hallucinations et phénomènes ataviques

médiumnisme et poison dans les plantes vénéneuses

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In previous reviews of Nutrition and Bees, we discovered that poisons in the plant world have a nature of astrality about them that should be reserved for the animal world. Plants that develop poisons are trying to act like animals, something that will be good for them to do in the epoch following Earth epoch, but as any good out of its time, that something becomes a evil, a harmful poison, in our time. Steiner looks at the deadly nightshade Belladonna and the harmless violet and compares them.
[page 153] The Belladonna develops its bell-shaped flowers inside which the fruit is formed and the astral element penetrates into the fruit. The violet develops its capsule only in the etheric element. The fruit of the deadly nightshade assimilates the astral element and in consequence the plant is poisonous.
This is most interesting. We find that our astral body is the bearer of forces which prove to be poisonous when assimilated by plants. This is how we must think of poison. We can only acquire an inner understanding of poison when we realize that man's astral body contains in effect the forces of all existing toxins, for they are an integral part of his being.
We might say that the violet is on a true path, but the deadly nightshade is on a false path. This will become important as we enter the study of "true and false paths in spiritual investigation" as the title of this enbooked series of lectures promises. How are we to understand the latest varieties of mediums, the so-called "channels" -- such as Lazaris, Ramtha, and Seth that were so popular in the last quarter of the 20th Century? Once more we find a "good out of its time."
[page 156, 157] And when a medium is in a trance condition, when the brain is insulated, an entity of this kind which is subject to Ahrimanic influences and whose function is to transmit the achievements of civilization to the future, slips into the brain. Instead of being the carrier of the human Ego, such a medium is, temporarily, the vehicle of an elementary being which is neglecting its duty in the Cosmos.
Thus they slip into it [the part of brain vacated by the medium's Ego] and introduce into the contemporary world what their observation has taught them of the art of writing. Thus, with the help of mediums they project into the present that which, in accordance with their mission, they ought to communicate to the future. Mediumism depends upon the fact that what is to become future capacities is already developed in the present in a vague and chaotic manner.
The beings who take possession of channels are slackers, skipping out on their real duties, and getting caught up the world of the present. Steiner tells us that in the typical séance, someone with clairvoyant vision will see the group surrounded by poisonous plants with fruits and flowers from which demoniac beings emerge. (page 162) This reminds me of the phrase from Matt 7:16, 20 "Therefore by their fruits ye will know them."
When is a human being apt to become a medium or a channel? When somehow their consciousness becomes dimmed. Our brain weighs about 1,500 grams, but floats in a liquid medium so that its effective weight is about 20 grams. In this small portion of the brain, the Ego resides. If it were to vacate that portion of the brain, an elemental being can slip in and take possession of the brain.
[page 167, 168] And fundamentally this danger is always present whenever the consciousness of man, i. e., his full Ego-consciousness, is suppressed, whenever he is in a stupefied, comatose condition or has actually suffered syncope [RJM: fainted]. Whenever man's consciousness is damped down, not through sleep, but through some other factor, there is the danger that man will be exposed to the world of elementary beings.
From the above we get the distinct impression that someone who attends séances, who consults mediums, or studies the writings of channels, is not on the true path, but rather the false path in spiritual investigation.



ANNEXE 46 : Les hallucinations comme symptôme de détachement du corps éthérique provoqué par une condition pathologique du corps.

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As you know, we leave our physical and our etheric bodies behind in sleep. In our usual dreams we look back, as it were, from within our astral body and I to what we have left behind in sleep. However, we are then not aware of our physical body and do not use our physical senses. Rather, we look back only at our etheric body. Fundamentally, therefore, processes in our etheric body reveal themselves in certain places, and we perceive them as dreams. In fact, most dreams are nothing else but looking at our etheric body in sleep and becoming aware of some of its exceedingly complex processes.
Our etheric body is very complex and contains all our memories, ready to present them to us when we recall them. Even those things that have sunk down into the depths of the soul, things we are not aware of in waking consciousness, are contained in the etheric body in some way. Our whole life in this incarnation is retained in the etheric body, is really present in it. Of course, this is very difficult to imagine, but it is true nevertheless. Imagine you were to talk all day long, as some people do, and everything you said was recorded on records. When the first record is full, you take a second one, then a third, and so on. The number of records would depend on how much you spoke. Now if someone collected all the records, everything you had said would be nicely preserved on records at the end of the day. Then, if someone played them, everything you said during the day would be heard again. In a similar way, all our memories are retained in the etheric body. Under the special conditions of sleep one part of the etheric body appears before us, as though ― to stay with this metaphor ― we took one record from the collection and played it; this is the most common kind of dream. Thus our consciousness weaves in our own etheric body.
The same applies to hallucinations affecting our soul. As a rule, such hallucinations arise because the person can see with the ego and the astral body, which are still in the physical body, a section of the etheric body that has become detached. This can happen when a part of your physical body is ill, the nervous system, for example. Your etheric body is then unable to penetrate the physical at the point where the nervous system is diseased; it is cast out there, so to speak. The etheric body itself is not sick, but it has been separated from the physical body in a specific place. If it could remain in the physical body, our normal state of consciousness would prevail, and we would be unaware that our physical body is sick. When the part our etheric body cannot penetrate shines out toward it, we experience this in our consciousness as a hallucination."

