By Eduard Herrmann
Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) holds that
the soul is not only the thinking, but is also the formative principle, and that,
in consequence, the forms of things are the work of the creating soul. He says
(in de anima II. 1, 3) "The soul is the Entelechy of the body." In
order to understand this correctly we have to consider the soul as the cause,
and the body as the effect; the soul as thinking principle contains in itself
the ideal form, which it then projects into the material world, because it is
at the same time the formative principle. The body is therefore the soul made
visible. The destruction of the body concerns only the effect and not the
cause, since the soul cannot lose the faculty of thinking and organizing
another body; from which it follows that reincarnation must be possible.
Now, if there is a necessary
connection between soul and body; if the body shows outwardly what the soul is
inwardly, then, in a certain sense, the soul itself must be a formed being,
somewhat material. Aristotle calls this kind of matter, soul-matter, and
describes it as being much finer than the elements related to the ether. But Aristotle
is not the only one who ascribes a finer body to the soul. Theophrastus (373
B.C.) calls it deion soma ethereal.
The Stoics taught that the soul is
of a bodily nature because it extends in the three dimensions of space through
the whole body; the Epicureans were of the same opinion (Zeller, Philos. d.
Griechen III. 7. 147).
The Greek philosophers had two words
for the body: Sar (the physical body), and soma (the soul body);
and this view was held through the middle ages.
Among the newer philosophers, Fichte
(1762-1814) speaks of the spaciousness of the soul, and the possibility of an
astral body; so also does Leibnitz (1646-1716). Reichenbach (1788-1869), with
his important discovery of that mysterious emanation which he calls Od, and
which is probably the same as the akasa of the Hindus, has shown that there is
an Agens which intermixes matter and force, the physical and psychical, so that
an absolute penetration of both occurs, which makes it impossible to decide
whether the Od is of a physical· or psychical nature; here matter and force
become one and the same thing, that property of the soul which not only unites
body and soul, but in fact every living being with every other living being.
"It seems to be the last and highest link between the corporeal and
spiritual world," (Reichenbach: Odixche Lebre 151) says Reichenbach. It
constitutes an important element in the formation of that finer body which
serves as a model for the physical. It may seem to be a paradox to talk of an
astral body, yet it has always played an important part among philosophers and
physicians, theologians and mystics, and in the popular tales prevalent in all
countries. A short retrospect of this belief, many thousands of years old,
might be interesting and useful at the same time, even if by so doing, we
should not get a much clearer conception of this mysterious thing. Such an
inquiry will at least furnish evidence that in all countries and at all times
the most learned men have either granted the possibility, or believed in the
existence of the astral body; this fact should be reason enough that we, who
claim to have progressed so much further in all the sciences, should continue
the search in this direction until we have not only absolute proofs for the
existence, but also knowledge of the causes which produce the astral body.
We have mentioned Aristotle who not
only believed in invisible beings, but even says they are substantial, like
visible beings, having an ethereal body (Aristotle: Physics IV. 2, 3). The same
view is held by Digoenes Laerti us (about 193) (Diogenes Laertius, III. 56) and
the Stoics. But the precursors of Aristotle had similar views; thus Pythagoras
is a follower of the Egyptian-Indian teaching, which holds that Purusha, the
individual, spiritual and eternal soul, is the true Ego of man, and that the
ethereal body contains the inner senses, the fundament of the outer senses, and
the vital force (Sankhya-Kerika art. 53). This view is much more correct than
that of the modern vitalists who place the vital force in the body, calling it
the organic force. With the exception of the materialists, all philosophers and
naturalists accept an organizing principle, which Plato calls "Idea";
Buffon, "the inner primitive form"; the vitalists, "life
principle"; Hellenbach, "meta-organism.,, This means the potential
ability to form a body, either by means of organic cells, or other, finer,
ethereal matter. Whoever believes that the soul is more than a mere thought,
that it is the formative as well as the thinking principle, has to accept the
proposition of a medium for the thinking principle, which can only be imagined
in a certain form. This is why Epicurus (342-270 B. C.) says that even the gods
must have a form, since a formless soul could produce no effects. (Plutarch: de
plac. phil. I. 7.)
The Greek view was that the soul
builds a body out of itself, and that this body is an inseparable constituent
part of the soul; but that the physical body is built up from exterior
material; for which reason they designated the material body with sar
and the soul body with soma or deion soma, divine body.
The same distinction between the two
bodies is made by St. Paul; Sar is with him the sensual, material
substance of the body, the source of evil and error, which perishes like all
terrestrial matter. In contra-distinction to this he calls the
resurrection-body soma pneumaticon, which is immortal: "It is sown
a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." (I. Cor. 15, 40 and 44.)
