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... | <center>{{Style S-Small capitals|by a. j. penny.}}</center> | ||
In ''The Spiritualist'' of May 7th you opened the question as to how far our thoughts are influenced by unseen associates, and though you referred to the teaching of Swedenborg, it seemed to me that you hardly accept it on this point; for he asserts repeatedly that every spirit in a human body, or out of one, is affiliated to different societies of spirits, and is therefore moved by an ''esprit de corps'' none the less influential because it is unconscious. For instance, in the 294th paragraph of his ''Heaven and Hell'' he says: “Every spirit belongs to some particular society, and subsists by influx from it, so as to act in unity with it, and therefore since man is conjoined with spirits he is conjoined also with Heaven and Hell, and indeed with that particular society there in which he is as to his affection or love.” He states also that we cannot escape direct spiritual influence of some sort or other at any time. He says: “Although he is ignorant of it, every man, as to his spirit, is in society with spirits while he lives in the body. By them as mediums a good man is in some angelic society, and an evil man in some infernal society; and each after death enters that very society with which he had been tacitly consociated during life.” (''Heaven and Hell'', Par. 438.) Thomas Lake Harris, his greatest disciple, has enlarged upon these occult facts with almost terrific force; see his eloquent sermon on ''Modern Spiritualism''—more especially the appendix to it—and also his sermon on ''Man’s Relation to Nature'', Part 1st, in which this passage occurs indicating the secret cause of human mediumship being made use of by spirits: Men “are themselves connected by the medium of their vices in which they indulge with those who, having previously passed on earth through the same career, endeavour to reproduce and perpetuate their vices through individuals with whom they can enter into these close and immediate relations.” | |||
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I was pleased to find by Mr. C. Reimer’s interesting paper, in your impression of May 28th, that I am not alone in believing the action of spirits of all grades on mind and matter is by no means confined to ''seances''; my strongest objection to these being, not that they make us cognisant of spirits’ presence, but that they reveal ours to them. | |||
In his account of a somnambulistic patient, (Christiana Kapplinger, of Weinsberg, in 1822) Justinus Kerner moots the same idea as Mr. Reimers, with regard to the real culprit in many a criminal transaction being a malevolent spirit influencing the ultimate agent. On this subject F. Baader’s opinion may be worth recalling: “Every somnambulist,” he says, “has two mesmerisers, one from without, of this earth; and one within, no longer of this earth. The agency of an unseen mesmeriser is undeniable with many somnambulists, and as even our Saviour in his temptation, could not guard himself from such influence, (for the tempter showed him in one glance all the kingdoms of the world), still less can we defend ourselves from it, both in a good and a bad sense; and I believe that even in our waking hours we have this kind of clairvoyance produced in us oftener than we think, and oftener than it would be good for us to know perhaps. Our earthly or so-called waking consciousness is never wholly clear; still less devoid of that obscure sense of another world which only arises undisturbed in sleep and dreaming; and we are in continual ''rapport'' with the dwellers in this other world, though to our dull ears deafened by the noise of the outer world, their voices only reach us like the sound of the far off ocean.” | |||
I fear that the laws of spirit life would not allow much extenuation of guilt to the human being who commits a crime under the control of an invisible mesmerist. His power to subjugate both reason and conscience could not have been gained without, (1) a congruity of disposition; for “''like seeks like in every realm of being'',” (T. L. Harris); and (2) yielding little by little to evil promptings, “for all influx from the spiritual world assumes a quality according to reception, or according to the forms into which it flows.” (''Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, Par.'' 569). | |||
In this life, at least, disembodied spirits cannot take more power over us than we give; and among all the revelations for which Jacob Behmen was a medium, I believe none are more important than this, that evil spirits can only touch us, can only see us spiritually when we are in ''some'' degree in a like minded state of being. See on this head his ''Aurora'', ''Chap''. 21, ''pars''. 47, 48, 50, and his very curious expression ''in six points''. Point 6. ''par''. 48, when speaking of covetousness, he says, “it is the eye of Hell, the devil seeth man therewith into soul and body.” I suppose no law of chemical action more invariably true than this, though to prove it is not yet possible to reason. | |||
Callopton, Devonshire. | |||
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