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Hypnotism demonstrates in a still more decisive manner this reflex action of the thoughts. The
suggestion of a burn can produce on a subject the effect of a real burn. (Authentic instances of this nature are
given in chap. XX of my book In the Invisible). If the thoughts and will can exercise such an effect on the
material body, we can understand how the action increases and produces more intense effects when applied to
the imponderable, etheric form. Less dense, less compact than the material body, it obeys with much more
suppleness each volition of the thought. It is by virtue of this law that spirits can appear in their old forms
clothed, as in the past, with all their vanished attributes of personality. It is only necessary for them to think
strongly of a phase of their past existence to show themselves to clairvoyants as they were at that epoch. The
ability to materialise in this manner is furnished by people of mediumistic power. Colonel de Rochas, in his
work L’Éthérisation de Sensibilité, relates how he succeeded in separating the etheric body of a subject long
enough to demonstrate that it was the seat of feeling and memory. Psychology and hypnotism combined
permit us to study the action of the soul released from its material form and united to its etheric body. It
furnishes us the means to elucidate the most delicate problems of life.
Psychical research contains the key to all the phenomena of life. It has come to renovate entirely
modern science, and cast a clear light on a great number of questions which have been obscure until now. The
following authentic statement made by Pierre Jenet, psychologists of Sorbonne, is of vast importance to
students of the problems of being. It illustrates how the impressions registered in the etheric body are indelible,
and form a close connection with the body.
Rose, the hypnotic subject of Dr. Jenet, was put into sleep (or trance) and told that she was living in
the year 1886, in the month of April. Then suddenly Rose began to sigh and complain of fatigue, and said she
could not walk; asked what was the matter, she said, ‘Oh, it is my condition.’ ‘What condition?’ was asked.
She responded with a gesture, and then the doctor observed that her form had suddenly swollen and was
twitching with the movements of a woman advanced in pregnancy. Without any knowledge of the fact, Dr.
Jenet had put Rose into a period of time when she had been expecting to become a mother. Another subject,
Marie, blind in one eye since her seventh year, and with no normal memory of ever having seen with that eye,
when put into trance sleep, and told she was six years old, seemed to see perfectly with both eyes and related
the entire circumstances of her accident. Memory restored automatically a state of health which in her normal
condition was absolutely forgotten. The possibility of awakening in the consciousness of a subject lost
memories of childhood bring us logically to memories of anterior lives. This order of facts was first touched
upon in the Spiritualistic Congress at Paris, 1900, by Spanish experimenters. Fernandez Colavidie announced
that he had received from a medium in profound trance a complete detailed account of his life back to birth.
Then the medium went still further back to his life in space, and to four former incarnations, the furthest one
wholly savage. At each recital the features of the medium changed expression.
In the same congress, Estava Marata, President of the Union of Calalogne, declared he had, through
his wife who was a medium, received the history of his past lives. These experiences have multiplied day by
day since then, and experimentation grows. But it is necessary to use great prudence and caution, and to be on
guard against fraud and error, and against auto-suggestion. One should not accept from mediums any recitals
which cannot be verified by an ensemble of proofs, positive and scientific. It would be wise to imitate on this
point the example given by the London Society of Psychical Research, and to adopt its precise and rigorous
methods. Even where such methods have been neglected, we find some cases of very striking phenomena,
such as that of Helen Smith, a medium studied by Professor Flournoy of the University of Geneva.
Entranced, this medium reproduced scenes of former lives in India, in the twelfth century. She used
Sanscrit words of which she knew nothing in her normal state; she gave facts concerning historic personages
of that epoch which the Professor after much research found confirmed in a book by Marles, a little known
historian, and absolutely beyond the knowledge of the medium. Other better-known historians had not
mentioned these facts. In trance, Helen Smith, without education and with no knowledge of the Orient, spoke
and sang with an Oriental charm and languorous abandon which the most finished actress after long study
could hardly attain. Colonel Rochas, former Administrator of the Polytechnic School, made a careful study of
such cases. One of these subjects was put in trance, and sent back to the time of her infancy. Then suddenly a
new voice and personality appeared, and the subject gave a history of her former life, even to the name she
bore and the country in which she lived. Colonel de Rochas, while dissatisfied with many of his investigations,
ended his description as follows: ‘It is certain that by magnetic operations one can bring a hypnotic subject
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