THE  HOPE 
BOOKLETS

edited by Filippo Liverziani
The Convivium, Centre of Study 
and Community of Research 
Via dei Serpenti, 100 00184 Roma, Italy

10

THE MIND  MOULDS  MATTER, 
IS  AUTONOMOUS  OF  IT 
AND  SURVIVES  IT

THE MIND  MOULDS  MATTER, 
IS  AUTONOMOUS  OF  IT 
AND  SURVIVES  IT

C O N T E N T S

CHAPTER I - Deep within the physical body of each living person a psychic force organizes matter and at times transforms it
1.   The phenomena of life seem to be promoted and regulated by an autonomous and creative psychic principle of which the action can be defined as "ideoplasty": an idea moulds matter in a direct and immediate manner.
2.	 Sensitivity, psychicness and a form of ideoplastic action seem already to be present in plants. 
3.	On the other hand, psychicness and ideoplastic action	are more generally expressed in all living beings.
4.   An ideoplastic action reveals itself in a particular manner in animals and in a very particular manner in human beings.
5.	Ideoplastic action expresses itself especially in the processes of cicatrization and regeneration of tissues and, more exceptionally, in prodigious healings. 
6.   Ideoplastic action is also attested by the effects obtained by means of suggestion and hypnosis. 
7.	Ideoplastic action reveals itself in a particularly clamorous manner in the variety of paramystic phenomena that we shall now review, distinguishing them from the corresponding parapsychic phenomena: we shall begin with dermographisms. 
8.	We shall now pass on to considering the stigmata.
9.	We can now pass on to considering incombustibility.
10.   Levitation.
11.   Lengthening of the body.
12.   Fire of love.
13.   Luminosity and transfiguration. 
14.   Odour of sanctity and incorruption.
15.   Extreme fasting.
16.   Sleeplessness.
17.  The paramystic phenomena complete each other and from the theological point of view they all contribute to prefiguring what could be the ultimate condition of man.

CHAPTER II - The organizing psychic force can manifest itself also outside the physical body
1.	To the dreams and the hypnagogic and hypnopompic images there correspond realities that can be defined as objective. 
2.	Certain mental creations assume a hallucinatory character in the eyes of the subject who brings them into being. 
3.Certain mental forms are perceived by other subjects endowed with sensitivity. 
4.	Lastly, there are mental forms that can also be perceived by a photographic objective. 
5.   Thought-forms or creations of the mind can arrive at manifesting a certain initiative and autonomy of action. 
CHAPTER III - The organizing psychic force may also bring to life secondary personalities endowed with an autonomous existence of their own
1.	Here we shall review what can be defined as provoked secondary personalities: for example, provoked by means of hypnosis or the creation of a character by a writer or, lastly, the interpretation of an actor.
2.   Honoré de Balzac and Papa Goriot: how a writer can identify himself with one of his characters to the point – in a certain sense – of transforming himself into that character. 
3.	Rudolph Valentino: how an actor interpreting a certain character can get into its skin to the point of becoming its medium. 
4.	Saint Genesius: how a comic actor of ancient Rome became a a Christian and martyr of the faith by playing the part of a Christian. 
5.	The character created by an author, as also the one interpreted by an actor and the one with which a hypnotized subject identifies himself and in a certain way transforms himself, are mental creations or thought-forms liable to acquire an ever greater vitality and autonomous consistency. 
6.	My own "Cynthia" is a good example of how the protagonist of a comedy can acquire such autonomous consistency as to manifest itself in a mediumistic seance, expressing itself as a person who has a character, a will and opinions of her own. 
7.   In "Father Christmas", our other case, we have a psychic creation, this time a collective one, capable of similarly manifesting itself in the course of a mediumistic experiment. 
8.	The well known case of "Philip" concerns a collective mental creation once again capable of manifesting itself in the same manner. 
9.	The case of Alexandra David-Neel’s "tulpa" is that of an autonomous personage created by means of special psychic techniques elaborated in Tibet, a personage that not only behaves in an autonomous manner with consequences that are not always pleasant, but also proves capable of appearing to third parties. 

