8io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



seek it, but quietly wait until it shines, first preparing one's self to 

 behold it, as the eye awaits the rising of the sun. The sun ap- 

 pearing above the horizon out of the ocean, as the poets say 

 presents itself to our eyesight. But this other light, of which the 

 eun is an imitation, whence is it to rise, and above what is it to 

 appear ? It rises above the contemplating mind, for the mind 

 fixes itself upon the contemplation." Again (Ennead VI, book ix, 

 chap. 9), " There the soul beholds God and herself in the only way 

 permitted, herself radiant, full of intelligible light, nay rather her- 

 self all pure light, weightless, buoyant (KOV^OV), becoming God 

 nay, already become God." 



The sect known in the eleventh century as Hesychasts, and 

 later the Omphalopsychics of Mount Athos, claimed to have, and 

 doubtless did have, the same experience. Prof. Preyer, in a note 

 to his Hypnoiismus, has given an interesting account of them. 

 Their method was to drop the chin upon the breast, fix the eyes 

 upon the navel, and wait for the light to burst upon them. A 

 great ecclesiastical controversy arose over these practices. The 

 language which George Fox and the early Quakers use of the 

 "inner light" seems to point to the same thing. One of my 

 graduate students, while under ether, had a similar experience, 

 which makes an excellent commentary upon Plotinus's statement 

 that the soul is " pure light." " I took form, I was a body of light 

 in an abyss of ethereal gray ; in form I was, as memory repro- 

 duces size, eighteen inches by eight, a rounded disk : I was not 

 looking at myself, but I knew and saw myself." Such experiences 

 would seem, from my own inquiries, to be far from uncommon, 

 and I would be grateful to any of my readers who can give me 

 more cases. 



Among the monks and nuns of the mediaeval Church ecstatic 

 states were common. The constant fasting and loss of sleep to 

 which many of these saints condemned themselves are known 

 upon independent evidence to be fruitful soiirces of hallucina- 

 tions, and prolonged meditation upon a given topic determined 

 the general form of the vision. The enforced celibacy of the 

 monastic life and the practice of self-torture were further con- 

 ditions of the greatest importance. Enforced celibacy frequently 

 gives rise to reflex neuroses, and self-torture is in many neurotic 

 individuals a direct stimulus to the very passions which the celi- 

 bate most desires to repress. It is not surprising, therefore, that 

 the religious ecstasies of the ascetic frequently assume a highly 

 erotic form, although expressed in the most chaste language, and 

 alternate with apparitions of the devil in the forms of incubi and 

 succubce. Prof. Mantegazza has given interesting accounts of 

 some of these religious ecstatics and visionaries, and I shall abbre- 

 viate a few of them. 



