The young servant of Elisha (2 Kings vi. 17) was unable to see spirit hosts upon the hills about Dothan, which were visible to his master; but “Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses, and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” The prophet did not ask that his young man should be endowed with any new organs of vision, but only for the opening of such as he already possessed. As soon as those visual organs in him, which could be reached and illumined by spirit aura, came into action of which he became conscious, the young man beheld spiritual beings; which beings, since the prophet had been seeing them all the time, were obviously as near and as visible before as after the prayer. Some spirit perhaps ejected spirit force upon the young man in such way as helped internal perceptions to impress themselves on his external consciousness. Spirits frequently throw some invisible aura with perceptible force upon the external eyes of modern mediums, when these sensitives are being brought into condition for conscious discernment of spirits. Whether the object be to awaken new vision, or simply to impress existing internal vision upon the outer consciousness, is yet an unanswered question. Perhaps each in different cases.
Possibly an actual discernment of earth-emancipated intelligences by our inner organs, especially in our hours of sleep, occurs frequently with most human beings; that is, the “inward man,” or inner consciousness, of each mortal may be well acquainted now with many spirits and spirit scenes, so that, upon liberation from the flesh, emerging spirits may find themselves among acquaintances and at home. With some individuals—especially with prophetic and otherwise mediumistic ones—their knowledge, gained through sensations experienced by the inner faculties, is sometimes brought to and impresses itself upon the outer consciousness, and becomes to palpably operative that those individuals are deemed inspired, for they speak as never man—that is, as the outward man—spake.
Either physical peculiarities, or peculiar relations between the outer or natural and the inner or spiritual bodies, more than the quantum of either mental or moral developments, seem to be the requisites for facile mediumship. That view is often set forth in statements made by spirits, and is rendered probable by observation of many facts. Mediumistic proclivities run much in families, about as much as musical ones do; and the capabilities for either mediumistic or musical performances are measurably constitutional and transmissible. Moses, Aaron, and their sister Miriam, all prophesied, or were mediums of communications from the realm of spirits. In our antecedent pages it appears that four children of John Goodwin,—that three noble, adult, and married sisters, Nurse, Easty, and Cloyse, living apart from each other, whose mother had been called a witch,—that Sarah Good and her little daughter Dorcas, five years old,—that Mrs. Ann Putnam and her daughter Ann, and that Martha Carrier and four of her children, were mediumistic. We can add to the list seven sons of Seva, and four daughters of Philip, in apostolic times. Constitutional properties, combinations, or endowments, differing from such as are most common in the make-up of man, pertain to such persons as are or can be the most plastic mediums. In many people, the organized properties of their physical or mental structures, or of both these, and the relations of such properties to each other, and their mutual action, become, at times, so modified by severe sickness, proximate drownings, protracted fastings, sudden frights, intense griefs, by use of anæsthetics, narcotics, and stimulants, and from many other causes, that those to whom the properties belong become temporarily mediumistic, though they be not observably or consciously such in their more normal states. The most common, and the more mildly acting agents or instrumentalities of such change, and those which produce the more abiding effects, are magnetic emanations and psychological influences from the positively mediumistic acting upon relatively negative systems. Such emanations may be seed originating new, or fertilizers quickening and expanding existing, inward growths.
Emanuel Swedenborg was, prior to and independently of his marked spiritual illumination late in life, one of the most erudite and illustrious scientists of the last century, and, being a truthful, conscientious, devout man, trained to accuracy of observation and statement, he was admirably fitted for a reporter to the external world, of facts which came under his observation as an observer in spirit realms; and we take from his works the following short extracts, which have some bearing upon the topic just presented.
“Man loses nothing by death, but is still a man in all respects.... Many are bewildered after death by finding themselves in a body, in garments, and in houses, ... some had believed that men after death would be as ghosts, specters of which they had heard.”
“The will and understanding ... are two organic forms, ... forms organized from the purest substances. It is no objection that their organization is not manifest to the eye, being interior to sight.... How can love and wisdom act upon what is not a substantial existence? How else can thought inhere?”
Two Sets of Mental Powers.
Teachers unseen, speaking back to the world they have gone from, often say that, when here, they possessed two bodies—one of which is entombed below, while in the other they went forth and still abide; they say also that they possessed two mental systems and a double consciousness, one only of which survives. Quite recently, science, pressing forward in explorations, obtained perceptions of this latter fact. In his eighth lecture on the “Method of Creation,” given May 1, 1873, and reported in the New York Tribune, the eminent Agassiz spoke as follows:—
“Are all mental faculties one? Is there only one kind of mental power throughout the whole animal kingdom, differing only in intensity and range of manifestation? In a series of admirable lectures, given recently in Boston by Dr. Brown-Séquard, he laid before his audience a new philosophy of mental powers. Through physiological experiments, combined with a careful study and comparison of pathological cases, he has come to the conclusion that there are two sets, or a double set, of mental powers in the human organism, or acting through the human organism, essentially different from each other. The one may be designated as our ordinary conscious intelligence; the other as a superior power which controls our better nature, solves, sometimes suddenly and unexpectedly, nay, even in sleep, our problems and perplexities, suggests the right thing at the right time, acting through us without conscious action of our own, though susceptible of training and elevation. Or perhaps I should rather say, our own organism may be trained to be a more plastic instrument through which this power acts in us.
“I do not see why this view should not be accepted. It is in harmony with facts as far as we know them. The experiments through which my friend Dr. Brown-Séquard has satisfied himself that the subtle mechanism of the human frame, about which we know so little in its connection with mental processes, is sometimes acted upon by a power outside of us as familiar with that organization as we are ignorant of it, are no less acute than they are curious and interesting.”