CHAPTER IV - In what sense UFO phenomena have to be interpreted as mental creations capable of attaining a certain physical consistency
1.	The so-called UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) seem in substance reducible to collective mental creations. 
2.	Such an interpretation seems convalidated by testimonies describing facts that, if considered real, would seem unlikely and appear capable of being interpreted as contents of hypnotically induced subjective experiences or as the result of experiences of impact with psychic formations. 
3.	This interpretation has to be compared with the research results of "ufologists" (i. e, those who study the associated phenomena scientifically) and the experiments of the "contactists" (i. e, those who profess a faith in their nature of extraterrestrial vehicles). 
4.   When observed with attention, the UFOs seem highly evanescent and phantomatic mental realities, but also capable of materializing to various extents and attaining a rather solid consistency. 
5.	This materializable mental nature of the UFOs is confirmed by an examination of the size that UFOs assume, as also of their colours, movements, speeds and their apparent occupants. 
6.	The interpretation here proposed is confirmed by an examination of the effects produced by the UFOs at both the psychic and the physical level. 
7.	The UFO phenomenon conceived in the aforesaid terms may also be placed in some relationship with the phenomenon of the "crop circles". 
8.	The interpretation that has been given of the UFO phenomenon as a mental creation provides us also with the key for interpreting the damage attributed to these mysterious objects and also certain presumed disappearances due to dematerialization. 
9.   The accounts of "abductions" collected as a general rule by means of hypnotic regressions hardly confirm the extraterrestrial reality of UFOs. 
10.   The mental character that has been attributed to the UFOs enables us to interpret the USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects) in a similar manner, and to interpret many legends of "monsters" in seas, lakes, plains and mountains in the light of whatever sensible phenomena may express themselves in their appearance. 
1.   The interpretation so far proposed gives us a key for sieving certain similarly paranormal phenomena that we find both in the Bible and in various sacred scriptures and chronicles of other times. 
12.   UFO phenomena prove to be regulated by an intrinsic intelligence that confers consistency, dynamism and autonomy on the phenomena, though of a level such as to make it impossible for them to differ greatly from each other and condemns them to a monotonous, sterile and inconclusive repetitiveness. 

CHAPTER V - How the organizing psychic force can act on matter from the outside
1.	There are thought-forms capable of producing effects also on the physical level and even healings: they do so in an indirect manner by first influencing the psyche of the other subject to whom there belongs the physical body on which the physical effect is to be produced. 
2.	But thought-forms can produce physical effects also by acting in a direct manner on matter: this is what happens in psychokinetic phenomena. 
3.	The forms of psychokinesis realized in poltergeists are at the unconscious level. 
4.	Other forms of psychokinesis are those that seemingly are employed not only in "black magic", but also in its "white" counterpart of a beneficial character.
5.	It seems that the emission of thought-forms and the corresponding mental energies that produce physical and therapeutic effects can also be photographed with Kirlian’s apparatus. 

CHAPTER VI - How the organizing psychic force can arrive at materializing on its own account
1.	When a congruous emission of mental energy assumes a compact and solid consistency, it can give rise to true materializations of which a first degree is represented by the incomplete materializations. 
2.	There are also complete materializations like the ones obtained with the mediumism of Kate Fox, Florence Cook, Elisabeth d’Espérance and also Mrs. Hollis, Eva Carrière, Linda Gazzera and in a certain way even Eusapia Paladino. 
3.	 How the process of materialization is described in the testimonies of Geley, Richet and Felicia Scatcherd and also in the report of a participant in the mediumistic seances of Elisabeth D’Espérance. 

