Reincarnation | Page 7

see how tongue and lips could suddenly utter precise sounds which
they had never produced before. Another factor must have intervened
here, as was the case with the child prophets of the Camisards. (V.
Figuier's Hist. du merveilleux, etc.)
Young Hébert, who had gone mad as the result of a wound, regained
full consciousness, the higher consciousness, during somnambulism.
(Puysegur's Journal du traitement du jeune Hébert.)
Dr. Teste (Manuel pratiq. du magnét. anim.) came across madmen who
became sane just before death, i.e., when consciousness was passing
into the astral body. He also mentions a servant girl, quite uneducated
and of ordinary intelligence, who nevertheless became a veritable
philosopher during mesmeric somnambulism and delivered learned
discourses on lofty problems dealing with cosmogony.
This proves that the vibratory scale of the finer vehicle extends far
beyond that of the physical, and that the soul cannot impress on this
latter vehicle all that it knows when functioning in the former. By this
we do not mean that it is omniscient as soon as it has left the visible
body; this opinion, a current one, is contrary to the law of evolution,
and will not bear examination.
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER
THE FORM OF MEMORY.
The memory that is lost by the brain is preserved in its entirety by the
finer vehicle.
A musician, a friend of Hervey's, once heard a remarkable piece of
music; he remembered it on awaking, and wrote it down, regarding it as

his own inspiration. Many years afterwards, he found it in an old parcel
of music where he knew it had been long before; he had totally
forgotten it in his normal consciousness. (Hervey's Dreams.)
Coleridge tells of a servant girl who, when in a state of delirium, would
recite long passages of Hebrew which she had formerly heard from the
lips of a priest in whose service she had been. In the same way, she
would repeat passages from Latin and Greek theological books, which
she had heard under the same circumstances; in her normal state, she
had no recollection whatever of all this. (Dr. Carpenter's Mental
Physiology, p. 437, 1881 edition.)
Ricard (Physiol. et Hygiène du Magnét., p. 183) relates the case of a
young man, possessed of an ordinary memory, but who, in
somnambulism, could repeat almost word for word a sermon he had
heard or a book he had read.
Mayo, the physiologist, states that an ignorant young girl, in a state of
somnambulism, wrote whole pages of a treatise on astronomy,
including figures and calculations, which she had probably read in the
Encyclopædia Britannica, for the treatise was afterwards found in that
work. (Truths in Popular Superstitions.)
Ladame (La Névrose hypnotique, p. 105) mentions a woman who,
having only on one occasion been to the theatre, was able, during
somnambulism, to sing the whole of the second act of Meyerbeer's
L'Africaine, an opera of which she knew nothing whatever in her
waking state.
During experiments with the inhaling of protoxyde of azote, H. Davy
said that normal consciousness disappeared, and was followed by a
wonderful power of recalling past events. (Hibbert's Philosophy of
Apparitions, p. 162.)
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS IN
PHENOMENA OF DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS.
The "strata of memory" met with in many cases also prove the

existence of the second vehicle of consciousness which we are trying to
demonstrate.
Certain dreams continue night after night, beginning again just where
they stopped the previous night; this is noticed in the case of those who
talk in their sleep and in spontaneous or forced somnambulism.
The memory of one intoxicated, or in a state of fever delirium is lost
when consciousness returns from the astral to the physical body; it
comes back on the return of the delirium or the intoxication.
The same thing takes place in madness; at the termination of a crisis,
the patients take up the past just where they left it. (Wienholt's
Heilkraft.) Kerner relates that one of these unfortunate persons, after an
illness lasting several years, remembered the last thing he did before
the crisis happened, his first question being whether the tools with
which he had been cutting up wood had been put away. During the
whole of the interval he had been living in his higher consciousness.
Ribot (Maladies de la Mémoire p. 63) has noted the fact that the same
thing happens with those who fall into a state of coma after having
received a hurt or wound.
MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS,
INDICATING NOT ONLY THAT IT EXTENDS FARTHER THAN
NORMAL CONSCIOUSNESS, BUT DOMINATES, AND IS
SEPARATED FROM IT, RECOGNISING THAT ITS
VEHICLE--THE BODY--IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN
INSTRUMENT.
The Soul functioning in the finer body sees the physical body in a state
of coma. Dr. Abercrombie relates the case of a child