The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of imagination.
After centuries dominated by church religion and the eighteenth century’s age of reason, men and women began exploring new ways of looking at and experiencing the world, including the world of the unseen.
Esoteric psychic practices such as séances, channeling and hypnosis were used to directly contact realms beyond the material. Incidentally, nowadays we say hypnosis but mesmerism was the term used back then, coming from the Austrian physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who employed this technique in his treatment of willing patients. Is it any wonder Edgar Allan Poe, master of the fantastic, wrote this tale about a doctor dialoging with his hypnotized patient?
Reading Mesmeric Revelation, I was struck by how Mr. Vankirk, the man under hypnosis, speaks of God and the afterlife not in biblical or religious terms, but in the scientific language of his time; and using this scientific language, his experience parallels an entire range of other philosophical and spiritual traditions. To provide examples, below are several passages from the story coupled with my comments:
The doctor (P.) asks the patient (V.) questions.
“P. What then is God ?
V. [Hesitating for many minutes.] I cannot tell.
P. Is not God spirit ?
V. While I was awake I knew what you meant by "spirit," but now it seems only a word — such for instance as truth, beauty — a quality, I mean.”
P. Is not God immaterial ?
V. There is no immateriality — it is a mere word. That which is not matter, is not at all — unless qualities are things.”
-----------The patient’s inability to use language to speak of God and communicate his experience reminds us of mystics such as Meister Eckhart who tells us when we experience God directly all of our language and concepts fall away.
Answering further questions, the patient shifts his explanation. Toward the end of his detailed account, we read:
“P. You assert, then, that the unparticled matter, in motion, is thought?
V. In general, this motion is the universal thought of the universal mind. This thought creates. All created things are but the thoughts of God.
P. You say, "in general."
V. Yes. The universal mind is God. For new individualities, matter is necessary.
P. But you now speak of "mind" and "matter" as do the metaphysicians.”
---------- The doctor/narrator is spot-on in citing how his patient is describing the world of the philosophers – recall how the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras conceived of ultimate reality as "Mind" (Nous) and how Plotinus and other Neoplatonists maintained that "the One" is the absolute first principle.
The patient’s explanation shifts again as he experiences a different phase in his altered state of consciousness:
“There are two bodies — the rudimental and the complete ; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.” ----------- This section of the tale is quite remarkable. We hear echoes of the Bardo teachings from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Rather than continuing with quotes, suffice to say the patient takes more shifts as he continues to answer the doctor’s questions. One might ask if there is any mention at all from the Western monotheistic tradition. Actually, the answer is "yes." At the very end of the tale, the doctor makes an observation and alludes to “Azrael’s hand”, Azrael being the "Angel of Death" from Muslim and Jewish legend.
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