CHAPTER VII - How the external action of the psychic force and its materialization can be lived in subjective interiority
1.	 The action of the organizing psychic force can be intimately lived in astral projection and bilocation experiences. 
2.	How the psychic "double" sees itself in astral projections and experiences its coming out of the body. 
3.	How the double sees the astral realities, how it creates new ones and how it acts on them to transform them. 
4.   How the double sees the physical realities. 
5.	How the double moves and passes through walls and carries with it objects that it dematerialises and then rematerializes elsewhere and, lastly, acts on matter with psychokinetic phenomena and on the bodies of other people with healings. 
6.	The phenomena of astral projection become verifiable also by other subjects when they give rise to apparitions. 
7.	There is analogy and continuity between out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences (both attested by living subjects) and also between these and the experiences of death and of life after death (attested by the personalities of presumed deceased who are supposed to come to communicate in mediumistic seances). 
8.  An example of this analogy and continuity can be found by  comparing the near-death experience of Dr. Wiltse and the experience of passage to the other dimension of the self-styled entity Felicia Scatcherd. 
9.  What a dying person attests regarding his own visions receives confirmation from what can be glimpsed by a seer present at the deathbed. 
10. In out-of-body and near-death experiences the subject still incarnate on this earth lives in the first person and with the greatest possible evidence the creativity of the psyche, which nevertheless attains its maximum expression in the other dimension: a reality that is wholly and solely mental and where ideoplasty reigns supreme. 

CHAPTER VIII - How the psychic force can know things directly by identification and participation
1.	The psychic force can act directly not only on psychic realities, but also on physical ones and can know these in a similarly direct and immediate (though inevitably imperfect) manner by means of telepathy and clairvoyance.
2.  How the psychic force can know reality directly by means of clairvoyance in the present.
3.  How the psychic force can know other people’s thoughts, lived experiences and frames of mind by means of telepathy. 
4.  A "psychometric object" can help the extrasensorial perception experience and its place can be taken by many different actions. 
5.  There is also a clairvoyance in the past and a clairvoyance in the future: and both are facilitated by the use of a psychometric object. 
6. Telepathy and clairvoyance are forms of knowledge due to identification. 
7.   Telepathy and clairvoyance are forms of participative knowledge. 
8.   Telepathy and clairvoyance are forms of symbolic knowledge.

CHAPTER IX - The philosophical and theological conclusions that can be drawn from this analysis
1.   The mechanistic postulate on which the edifice of modern science of Galilean imprint seems to be founded is in actual fact a conventional assumption: put in other terms, it is no more than a watchword.
2. As Emile Boutroux observes, when passing from the logical, mathematical and mechanical sciences to the physico-chemical, biological and psychological ones, the effect seems ever less capable of being reduced to the cause and ever more contingent and eventually wholly indeterminate, autonomous and free: and one thus passes from a mechanistic vision to one that can be defined in more finalistic terms.
3.  In our own days John Eccles criticizes the determinism of many neurophysiologists, noting the autonomy of conscious phenomena from the corresponding neuronic mechanisms and affirming the independence of the mind from the brain, though it nevertheless interacts with it.
4.  Henri Bergson criticizes both radical mechanicism and radical finalism and notes that in its progress to ever more evolved forms life seems to be guided by a kind of intuition and creates not piece by piece (as would a craftsman) but rather by acts of "organization", each global and moulding something as a whole.
5.   The knowledge and action of the psychic force find their supreme paradigm in the knowing and acting of God.

Chapter  I

DEEP WITHIN THE PHYSICAL BODY OF EACH LIVING PERSON A PSYCHIC FORCE ORGANIZES MATTER AND AT TIMES TRANSFORMS IT

1.	The phenomena of life 
      seem to be promoted and regulated 
      by an autonomous and creative 
      psychic principle of which
      the action can be defined as "ideoplasty": 
      an idea moulds matter 
      in a direct and immediate manner.
	
