Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl[1]
It is exceedingly difficult, if not downright impossible, to persuade those lovers of dreaming, divination, table-breaking, table-turning, and hauntings, who do not know the laws of the mind and their effects, that the visions which they so think, from their dear deceased friends, and the “messages” which they receive are nothing other than the reflections and effects of their own soul activity, i.e., the reflection of their own feelings and thoughts, which, since reason is not active in them, either not at all or only dimly conscious. People love what they believe to be true, and they believe what they love to be true and do not want to be disappointed; for a dearly won deception is for them a reality which has come into being, a part of their “self,” which, viewed in the light of truth, is only an illusion, a deception.
In the waking state, sensations flow into our soul life, and from the sensation arises the thought. Then the intellect comes into its own and judges what it perceives, separating out the reasonable and eliminating the unreasonable. In dreams and in the “mediumistic state” on the other hand, the understanding is not active; there the game of imagination has its course; the soul becomes the playground of semi-conscious sensations and memories, out of which the unreasonable stuff combines itself in a sort of mechanical way, and though sometimes there is something seemingly rational mixed in with it, the cause of this is that there is just no discrimination, and that the helpless unreasonable spirit (Kāma Manas) absorbs everything which comes along like a living mirror.
Whether a person is in an ordinary sleep and dreams, or whether he is in that semi-conscious state, which the spiritualists call “passive” and which they try to bring about through as little thought as possible, with the chanting of songs serving as an aid, whether the half-sleep is brought about through hypnotism, sentimentality, by chloroform or narcotics, or otherwise, remains the same in effect; the imagination plays its part, and the spectator, bereft of reason, takes the images he sees for reality; they are in fact a reality for him as long as he himself is in that dreamlike state and therefore only leads a semblance of life.
The following is an example. I made a poem in a dream; the content of which struck me as extremely touching, so that I resolved to make the greatest possible effort not to forget it when I awoke. This succeeded, and I immediately wrote it down, as follows:
The furious man drives through the air whizzing by wheel;
The owl moans, the gray French horn is silent.
A breath of mildew moves through the mountain clefts,
Like longing for love as the day draws to a close.
The elephant stands uneasy in the swamp.
What good is his midnight lamentation?
Everything is gone, like the desert sand;
The fog is falling. Oh it will never day!
What is the use of the nightingale’s singing?
The sound of the organ has long since faded.
Can the wind bring back my sigh
With whom I once listened to the pounding of the waves?
A light smoke disperses in the red of dawn;
The tips burn as if moved by night;
A faint whiff of melancholy blows through existence,
And from the bath it sounds: “He lied!”
The shadows are dying. No! it’s not right
That moths warm up in the Alp-glow.
The master rages and trembling the servant gnaws;
The eagle is panting; who will fret over it?
So let the waterfalls rush freely;
Even if the cup froths over it.
Once again the roses wave there in the brook,
Life flees; it was only a dream.
Outrageous as this nonsense is, it struck me as extremely profound and expressive while dreaming, and this very fact proves that during sleep the higher principles (Buddhi Manas) separate from the lower (Kāma Manas) to a certain degree; for there can be no talk of an absolute cessation of reason itself, since reason is not the result of bodily activity, but the body (brain and soul) is in full activity when reason reveals itself in it.
But there is another instructive side to the consideration of this circumstance with regard to the circumstances under which the so-called “earthbound spirits” continue to exist after the death of the body. Here, too, the higher principles have separated from the remaining “astral corpse”; reason no longer exists in her, but a faint reflection of it, which makes her the plaything of half-conscious emotion, from which fantasies spring, the character of which depends on the thoughts and feelings which the person has had during life, and from which arise from the accumulated memories of the earthly part of the mind.
But in order to make this process possible and to reach a kind of consciousness, these “astral corpses” need the life force, which they withdraw from the medium, be it voluntarily or instinctively (as a result of the inner urge for life), and that is why these “ghost” vampires who not only rob the sanity of the “mediums” who associate with them, but eventually destroy them physically. Ignorance as to these things is no safeguard against the evil they do, and some fancy themselves doing a good work by associating with such a “spirit”; while his “dual” or “soul bride” or “groom” is but an astral corpse, if not a fiendish being, by which he is possessed.
Notes:
[1] Vampirism. On the Origin of a Certain Class of So-Called “Communications from the Spirit World.” [Vampirismus. Üeber den Ursprung einer gewissen Klasse von sogenannten “Mitteilungen aus der Geisterwelt.” Franz Hartmann, M.D. Sphinx 21, no. 114 (August 1895), 99-101] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}