinthian bride, resuscitated by Apollonius. In
the former case, totally disregarding the significant expression of
Jesus -- "She is not dead but sleepeth," the clergy force their god to
become a breaker of his own laws and grant unjustly to one what he
denies to all others, and with no better object in view than to produce
a useless miracle. In the second case, notwithstanding the words of the
biographer of Apollonius, so plain and precise that there is not the
slightest cause to misunderstand them, they charge Philostratus with
deliberate imposture. Who could be fairer than he, who less open to the
charge of mystification, when, in describing the resuscitation of the
young girl by the Tyranian sage, in the presence of a large concourse of
people, the biographer says, "she had seemed to die."

In other words, he very clearly indicates a case of suspended animation;
and then adds immediately, "as the rain fell very fast on the young
girl," while she was being carried to the pile, "with her face turned
upwards, this, also, might have excited her senses."* Does this not show
most plainly that Philostratus saw no miracle in that resuscitation?
Does it not rather imply, if anything, the great learning and skill of
Apollonius, "who like Asclepiades had the merit of distinguishing at a
glance between real and apparent death"?**

A resuscitation, after the soul and spirit have entirely separated from
the body, and the last electric thread is severed, is as impossible as
for a once disembodied spirit to reincarnate itself once more on this
earth, except as described in previous chapters. "A leaf, once fallen
off, does not reattach itself to the branch," says Eliphas Levi. "The
caterpillar becomes a butterfly, but the butterfly does not again return
to the grub. Nature closes the door behind all that passes, and pushes
life forward. Forms pass, thought remains, and does not recall that
which it has once exhausted."***

Why should it be imagined that Asclepiades and Apollonius enjoyed
exceptional powers for the discernment of actual death? Has any modern
school of medicine this knowledge to impart to its students? Let their
authorities answer for them. These prodigies of Jesus and Apollo-



482 


nius are so well attested that they appear authentic. Whether in either
or both cases life was simply suspended or not, the important fact
remains that by some power, peculiar to themselves, both the
wonder-workers recalled the seemingly dead to life in an instant.* Is
it because the modern physician has not yet found the secret which the
theurgists evidently possessed that its possibility is denied?

Neglected as psychology now is, and with the strangely chaotic state in
which physiology is confessed to be by its most fair students, certainly
it is not very likely that our men of science will soon rediscover the
lost knowledge of the ancients. In the days of old, when prophets were
not treated as charlatans, nor thaumaturgists as impostors, there were
colleges instituted for teaching prophecy and occult sciences in
general. Samuel is recorded as the chief of such an institution at
Ramah; Elisha, also, at Jericho. The schools of hazim, prophets or
seers, were celebrated throughout the country. Hillel had a regular
academy, and Socrates is well known to have sent away several of his
disciples to study manticism. The study of magic, or wisdom, included
every branch of science, the metaphysical as well as the physical,
psychology and physiology in their common and occult phases, and the
study of alchemy was universal, for it was both a physical and a
spiritual science. Therefore why doubt or wonder that the ancients, who
studied nature under its double aspect, achieved discoveries which to
our modern physicists, who study but its dead letter, are a closed book?

Thus, the question at issue is not whether a dead body can be
resuscitated -- for, to assert that would be to assume the possibility
of a miracle, which is absurd -- but, to assure ourselves whether the
medical authorities pretend to determine the precise moment of death.
The kabalists say that death occurs at the instant when both the astral
body, or life-principle, and the spirit part forever with the corporeal
body. The scientific physician who denies both astral body and spirit,
and admits the existence of nothing more than the life-principle, judges
death to occur when life is apparently extinct. When the beating of the
heart and the action of the lungs cease, and rigor mortis is manifested,
and especially when decomposition begins, they pronounce the patient
dead. But the annals of medicine teem with examples of "suspended
animation"

Footnote(s)--------------------------------------------------------

* It would be beneficial to humanity were our modern physicians
possessed of the same inestimable faculty; for then we would have on
record less horrid deaths after inhumation. Mrs. Catherine Crowe, in the
"Night-Side of Nature," records in the chapter on "Cases of Trances"
five such cases, in England alone, and during the present century. Among
them is Dr. Walker of Dublin and a Mr. S----, whose stepmother was
accused of poisoning him, and who, upon being disinterred, was found
lying on his face.
--------------------------------------------------------------------


483 SUSPENDED ANIMATION.

as the result of asphyxia by drowning, the inhalation of gases and
other causes; life being restored in the case of drowning persons even
after they had been apparently dead for twelve hours.

In cases of somnambulic trance, none of the ordinary signs of death are
lacking; breathing and the pulse are extinct; animal-heat has
disappeared; the muscles are rigid, the eye glazed, and the body is
colorless. In the celebrated case of Colonel Townshend, he threw himself
into this state in the presence of three medical men; who, after a time,
were persuaded that he was really dead, and were about leaving the room,
when he slowly revived. He describes his peculiar gift by saying that he
"could die or expire when he pleased, and yet, by an effort, or somehow
he could come to life again."

There occurred in Moscow, a few years since, a remarkable instance of
apparent death. The wife of a wealthy merchant lay in the cataleptic
state seventeen days, during which the authorities made several attempts
to bury her; but, as decomposition had not set in, the family averted
the ceremony, and at the end of that time she was restored to life.
The above instances show that the most learned men in the medical
profession are unable to be certain when a person is dead. What they
call "suspended animation," is that state from which the patient
spontaneously recovers, through an effort of his own spirit, which may
be provoked by any one of many causes. In these cases, the astral body
has not parted from the physical body; its external functions are simply
suspended; the subject is in a state of torpor, and the restoration is
nothing but a recovery from it.

But, in the case of what physiologists would call "real death," but
which is not actually so, the astral body has withdrawn; perhaps local
decomposition has set in. How shall the man be brought to life again?
The answer is, the interior body must be forced back into the exterior
one, and vitality reawakened in the latter. The clock has run down, it
must be wound. If death is absolute; if the organs have not only ceased
to act, but have lost the susceptibility of renewed action, then the
whole universe would have to be thrown into chaos to resuscitate the
corpse -- a miracle would be demanded. But, as we said before, the man
is not dead when he is cold, stiff, pulseless, breathless, and even
showing signs of decomposition; he is not dead when buried, nor
afterward, until a certain point is reached. That point is, when the
vital organs have become so decomposed, that if reanimated, they could
not perform their customary functions; when the mainspring and cogs of
the machine, so to speak, are so eaten away by rust, that they would
snap upon the turning of the key. Until that point is reached, the
astral body may be caused, without miracle, to reenter its former
tabernacle, either by an effort of its


484 

own will, or under the resistless impulse of the will of one who knows
the potencies of nature and how to direct them. The spark is not
extinguished, but only latent -- latent as the fire in the flint, or the
heat in the cold iron.


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Part III follows


Dallas