The mesmeric state is the term frequently used to denote ordinary artificial somnambulism. It is actually the higher or more perfect form of hypnosis. The senses in this state are more fully submerged, and the mental faculties are more fully exalted, than in hypnosis.
The psychic state, as the mesmeric, relates to the mental, and hypnosis to the more physical, so does the psychic state refer to that class of extraordinary somnambulism in which the mental and the spiritual gifts transcend in character and power those of the foregoing states. In this state the higher phenomena of lucid somnambulism, clairvoyance, and thought-transference are manifested more perfectly than in any other.
The hypnotic, the mesmeric, and the psychic states indicated are frequently interlinked in manifestation. The sensitive may pass from the first to the last without apparent gradation. It is well to keep these divisions in thought, so that in practice no one will be content with the lower where it is possible, by wise and judicious observations and operations, to induce the higher.
To make the matter still more clear, in hypnosis and in the mesmeric state all phenomena may be said to be induced through and by the influence and the direction of the operator. Not that he produces the effects as they are exhibited by the sensitive, but they are brought about through the agency of his suggestions or operations.
In the psychic state this is not always the case. The influence of the operator may at times be almost nil. The operator will find it best—when the sensitive is in a high lucid state—to become an observer and a learner, and no longer continue the rôle of director.
In the psychic state, the soul-powers, so often submerged in ordinary life, transcend in a remarkable manner. The senses are completely suspended and the mind exalted to such a degree, a clearly defined super-sensuous condition is reached. Whether this stage or condition is induced by fasting, prayer, disease, or by mesmeric agencies, matters little. In it we find the key to the seership, and the clairvoyance, and the prophetic utterance, and the mystic powers attributed to and exercised by prophet, and seer, and sybil in the past. By the investigation of the phenomena evolved by the psychic state we are enabled to understand something of man’s soul or spiritual nature, apart from the phenomena induced by pathological conditions of brain and body.
The foregoing view presented of mesmeric conditions may be very different from that which medical men may glean from hypnotic practice with hysterical and lobsided patients, and certainly not the views which the general public are likely to gather from seeing a number of paid “subjects” knocked about a music hall stage by an ignorant showman.
From the roughest to the finest, from matter to spirit, from hypnosis to the psychic state, we find enough to arrest attention and give a high degree of seriousness and earnestness to our investigation. We stand on the threshold of soul, and the place where we stand is holy ground. We find, as is the physical, mental, and spiritual characteristics of the operator, plus those of the sensitive or sensitives, so will be the nature of the phenomena evolved.
It will be observed some subjects never get beyond the first state, or hypnosis; others that of the second, or mesmeric. All sensitives, in keeping with their temperamental and mental developments (as revealed by phrenology and psychometry), are better adapted for one class of phenomena than that of others.
It may be further observed that the foregoing states may be self-induced or, directly and indirectly, the product of “spirit-control,” drugs, or bodily disease. Hypnosis, we must bear in mind, although not unlike the mesmeric state, has no more relation to that condition than sleep produced by an exhaustive walk or a dose of laudanum is like natural or healthy sleep. Indeed, hypnosis is not properly a condition of sleep. In the majority of cases the sensitive is never wholly unconscious. It is rather a state in which there is a temporary perversion or subordination between brain impressions and consciousness. The sensitive in hypnosis is often less intelligent than in the normal or waking state.