Mesmeric Revelation

Mesmeric Revelation

Poe's narrator opens with an assertion that the general phenomena of mesmerism—the abnormal, death-like condition it induces, the exaltation of the subject's intellectual faculties, the profound sympathy with the mesmerizer, and the increasing susceptibility with repeated practice—are established facts not needing proof, and that his purpose is instead to relate, without comment, a conversation between himself (P.) and a sleep-waker. He explains that he had long been in the habit of mesmerizing Mr. Vankirk, who had for months suffered from confirmed phthisis, relieved by the narrator's manipulations. On the night of Wednesday the fifteenth he is summoned to Vankirk's bedside, where the invalid is suffering acute pain near the heart and asthma-like breathing difficulty, unrelieved this time by the usual mustard application to the nervous centres. Though in bodily pain, Vankirk is mentally at ease and greets the narrator cheerfully. Vankirk explains he has summoned him not chiefly for physical relief but to address psychal impressions troubling him. He recounts his longstanding scepticism about the soul's immortality, describing a vague half-sentiment of the soul's existence that never rose to intellectual conviction; his study of Cousin and of Brownson's Charles Elwood left him more sceptical, since abstract philosophical arguments cannot compel belief. Lately, however, the mesmeric influence has deepened this feeling nearly to the point of rational conviction. He hypothesizes that mesmeric exaltation lets him perceive a chain of reasoning that convinces him while entranced but does not fully carry over, cause and effect together, into his normal waking state. He proposes that a catechism of questions put to him while mesmerized might yield useful results, given the self-cognizance sleep-wakers display regarding the mesmeric condition. The narrator agrees, mesmerizes him with a few passes, and the dialogue proceeds. Vankirk, once soundly asleep, states he must die, but says the idea does not afflict him—awake he would wish to die, but the mesmeric state, so near death, contents him regardless. Questioned on first principles, Vankirk says the beginning is God, though he cannot define what God is. He denies God is "spirit" (calling that a mere word, like a quality) and denies God is immaterial, since immateriality is nothing. Yet he also denies God is material in the ordinary sense. After hesitation, he describes gradations of matter increasing in rarity—metal, wood, water, atmosphere, gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether—culminating in an "unparticled matter," without particles, indivisible, one, which permeates and impels all things and is God. This unparticled matter in quiescence is what men call mind; set in motion by an internal law, its motion is thinking, not the reverse as metaphysicians hold. Pressed for a clearer idea of unparticled matter, Vankirk argues that pushing rarity beyond the luminiferous ether leads to a mass where interspaces between atoms vanish and coalescence is absolute, which we might call spirit for want of a better word, though it remains matter. The narrator objects that such absolute density should offer more resistance to moving bodies than any known ether, citing the slight, only recently detected resistance to the heavenly bodies' revolutions, overlooked even by Newton. Vankirk answers that it makes no difference whether star passes through ether or ether through star; the retardation actually observed matches friction from instantaneous passage of the ether through the orb, not endless accumulation, resolving the seeming contradiction. Asked whether identifying God with matter is irreverent, Vankirk replies that this matter possesses all the high capacities attributed to spirit, so God is the perfection of matter. He explains that the unparticled matter in motion is the universal thought of the universal mind, and all created things are thoughts of God; for new individualities, matter—incarnation of portions of the divine mind—is necessary, since mind unincorporated is merely God. Thus man is individualized; stripped of bodily investiture he would be God again, but this can never happen, since that would mean an action of God reverting on itself, and thought is irrevocable. Vankirk clarifies he never truly meant man would become bodiless: there are two bodies, rudimental and ultimate—corresponding to the worm and the butterfly—and what is called death is only the painful metamorphosis between them, the present incarnation being progressive and temporary, the future perfected and immortal. He explains that the ultimate body escapes the rudimental senses just as the worm cannot perceive its own coming metamorphosis; only those already in the ultimate life can perceive both forms. Asked why the mesmeric state resembles death, Vankirk says it resembles instead the ultimate life, since in trance the rudimental senses are suspended and he perceives externally without organs, through the very medium he will use in the unorganized ultimate life. He likens the ultimate body to something like entire brain, describing how vibrations pass from a luminous body through ether, retina, optic nerve, brain, and finally the unparticled matter within it—this last motion being thought. In the ultimate life, an even rarer ether communicates with the whole body directly, without the limiting idiosyncrasy of organs, which are merely "cages" confining rudimental beings until fledged. Asked whether other rudimental thinking beings exist besides man, Vankirk says the innumerable nebulae, planets, and suns exist solely to supply matter for the organs of an infinity of rudimental beings, each world tenanted by its own variety of organic creatures; at death these attain the ultimate immortal life, cognizant of all secrets but one, moving by mere volition through space itself rather than among the stars, which the angels' perception "blots out" as mere shadows against the true substantiality of space. Asked why this rudimental necessity exists at all, Vankirk explains that inorganic life, obeying one simple Divine Volition, admits no impediment, while organic life and matter were contrived, through their complexity, to render violation of law—and hence pain—possible, whereas pain is impossible in the inorganic. Asked to what good end pain is thus made possible, he answers that pleasure is always relative, a contrast to pain, and never suffering would mean never being blessed; the pain of earthly rudimental life is the sole basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven. Finally questioned on the phrase "the truly substantive vastness of infinity," Vankirk explains that substance is not a quality but a sentiment—the perception by thinking beings of matter's adaptation to their own organization; things substantial to earthly organs may be nihility to beings on Venus, and vice versa, while to inorganic beings, the angels, all unparticled matter—what we call space—is the truest substance, even as the stars, materially real to us, escape angelic perception altogether. As Vankirk utters these last words in a feeble tone, the narrator, alarmed by a singular expression on his face, wakes him at once—whereupon Vankirk, smiling brightly, falls back and expires, his corpse stiffening within a minute with a coldness the narrator likens to the long pressure of Azrael's hand. The narrator closes by wondering whether, in his final words, the sleep-waker had already been speaking to him from beyond.

By Edgar Allan Poe · First published 1844 · Genre: Philosophical Fiction, Metaphysical, Psychological · 5,266 words

First lines

Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession -- an unprofitable and disreputable tribe. There can be no more absolute waste of time than the attempt to prove, at the present day, that man, by mere exercise of will, can so impress his fellow, as to cast him into an abnormal condition, of which the phenomena resemble very closely those of death, or at least resemble them more nearly than they do the phenomena of any other normal condition within our cognizance; that, while in this state, the person so impressed employs only with effort, and then feebly, the external organs of sense, yet perceives, with keenly refined perception, and through channels supposed unknown, matters beyond the scope of the physical organs; that, moreover, his intellectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigorated; that his sympathies with the person so impressing him are profound; and, finally, that his susceptibility to the impression increases with its frequency, while, in the same proportion, the peculiar phenomena elicited are more extended and more pronounced.

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Mystery · Supernatural · Psychological Thriller · Gothic Fiction · Science Fiction · Philosophical · Paranormal · Mind Control · Hypnosis · Reincarnation · Spiritualism · Occult

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