Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1865

Allan Kardec

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An Explanation regarding the revelation of Mr. Bach

The Grand Journal of June 18th, 1865 brings, with the title Letter from an Unknown, the explanation given below about the fact reported in the Spiritist Review, July 1865, with respect to the Aria of Henry III revealed in Mr. Bach’s dream. The author bases his explanation exclusively on somnambulism and seems to completely abstract from the intervention of the Spirits. Although we disagree in that respect, his explanation is not less wisely reasoned; and if it is not accurate in all points, in our opinion, it still contains points that are incontestably true and worth of attention. Contrarily to certain magnetizers, the so called “fluidists”, that only see the effect of a magnetic fluid in all effects, not taking the soul into account, Mr. Bertelius instead gives the soul a fundamental role. He represents the soul in its emancipation state, detached from matter, enjoying faculties that are not present in the vigil state. It is therefore an explanation from a completely spiritual point of view, if not totally Spiritist, and that is something on its own for the possibility of the fact by means that are not purely material, and that from an important journal. It is noticeable that a movement is forming among the detractors at this time, a kind of reaction, or even better, a third opinion that can be considered as a transition. Today many acknowledge the impossibility of explaining certain phenomena only by the laws of matter, but they cannot yet admit the intervention of the Spirits. They seek the causes in the exclusive action of the incarnate soul, acting independently from the material organs. It is incontestably a step forward that must be considered as a first victory against materialism. There isn’t a great distance between the isolated and independent action of the soul during life and the same action after death. They will be led to this by the evidence of the facts and by the impossibility of explaining everything just with the help of the incarnate Spirit.

Here is the article from The Great Journal:

The issue before the last one of the Great Journal brings the singular case that happened to Mr. G. Bach, with these questions at the end: “- Had the harpsichord belonged to Baltazzarini? Was the Spirit of Baltazzarini that wrote the Sarabande? A mystery that we dare not investigate!”

Please explain to me why a man that has no prejudices, as I believe, steps back before the search for the truth? A mystery, you will say. – No Sir, there is no mystery. It is just a God given faculty to certain persons, like others are gifted with a beautiful voice, others with the genius of poetry, calculation, a rare perspicacity, all faculties that can be awaken, developed and improved by education. On the other hand there is an infinite number of other faculties conferred to mankind that civilization, progress and education annihilate, instead of favoring their development. Isn’t that true, for example, that indigenous peoples have an auditive sensitivity that we do not? That they can distinguish the step of man from several men, a horse from several horses or detect a wild animal at a great distance by holding the ear to the ground? Isn’t that also true that they measure time accurately without a pendulum or a clock? That they walk through virgin forests or navigate the rivers and oceans in their canoes oriented by the stars, with the help of a compass or without notions of Astronomy? Finally, isn’t that also true that the heal their diseases without doctors; cure the bites of the most venous animals with simple herbs, distinguishing them from so many others? Isn’t that a fact that they cure the most dangerous ulcers with clay? A red-skin chief in the middle of nowhere told me in the United States: The Great Being places the medicine by the side of the illness.

Those truths became banal by the force of repetition, but some use them to disguise their ignorance and others, that constitute the majority, use them to feed controversy. It is so easy to play the role of a strong mind just by denying everything! It is so difficult to explain the works of God whose secret we seek in books when the solution would be found in nature! There we have the great book, open to all intelligences; but not all of them are cut to decipher those mysteries because some read it through their preventions and prejudices and others through their insufficiency or the pride of pseudo-wise people.

Use the simplest means to investigate the mysteries of nature and the solution will be found, up to the limits imposed to our human intelligence by a superior one.

You said that Mr. Bach is not a somnambulist. What do you know about it and what does he know about it? Without the honor of having ever met him or known him I affirm that Mr. Bach is a somnambulist. It was in a latent state in him; an exceptional circumstance was necessary, a very lively and persistent sensation, an emotion understood by all of those that love curiosity and search, to have a faculty revealed to himself, a faculty that may have given him many unnoticeable examples in his life, but that he can certainly remember now if he wants to question and think about his past.

According to your report Mr. Bach spent part of his day admiring his precious harpsichord; he found out the age of the instrument (April 1564). He was thinking about it when he lied down and even when he was about to sleep he thought of that.

The somnambulist works in stages. When you want him to see what is going on in London, for example, you must tell him that he is boarding a carriage, then he is taken to the railroad and takes a train that moves, that he boards a ship and crosses the ocean (he will sometimes feel seasick), that he disembark, takes another train and gets to the end of the journey.