"There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial."
The ideas of Aristotle and Paul for
a long time dominated in the Christian church. Thus Origen (185-254) says:
"Every body must be adapted to the world surrounding it; just as sure as
we would be built like fish if we had to live in the water, so will we need
celestial bodies in heaven." (Origen: de princip. III. 4.) In the Laws of
Manu, we read that the soul after death is clothed with ethereal matter. (Manu
XII. 16 and 21.) The Neo Platonists speak of the astral body (Ochema) as the chariot
of the soul, its invisible vestment an ethereal, immortal body of air. With
Iamblichus (about 300) and Porphyry (233-306) (Iamblichus: de myst Aegypt I. 8.
V. 10) the ether body does not die, and needs nothing for its sustenance. Among
the early Christian writers we find Origen, Tertullian, Lactantius, Augustin,
Irenaeus, who clothe the soul with an ethereal body after the death of the
physical. Cyrill of Alexandria, St. Augustin, and Ambrosius of Milan, declare
that all beings, angels as well as demons, are in some degree material, with
the exception of God. But as we are unconscious of the vegetative functions of
the body, those ecclesiastical philosophers were always in doubt about the soul
being the organizing as well as thinking principle, because it was, as they
said, impossible that the soul could at the same time be intelligent and not
intelligent; just as Baltzer, in our time, declares, "If the soul is the
vitalizing and organizing principle of the body, then we must be able to rule
with our will, the whole life, all the functions of our body. But this we
cannot do! It is true, we can move the limbs, but who, for instance, can
influence the growth of the body?" (Baltzer: Theological Essays 60.)
In order to get rid of this
confounding of soul and consciousness, it is necessary to study somnambulism.
Then we find that the soul is capable not only of determining the slightest
disorder in the inner organs, but also to prescribe the most efficient
remedies, which would be impossible if the soul were not conscious of the
normal inner scheme of the body. Only the soul which organizes its own body can
have such an accurate knowledge as we find in somnambulism.
Another objection to the Monistic
doctrine of the soul is, that an immortal principle .(the soul) cannot produce
mortal life (the body). This objection is easily overcome if we regard life as
a function of the plastic forming-power of the soul, which cannot be lost in
death, but which manifests itself again, either for a shorter time, as
materialization, or for a longer time, as reincarnation.
We should always make a difference
between personality and individuality: The personal man is represented by the
body with its different functions and limited consciousness; the individuality
man is the immortal soul, the transcendental, thinking and organizing Ego, with
its unlimited consciousness. We must not be disturbed by the fact that this
mysterious consciousness rarely manifests itself. There are many authentic
cases where it has been observed; and one such case is quite sufficient to
establish the fact of the higher consciousness of the soul as compared with our
ordinary waking consciousness.
If the immortal soul has, as we
really believe, the organizing faculty, then it is very improbable that it
should only once make use of the power to present itself in a material, human
form, especially if in it the desire for life on this earth is still strong.
Reincarnation would in this case almost become a necessity.
It is improbable that the soul
should not be able to use any other material than the organic cell substance of
which the physical body consists. Just as an artist may use clay, plaster or
marble, for his creations, so the soul may employ other than terrestrial matter
in order to appear in a certain form, especially if it wants to make itself
visible for a short time only. Thus only can we understand the so called
manifestations of spiritism. Considered from this point of view the astral body
not only becomes a possibility, but a logical necessity.
The Hindus and Chinese take it as a
matter of fact. In the Zend Avesta it is called "Ferner" and
designated as the prototype of soul and body. The Ferner has the human form in
intensely fine matter before its connection with the physical body; it is the
first impression of the creator's thought, the individualized Platonic Idea.
(Rhode: Die heilige Sage des Zendvolkes, 397.)
In the Kabala, the secret doctrine
of the old Hebrews, we find the same teaching; there the astral body is called
zelem, the phantom of nephesh, the soul. In the middle ages Paracelsus
frequently speaks of the astral body, the knowledge of which he received in
Tartary, where he was imprisoned for nine years. He says: "There are two
bodies, the corpus material and the corpus spiritual; both are formed by
nature. (Philosophia sagax I. 3. II. 350.) "Death separates these two
bodies from each other." (Degeneratione stultorum W.W. II. 180.)
Paracelsus states that the astral body does not have the defects of the
physical, and that it is formed of entirely different matter; so it may pass
through solid substances. (Denymphis W.W. II. 182.) He calls the visible body
the instrument by means of which the invisible body acts and expresses itself;
the visible body dies, the other one overcomes death (W.W. IL 353); the visible
body rests in sleep, while the other one is then active. "As the natural
body has natural wisdom, so the spiritual body has heavenly wisdom." (W.W.
