In the great crises of life, when existence itself is threatened, the soul attains transcendent powers.
It seems sometimes as though the fear of poverty drove the tortured soul to fly to seek a life somewhere else, where living is easier, and it is not for nothing that suicide attracts the unhappy by promising to open the gates of their prison.
Some years ago I had the following experience. One autumn morning I sat at my writing table before, the window, which looked out on a gloomy street in a small industrial town of Moravia. In the neighbouring room, of which the door was on the jar, my wife, who was expecting her first confinement, was resting.
While I was writing, I imagined myself transplanted to a scene many hundred miles north, which I well knew. Although where I was, it was autumn and approaching winter, I found myself in my thoughts under a green oak in the sunshine. The little garden which I had myself cultivated in my youth was there; the roses—I could tell them by their names—the syringas, the jasmines exhaled their scents so that I could smell them; I picked caterpillars off my cherry-trees, I trimmed the currant-bushes *** Suddenly I hear a hoarse cry, I find myself standing on the ground, I feel a kind of cramp in my spine causing intolerable pain, and fall senseless on my chair.
When I recover consciousness, I find that my wife had come from behind in order to say good morning, and had quite gently laid her hand upon my shoulder.
"Where am I?" That was my first question, and I said it in my native language, which my wife, as a foreigner, did not understand.
The impression which I received from this occurrence was, that my soul had dilated itself and left the body without breaking the connection of the invisible threads, and I needed a certain though ever so small an interval to recollect in some degree that I was conscious and intact in the room, where I had just been sitting and working. If, according to the old methods of explanation, my soul had merely sunk in herself and still remained confined in the limits of the body, it would have been able to expand itself again with greater readiness and swiftness, and I would not have suffered so much through being surprised during my absence.
No. I was absent, "franvarande"—that is the Swedish word for "distracted "—and my soul returned so suddenly as to cause me suffering. But the pains were felt in the neighbourhood of the spine and not in the brain, and this reminds me of the important functions attributed to the "plexus solaris" when I studied medicine in my youth.
Another occurrence, which happened to me three years ago in Berlin, is to my mind sufficient proof that the exteriorisation or displacement of the soul can happen under certain extraordinary circumstances. After soul-shattering crises, troubles, and an irregular life, I was sitting one night between one and half-past in a wine shop, at a table which was always reserved for our coterie. We had been eating and drinking since six o'clock, and I had been obliged the whole time to carry on the conversation practically alone. The problem was for me to give sensible advice to a young officer who was on the point of changing a military career for that of an artist. As he happened to be at the same time in love, his nerves were in a very over-strained condition, and after having received in the course of the day a letter containing reproaches from his father, he was quite beside himself. I forgot my own wounds while I was tending those of another. The task was a difficult one, and caused me some mental disturbance. After arguments and endless appeals, I wished to call up in his memory a past event which might influence his resolve. He had forgotten the occurrence in question, and in order to stimulate his memory, I began to describe it to him. "You remember that evening in the Augustiner tavern." I continued to describe the table where we had eaten our meal, the position of the bar, the door through which people entered, the furniture, the pictures *** All of a sudden I stopped. I had half lost consciousness without fainting, and still sat in my chair. I was in the Augustiner tavern and had forgotten to whom I spoke, when I recommenced as follows: "Wait a minute, I am now in the Augustiner tavern, but I know very well that I am in some other place. Don't say anything *** I don't know you any more, but yet I know that I do. Where am I? Don't say anything; this is very interesting." I made an effort to raise my eyes—I don't know if they were closed—and I saw a cloud, a background of indistinct colour, and from the ceiling descended something like a theatre curtain; it was the dividing wall with shelves and bottles.
"Oh yes!" I said, relieved after feeling a pang pass through me, "I am in F.'s" (the wine shop).