Mr. Bach followed the commonly path of the somnambulists. He had checked, disassembled, turned up and down and examined his harpsichord; he was taken by that idea and must have said to himself: whose instrument was this? There was a magnetic connection established between him and the instrument – and the strong minds cannot deny such connection. He fell asleep naturally and that was followed by the somnambulistic state. He then searched, excavated the past and established an intimate relationship with the harpsichord; he must have turned it, touched and placed his hand where three centuries before that the former owner had his own hand. He then questioned the past – something that is infinitely easier than predicting the future – and found himself in contact with a being that no longer exists. He saw him dressed and executing the aria that the instrument had executed so many times; he heard the words and dragged by that magnetic force called electricity Mr. Bach wrote the aria with his own hand, as clearly as one can send a message to Lyon today, written by your hand and with your writing. Mr. Bach wrote it in a somnambulistic state, I repeat, the music and lyrics that he had never heard before. He then woke up tearful and touched by such a lively emotion.

You can go and say that it is impossible. That is okay. But hear this case: I myself sent a somnambulist to England; she traveled not in a complete somnambulistic state but in an intermediary condition between the natural sleep and total somnambulism. I just ordered her to sleep the necessary time in her natural sleep and that she wrote whatever was reachable in her trip. She did not know a word in English. She knew nobody there. It was a serious task… She traveled and every night she wrote what she was supposed to do, the people that she should see and the addresses where she should meet them. She followed strictly the indications that were given to her. She visited the homes of people that she did not know and had never heard about, precisely the ones that could do it all… After eight days her mission was over, a task that would have required years for a complete satisfaction; my somnambulist came back after having accomplished wonders. In her natural state this extraordinary woman is a very common person.

Check this out: in her sleeping state her writing is very different from her natural way of writing. Words were written in English, unknown to her. She talks to me in Italian, but she could not say two words in that language in her vigil state.

Mr. Bach himself wrote and annotated the aria of Henry III with his own hand, although he cannot perhaps recognize his own writing. Something even more extraordinary is that he may doubt his own magnetic faculties, like my somnambulist who is radically skeptical about magnetism, to the point that whenever this is mentioned in her presence she promptly declares to be a non-believer.

And perhaps you may even say that Mr. Bach did not have paper and pen. My somnambulist in London found her indications written in pencil on her desk. She had no pencil… I am certain that she sought the pencil in the hotel, found it and brought it to her room with that almost supernatural and vaporous agility, accuracy and precaution, common to the somnambulists.

I could describe facts that are more remarkable than those of Mr. Bach but that is enough for today. I even hesitate in sending you these notes, serendipitously written by the pen.

For twenty years that I magnetize, I have hidden the result of my discoveries, even from my best friends. It is so easy to charge a man with madness; there are so many people interested in putting the light under the bushel, and above all it must be said, there are so many charlatans who have abused magnetism, that it would require a superhuman courage, to declare that I am involved with that. It would be better to proclaim that one has murdered his own father and mother, than to confess such a belief.

As a general rule, though: never ever believe in public experiments, in somnambulists that give consultation for a fee, that work like the ancient sibyl, speaking at the slightest command and at the scheduled time, in front of a large audience, like a skillfully prepared robot. It's trickery! Nothing is more unpredictable, capricious, voluntary, unstable, suspicious, rancorous than a somnambulist. The tiniest thing paralyzes their faculties of second sight; the tiniest thing makes them lie maliciously; the tiniest thing disturbs them and makes them deviate, and that is conceivable. Is there anything more susceptible than electric current?

I separated myself from an illustrious scientist (Dr. E ..., well-known in London), with whom I began my first magnetic experiments, precisely because I always considered the abuse of magnetism as a serious fault. Driven by the miraculous results we obtained, he one day wished to graft the phrenological system onto magnetism; he claimed that by touching certain bumps in the head, the somnambulist felt the sensation of that seat. By touching the presumed hump of music, the subject sang; that of gluttony, he chewed the emptiness, saying that such food had good or bad taste; and so on. I felt that it was pushing the experience to the point of abuse, sitting the problematic science of phrenology on the real fact of somnambulism. I wanted to extend the field of magnetic discoveries, but not to abuse them, as it is generally done.

I had the irreverence of declaring to my professor that he was going off course, and I maintain that it is the duty of all those who know the magnetic phenomena to rise against all these experiments, whose sole purpose is to satisfy an ignorant curiosity, to exploit some human weaknesses and not to achieve a practical result for humanity and useful to all.

But it is more difficult than one thinks to maintain oneself in these honorable limits, when one has arrived at marvelous results. The strongest magnetizers let themselves be carried away, and an even more remarkable phenomenon, when one gets to the point of always demanding public experiences of his subject, he seems to be out of order, he no longer has this unpredictability, this lucidity, that clairvoyance which distinguished him; the subject becomes an automatic machine, which responds on a given theme, and whose faculties are impoverished to the point of disappearing.

Unfortunately, people who would not dare to attempt a simple experiment in recreational physics, who would admit to being unfit to perform the slightest trick of prestidigitation, never hesitate, without the least preparatory study, to make magnetic experiments.

Ah! If I were not afraid of lulling the readers of your Grand Journal of a less interesting sleep, but louder than that of my sleepwalkers, I will soon be talking about eminently curious facts. But before anything else we must know how you will receive this first letter, and that's what I'll learn on Saturday by flipping the pages of my paper.”

Bertellius

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