	One may assert that every phenomenon of life is underlain by an ideoplasty. What does that mean?
	Historically, the first to speak of ideoplasty was Durand de Gros in 1860, who used the term to signify what seems to be the essential character of suggestionability: impression of ideas by hypnosis on a well prepared field. Rather different is the meaning that Ochorowitz attributed to the term in 1884, when he called ideoplasty "the physiological realization of an idea".
	To give the concept its most ample development, it is as well to bear in mind that ideoplasty is a term made up of two Greek words; éidos, image idea, and plàssein, to mould.
	Hence: the idea moulds matter. It gives form and structure to it. It forms it in a direct and immediate manner. Not like an artisan, who formulates a project and then procures the necessary tools for himself, eventually proceeding with a series of partial acts, each one of which prepares the next.
Nothing of all this, but "said and done": rather "thought and done"!
In the limit, the idea creates matter: it brings it into being from nothing, as it were. It is what happens in the processes of materialization.
Before the phenomenon of materialization was studied by the parapsychologists of our own days, it was studied (and also far better) by the metapsychists of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth.
When this phenomenon arrives at its fullest implementation, we are faced with an extraordinary, incredible and yet well ascertained fact. In the course of a mediumistic seance, though not beyond the limits of its duration, from the physical body of the medium there emerges a fluid, a gelatinous and at times slightly luminous substance that to the touch communicates a sensation sometimes of cold, at times also of viscosity or of a filamentous substance similar to a spider’s web. This substance, which at first seems as if evanescent, can acquire ever greater consistency and eventually bring into being a phantom, i. e, a complete human form: and not only complete, but warm, vital, palpitating like the body of a human being very much alive.
It is a human form that at times even speaks and replies to questions. And one can not only touch it, but also note that it expires carbon dioxide when it breathes. And it can be photographed.
Plaster casts may be made, its fingerprints can be taken and may be found to be perfectly equal to those the deceased had in life. The cast remains closed, because the hand dematerializes within it. And in the end the entire character dematerializes, but not before having left the signs, the evidence that in certain cases renders possible a true and full identification.
The maximum is what I have just described; but there is also an entire range of weaker, partial and imperfect exteriorizations. And, in any case, there is a moulding action that the psyche already performs within the body. And it already connotes itself as Ideoplasty. To all appearances, the phenomena of life are promoted and regulated by an active, creative and autonomous psychic force.
Man seems to be a psychic being par excellence; but a certain psychicness, though of a different level, can be found also in animals, while a careful consideration of the way of being of plants induces various scholars to speak of psychicness also in relation to the vegetal world.
According to this more extended conception of psychicness, this psychic force can be conceived as something that, albeit to different degrees, underlies the life of plants, animals and man, organizing all that is physical in them, though without identifying itself with the physical. Inasmuch as it is clearly distinguished from the physical, the psychic principle may even live by itself and, consequently, can survive the disintegration of the body, as we shall see at the proper time and place.
In all this ambit the reality of a psychic force that organizes the life phenomena no longer seems a reality to be supposed, deduced or inferred, but a fact of experience.