RÉF: The Presence of the Dead on the Spiritual Path, LECTURE ONE, UNDERSTANDING THE SPIRITUAL WORLD (PART ONE) Berlin, April 18, 1914

ANNEXE 47 : Avatismes: spiritisme et deutéroscopie (double vue, dans l'espace comme dans le temps) camouflée en 'pressentiment'.

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We must be quite clear as to the fact that when a man passes through the gate of death, the human individuality is at first for a short time, enshrouded in the astral body and etheric body; and that the latter after a more or less brief period — varying in different cases, but never lasting more than a few days — passes out into the etheric world and there pursues its further destiny; so that the individuality enters the Spiritual world with the astral body only, and continues its further wanderings in that world. The etheric body is severed from the human individuality just as the physical body was on earth. Now we must clearly understand that in Spiritualistic seances, — and the whole work of Sir Oliver Lodge is based on these, — only one who has real knowledge is able to distinguish whether the communications come from the actual individuality, or only from the cast-off, forsaken etheric corpse. This etheric corpse still remains in continual communication with the individuality. Only, when one gets into connection with the spiritual world in a round-about way through a medium, one comes in touch with the etheric corpse first, and so can never be sure of reaching in this way the actual individual. It is certain that there is in our age a striving to find for Spiritual existence some sort of proof such as is found by experiments in the laboratory, something which can be grasped with hands and that one can see before one in the world of matter. Our materialistic age does not care to follow the inner path the soul must take in the Spiritual worlds, the purely Spiritual path. It wants the spirit to descend into the material world and be discovered there. We are experiencing all kinds of materialistic Spiritualism, a materialistic turning to the worlds of the spirit. Now, it is quite possible for the etheric body, which has been separated from the actual human individuality, to manifest a certain life of its own which, to the uninitiated, may easily be mistaken for the life of the individual himself. We must not think that the etheric body when given over to the etheric world only manifests reminiscences and recollections, mere echoes of what the man passes through here; it manifests a real continuous individuality. It can relate incidents and say quite new things, But we should be going quite off the track if we thought that because a connection is established with the etheric body, we are necessarily in connection with the individual himself. It is very possible in the case of people sitting in a small circle — all being members of the family as was the case with the Lodges, all thinking in one way or another about the dead man, and all filled with thoughts and memories of him, — that their thoughts may be conveyed to his etheric body through the medium, and that this etheric body may occasionally give striking replies, which may really produce the impression of being spoken by the individuality of the dead. Yet, perhaps, they may only proceed from his etheric corpse. Those who are acquainted with such things actually find this to be the case, and when Raymond Lodge was supposed to come to his family through the medium, in reality it was the etheric corpse speaking; Raymond Lodge had not really held communion with the circle at all.

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It is remarkable that such a learned man as Sir Oliver Lodge, who was for so many years interested in the subject, although in this case he was specially interested because it was a question of his own son, yet should not have known what has often been referred to in our Spiritual science, when giving descriptions of the atavistic forms of clairvoyance, which appear as presentiments. For this is none other than a very special case of Deuteroscopia. The case is as follows.
We have a medium. To this medium the Spiritual world is in a certain respect accessible; of course, as we know — through atavistic forces — such mediums can in their vision reach beyond space, but not only does their so-called second sight extend beyond space it also extends beyond time. Let us take a special case; one quoted hundreds of times. You may read descriptions of it, if you have not experienced it yourself through your acquaintances.
The case I mean, is when some one who has that tendency sees as in a dream, half in vision, his own coffin or funeral. He dies a fortnight afterwards. He saw in advance what was to occur fourteen days later. Or perhaps, one may see not his own funeral or coffin, but that of a complete stranger, an event to which the dreamer is quite indifferent. To instance a particular case, one may see oneself leaving the house and falling from horseback. This thing did occur — someone saw that happen, and tried to avert it, — but, notwithstanding all precautions, it still came to pass. That is a case of a vision extending in time, and what Sir Oliver Lodge describes is precisely this second-sight in time. His descriptions are given so accurately that it was possible to investigate the case. The medium through her forces was able to see an event still in the future. At the time she spoke, the photograph was not there; but it arrived a fortnight later, or thereabouts. It was then shown round to friends and relatives. This happened some time after but the medium saw it in advance, it was a prophetic vision, a case of Deuteroscopia. It was a pre-vision; that is the explanation. It had nothing to do with a communication between those on the physical plane and one in the Spiritual world.
You see how greatly one may be misled by striving to give a materialistic explanation of Spiritual circumstances in the world, and how blind one may be to the actual facts; such a vision is, of course, none the less a proof of the reality of a world behind the ordinary world of sense. The case is an interesting one; only it should not be quoted as proving a connection between the dead and the living. We must seek for the dead — if indeed we should or ought to seek for them at all — by following a really Spiritual path. In the near future I shall have many things to say on this subject; for it is my intention to give much consideration to the subject of the relation between the living and the dead.