II. 440.) But man is not the only being that has an astral body, every living
thing has it: "The world has two bodies, a visible and an invisible
one." (I. 2. W.W. II. 346.)
The later mystics hold the same
views. Swedenborg, Ottinger, Bader, Kardes, all agree that no soul can be
without a body and whoever presupposes an organizing principle in the organism,
must come to the same conclusion. The materialist who does not believe in an
organizing principle is obliged to believe in an effect without a cause. If, on
the contrary, an organizing principle is acknowledged, then the astral body
becomes a necessity, because the organizing principle must always survive the
physical body, which is only an effect of that principle.
Even if the world had no knowledge of
the double, of appearances (phantoms) and materializations, we would have to
presuppose their existence; their invisibility would be a consequence of our
imperfect senses, just as the irregularities in the movements of Uranus would
necessitate the supposition of the existence of Neptune, even if we did not
have a telescope.
An organizing soul must retain the
capacity to represent itself — even after death. And this capacity cannot be
restricted to one single representation, the terrestrial life, nor to one
material, the cell body I the representation must, on the contrary, become much
easier in a finer matter, and for a shorter time. Birth, which is a long
lasting materialization in a material which can only become perceivable through
enormous condensation of cells, is a much greater riddle than any appearance of
ghosts or any materialization.
Those who deny the possibility of
ghosts do not consider their own existence, which is certainly the superlative
degree of any materialization. To many men the belief in spirits or ghosts is
so inconceivable that they cannot understand how an educated man can have it,
but their own existence is to them such a matter of fact that they cannot find
anything strange in it. Yet it is manifest that both kinds of beings, albuminous
creatures as well as specters, are unintelligible except as products of an
organizing soul; wherefore a logical thinker cannot show surprise at albuminous
beings, and so much surprise at specters, that he simply denies their
possibility. Moreover, to form an organism from albuminous matter and to
conserve it for sixty years, must be more difficult than to make oneself
visible for a few minutes and in finer matter; wherefore he is a poor
philosopher who is not more surprised about his own existence than about one
hundred ghosts.
Those who believe in an organizing
principle cannot escape the astral body; this is the reason why the so called
period of enlightenment, that tried to exterminate all mysticism, could 'not
get rid of the astral body as a philosophical problem. We find it mentioned in
the works of many philosophers and naturalists, as in Leibnitz (Monadologi 72,
73), Fichte (Anthropology), Fortlage (Psychology 23), Fechner (Zend Avesta III.
242), Donte (Turgat XXV. 97-101), besides modern writers who have made this
question their special study.
The organizing principle in man is
his own soul; but it is at the same time the thinking principle E. Hartman's
("Un-known"), and the willing principle (Schopenhauer's
"World-Will"). Immanuel Kant, greatest of the German philosophers,
did not have a knowledge of somnambulism, hypnotism or spiritism; the magical
powers of the soul were entirely hidden for him; and yet, his genius led him to
a recognition of the truth in regard to this mysterious question. In his
"Dreams of a Visionary," which he wrote in regard to Swedenborg's
visions, he says: "I confess that I am very much inclined to affirm the
existence of immaterial beings in the world, and to classify my own soul among
those beings"; and further, "It will be proven in future, where or
when I do not know, that the human soul, while in this life, stands in an
indissoluble connection with all immaterial natures of the spiritual world,
that it exerts an influence on them and receives impressions from them, of
which man is not conscious as long as he is in a normal condition."
Now Swedenborg says pretty much the
same: "Man is so constituted that he is at the same time in the spiritual
and natural world. The spiritual world is where the angels are, and the natural
world is where the human beings are; and because man is thus created he has
been given an inner and an outer; the inner, that he may be in the spiritual
world, the outer that he may be in the natural world I"
It is astonishing that those two
contemporaries — although quite different in character, in their mode of
living, thinking and believing, express their belief in similar words, the
meaning of which is that man is a double being, belonging on one side to the
spiritual, on the other to the terrestrial world. The one came to this belief
by logical thinking, the other by inner seeing; which proves that both ways may
lead to a recognition of the truth, although in my opinion the first one is
safer, since the astral world is full of dangers, illusions, and seldom offers
any possibility for verification.