2.	Sensitivity, psychicness 
      and a form of ideoplastic action 
      seem already to be present in plants

Similarly to animals, though in a different and more elementary manner, even plants prove to have a psychicness. First of all, we may note that even plants are sensitive. And we may also note that, even though they lack sense organs similar to those of animals and men, plants seem capable of extrasensorial experiences, more specifically of a form of telepathy. In ways that are peculiar to them, they also prove to have an emotivity. This has been demonstrated by the experiments of Clive Backster.
In 1996 this American researcher thought of applying a lie detector to a plant. A lie detector is an electrode polygraph capable of measuring by means of the oscillations of a needle the variations of humidity and therefore the different amount of sweat that will generally be emitted by a liar for fear of being discovered.
In a vase (flower pot) in which there had been planted a dracaena, he set out to check whether and to what extent the water rose from the roots to the leaves of the plant as he altered the electrical resistance of the epidermis in accordance with greater sweating. On that occasion he discovered that the oscillations of the needle seemed similar to those that reveal the emotivity of human beings.
He wanted to test this emotivity by burning a leaf with a match. But he noted that, even before he translated this intention into practice, the mere formulation of this thought proved sufficient to cause a leap of the lie detector needle of the kind that could express a motion of anxiety and fear.
	He found that something similar happened when a person who had destroyed other plants or intended to destroy them entered the room where the dracaena was standing. 
Another experiment that yielded positive results is the one I am about to describe. Backster placed three plants in three different rooms of the laboratory, the plants being respectively connected to three lie detectors in a fourth room, each capable of signalling the "emotive" state of its plant. In a fifth room, well separated and distant from the three plants, he set up a mortal device capable of suppressing the life of a certain number of unfortunate shrimps. The instantaneous killing was to take place at a precise moment determined at random by another device situated in a sixth room. Very well, every time the shrimps were killed, there occurred what we might call an "emotive" reaction of the plants signalled by the oscillations of the needles (see Backster’s article in the bibliography)
One has to say here that other researchers and scholars strongly criticized Cleve Backster. As Ugo Déttore notes, these criticisms "greatly reduce the trustworthiness" of these results, "and yet they do not seem to be decisive" for reasons that he explains very well, though it is not necessary for us to consider them here (D., 1978-79, pp.   926-927).
With the help of my wife Bettina and occasionally also with that of others, I have personally	carried out experiments in which I applied to plants the fingers of two subjects in place of the electrodes in the endeavour of establishing a kind of mediumistic contact. At least apparently, the experiment produced	some results. This seems to be due to the fact that at least one of the two human channels was endowed with some mediumism valid for communications of telewriting, vulgo dicta "letter board and glass". Having established apparent contact with the plant, the two subjects could also cease to touch it and limit themselves to touching the glass, each with two fingers. Very well, it seems probable that on these occasions there came to be formed a kind of composite "entity" made up of the psychicness of the plant associated with the psychicness of the subjects. This more integrated and comprehensive entity undoubtedly had something of us, namely something human, something of our language and our culture.
It was decidedly this human contribution that enabled the plant to dialogue with us, be it even in an elementary form. Discourses of... plants, if we want to call them such: certainly not literary or scientific debates or high-level politics!
To the question "Who are you?", the plant replied (always provided that this is a licit form of expression) by tracing on the letter board a somewhat schematic outline of its form and principal ramifications. And then it replied "yes" and "no" to questions like "Do you like being caressed, being mollycoddled? Do you like this tickling? Do you want water? Do you like? Do you want more? Do you want more light?" The glass receives psychic energy from the two subjects, but moves on its own initiative, in a manner that is not only autonomous, but also unexpected.
Other movements of the glass can be a going round in circles, which in our conventional language expresses contentment. Or a repeated passage from a square of the board to the one immediately below it to express the idea "My leaves have fallen or are falling" (possibly the leaves at that specific point of the ramification). Or, again, the passage of the glass over the points of the previously determined schematic drawing of the plant (see above) to indicate that the plant feels a sense of pleasure on account of the fact that those points are being bathed and refreshed.
	Above all when the operating subjects are two persons who have "green fingers", as it is usually put, the greater feeling that unites them with the plant renders possible a greater merging with it and the formation of a more integrated common composite entity. That is why the plant (or, better, the composite entity that has come to be temporarily formed between the plant and the acting human subjects) gives "responses" that are more articulated, more human, more nourished by the human culture of the subjects.
In this case the question "Do you like it?", formulated after having provided a little water for the roots, may elicit the response "It rouses me". Similarly, the question "How do you like being looked after?" once obtained the answer: "Left firm".
Another example may be drawn from a similar experiment in which the two acting subjects were again two green-fingered persons (with the result of a greater merging, etc., as already explained). A little water was poured on the roots of the plant and it replied "Bath". More water was poured on the leaves and the plant begged "Little". Pouring more water on the soil that covered the roots, we obtained the expression: "Yes... water good". The answer to the question "Do you have enough water?" was: "Now blissful".
The plant does not seem to suffer when a dry branch is cut off with the scissors: quite the contrary, it seems to be happy, an emotion expressed with the usual circular motion of the glass. But it reacted very differently when we tore off a branch or a leaf: the glass kept turning in the "no" box with growing impetus; the human subjects who had their fingers on it felt it live and palpitating, and in a certain way felt its burning, excruciating, unsustainable pain.
Two green-fingered subjects had undoubtedly established a good relationship with the plant. Hidden in a distant room, I then ordered one of them to tear off a leaf. The plant’s reaction expressed both pain: "Oh!" and surprise; "Why?".
At this point, always on my suggestion formulated on the spur of the moment, one of them asked: "Who are we?". The answer: "Danger". Counter reply (admittedly a little hypocritical): "For you?" Unequivocal response of the plant: "Yes".
As can be seen, it is more reasonable to conclude that the responses that we summarily attribute to the plants are in actual fact filtered by us human subjects involved in the mediumistic communication. It is as well to insist on this point, on the mediation of this human factor, and one can never do this sufficiently.
I must nevertheless insist also – and above all – on the fact that vital instances of the plant are expressed through the  mediation of our human psychology, culture and language: what is expressed are the needs of the plant, but – inasmuch as these are the needs of live being – capable in their own particular way of emotivity, desire, enjoyment, trepidation, fear and suffering. And likewise capable, as we shall soon see, of participation in the sufferings of other beings.
We have already noted that Backster’s plants felt something like a sense of trepidation and fear in the presence of people who had maltreated other plants. And something very similar happened also in our own experiments.
Let me here quote a passage from my article "Mediumistic experiments with plants" (from which, moreover, I have also drawn the other information so far given in this connection): "The plants are usually very cordial with us, if not altogether tender and affectionate, real warm-hearted 'affection seekers'. But the attitude that Gianni’s plant reserved for Annamaria was in very strange contrast with this".
Let me explain myself better: our friend Gianni was the donor of the plant; Annamaria is another friend of ours, who found herself experimenting as acting subject together with a second  friend, Olga, while my wife and I had gone two rooms further away in order not to influence to any great extent the experiment in which we had participated until a few moments previously.
To resume the citation: "Since she [Annamaria] is a particularly good, generous and pleasant person, I asked myself what could possibly explain that she was evidently being 'rejected' by the plant.
Clarification of the mystery: "After having reflected about it, Annamaria herself offered me a key to explain the situation. She keeps many plants on a terrace at home and has always looked after them with love. In the last two years, however, she had lacked the time to do this properly. She had therefore often left them without water, causing them considerable suffering".
Now, "it is probable that Gianni’s plant grasped the suffering of many sister plants by a kind of telepathy similar to the one noted in the famous experiments that Cleve Backster has been carrying out ever since 1966" (Liverziani, 1993).
Now that I have spoken about our mediumistic experiments with plants, which were undoubtedly far less scientific than those of a Backster, I am breaking out into a cold sweat as I think of the things that Backster’s critics would say about us, always provided that they had the time, will and condescension to take even a minimum of interest in our work.
I have no pretence whatsoever of giving rigorous scientific demonstrations in the sense of being one hundred percent exact, unchallengeable, definitive, such as to gain the assent that is due to a geometric theorem.
We are still at the level of intuitions, which can be true and fecund and, at least for the moment, sufficient for orienting our thought while waiting for the more objective proofs that are perhaps to come, or perhaps can never be given with the rigour I spoke about, at least in certain more delicate research sectors.

