Thee, in thy starry loneliness,”
seems to be utterly unethical. Here the seer is in the first place jealous of the light possessed by his guru, or he is grasping in the dark, ignorant even of the rationale of himself being in lower states than his guru. However, Mr. Hellon has not erred about the existence of such a feeling. It does and should exist in the trance and dreaming state. In our ordinary waking state, attachments, desires, &c., are the very life of our physical senses, and in the same way the emotional energies manifest themselves on the astral plane in order to feed and fatten the seer’s astral senses, sustaining them during his trance state. Unless thus animated, his astral nature would come to rest.
No proof is therefore needed for the proposition that any state which is sustained by desires and passions cannot be regarded as anything more than as a means for developing one part of the animal nature. Van Helmont is of the same opinion as Mr. Hellon.[19] We cannot, therefore, for a moment believe that in such a state the “I” of that state is Atman.[20] It is only the false “I”; the vehicle for the real one. It is Ahankára—lower self, or individuality of the waking state, for even in trance state, the lower sixth principle plays no greater part and develops no more than in the wakeful state. The change is only in the field of action: from the waking one to the astral plane, the physical one remaining more or less at rest. Were it otherwise, we would find somnambules day by day exhibiting increase of intellect, whereas this does not occur.
Suppose that we induce the trance state in an illiterate man. He can then read from the astral counterpart of Herbert Spencer or Patanjali’s books as many pages as we desire, or even the unpublished ideas of Spencer; but he can never make a comparison between the two systems, unless that has already been done by some other mind in no matter what language. Nor can any somnambule analyze and describe the complicated machinery of the astral faculties, much less of the emotional ones, or of the fifth principle. For in order to be analyzed they must be at rest so that the higher self may carry on the analysis. So when Mr. Hellon says:
“A trance steals o’er my spirit now,”
he is undoubtedly wrong, as Atman, or spirit, cannot go into a trance. When a lower plane energy ascends to a higher plane it becomes silent there for a while until by contact with the denizens of its new home its powers are animated. The somnambulic state has two conditions, (a) waking, which is psycho-physiological or astro-physical; (b) sleeping, which is psychical. In these two the trance steals partly or completely only over the physical consciousness and senses.
“And from my forehead peers the sight,” etc.
This, with much that follows, is pure imagination or misconception. As for instance, “floating from sphere to sphere.” In this state the seer is confined to but one sphere—the astral or psycho-physiological—no higher one can he even comprehend.
Speaking of the period when the sixth sense shall be developed, he says:
“No mystery then her sons shall find,