Swedenborg was what we would call a
medium, who claimed to be in connection with the denizens of the invisible
world, and to have developed certain magical powers. The time in which both
Kant and Swedenborg lived was little disposed to believe in such powers, and
Kant was probably one of the few who did not have any prejudice in this
respect. Being a perfect logician, he knew that everything is possible that
does not contain a logical contradiction. For this reason he not only wanted
all information about Swedenborg, but also studied his writings, which,
however, did not satisfy our profound thinker. But he was greatly astonished at
the resemblance of Swedenborg's theories, respecting the transcendental nature
of man, with his own theories. He was not convinced of Swedenborg's clairvoyant
powers, but he did not declare them impossible, as so many of our materialistic
philosophers do; he simply said that if only one of those facts were true, it
would have the most astonishing consequences.
Since Kant's death, the magical soul
powers of somnambulists have been verified in such a manner that only ignorance
can deny them, and we are obliged to accept the "astonishing
consequences" of which Kant speaks, and which are nothing less than an
affirmation of his words, cited above, namely, that the soul of man is a
spiritual being "indissolubly connected with all immaterial natures of the
spiritual world," whom it influences and is in turn influenced by them.
Another great thinker, Schopenhauer,
speaks about the strange happenings which occur in our dreams, where we are
entirely in the hands of a mysterious power which is able to put us in
astonishment, vexation, anger, love, terror, mortal fright, without our being
able to break the bonds that entwine us, and which, after all, have been tied
together by our own will, that appears as inexorable destiny. Nothing could
better illustrate the dual consciousness of man than dreams, and if we replace
Schopenhauer's "transcendental world will" with our transcendental
Ego, the soul, then we may clearly recognize the mysterious power which is the
originator of our sleep dreams as well as of our life dream.
There is a close resemblance between
the happenings of a dream and the happenings of our life. In both there is a
consciousness active which is different from our waking consciousness,
otherwise nothing could happen that gives us pain and suffering. This
consciousness is higher than our waking consciousness because it not only
frequently, nay, most always; produces a solution which was quite unexpected,
but at the same time much better and more useful than any other one.
Schopenhauer is quite right when he says that in many cases, later happenings
show that the frustration of our plans was really the only thing that could
promote our true well being, especially if we regard moral progress as our well
being. (Schopenhauser: "The Seeming Purpose," 231.) Does not this
prove that a hidden purpose, an intelligent design, seems to guide us through
our life, just as it guides the dramatic actions of our dreams? And what else
can this guiding intelligence be than the transcendental subject, the immortal
Ego in man, the magical powers of which sometimes manifest them-selves in such
an astounding manner? How will we ever be able to explain those powers, if we
deny the existence of the immortal soul in man?
It is this immortal soul, or as the
men of science call it, the transcendental subject, which not only leads us
into physical life, but also determines our special individuality and guides us
through life in a manner which almost necessitates the belief that it knows
beforehand what is going to happen to us as so many premonitions and true
prophecies show.
But the purpose of this mysterious
guidance seems to be our transcendental, and not our terrestrial, well-being;
for it does not consider our desires and very often leads us contrary to our
wish and expectation. Our life on this globe cannot be anything else but a
transcendental self-prescription, fore-ordained by our immortal Ego, who knows
the necessity for our reincarnation, and also the very great advantages
resulting there from for our soul. Free existence of the soul is therefore much
more logical than the teaching of our churches, that the existence of the soul
begins with the birth of the body, and then lasts forever. Aristotle has
already proven that only an uncreated being can be imperishable. (Aristotle: De
coelo I. 12.) If, therefore, the soul is immortal, then it must have existed
before the birth of the body; and if the desire for physical life has brought
about its incarnation in a cell body, then it is more than probable that such a
desire cannot have become so strong, so irresistible all at once, but that it has
had its period of growth and gestation, like everything else; which means that
it has incarnated many times before, receiving each time a stronger conviction
of the usefulness and gain which the incarnation brings to the immortal soul of
man. This may be the strongest reason for man's love and desire for physical
life.
To live is to evolve; as there can
be no end to life, so there can be no end to evolution. It is very probable
that the soul progresses also after the death of the physical body, but this
progress takes place in other conditions, under circumstances which make all
operations much easier to the soul. There can be no doubt that it, the soul,
retains the magical powers, which we have been considering, after death; for it
is a fact that they not only manifest stronger the nearer man approaches his
end, but also after death. One of those powers is the faculty of the soul to
clothe itself with a physical body; and since it is manifestly more difficult
to form a body which has to last seventy years, than one which disappears after
a few minutes, like those we see in spirtistic materializations, there is no
reason why we should deny apparitions. Whether it is a physical or an astral
body, an ethereal or a mental body, it is ·always the same power which creates
it, the formative power of the soul; he who denies this wonderful power, is far
from learning how to consciously control and use it, and this is one of the
purposes of evolution.
(The Word, August 1913, p.262-272)
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