3.	On the other hand 
      psychicness and ideoplastic action	
      are more generally expressed 
      in all living beings
	
	Every time we tried to establish a mediumistic communication with a plant, its psychicness was revealed by means of movements of the glass.
	I remember that with a particular plant we carried out an experiment that took the form of a series of "seances" at intervals of forty-eight hours, so that the complete experiment lasted for more than a week. It was probably due to our clumsiness and lack of "green fingers", but unfortunately the plant died at the end. In the last few days its way of manifesting itself had become ever weaker, while the glass moved with ever greater difficulty, so much so that in the end it no longer moved at all.
	Even plucked flowers, just like dead flowers, do not respond. I am sorry for those in love who delight in giving to their beloved plucked flowers detached from the plant or directly from the roots. According to my results, a bunch of flowers is nothing other than a bundle of little vegetal corpses: somewhat macabre, but that’s how it is!.
	In short, the plant responds and reacts inasmuch as in it there is a soul, a psyche, a fluid (you may call it by whatever name you prefer) that can also come to lack. When it comes to lack, the vital biological phenomena cease and there remain only purely physical and chemical phenomena. There comes to lack the syntropy, the finalism, there remains the entropy, pure causality, pure determinism. The living being becomes transformed into a corpse. Of the live animal there remains only the carrion on its way to decomposition. The live plant withers. One and the other have by now become reduced to non-living beings, devoid of vital phenomena and therefore subject to mere physical and chemical phenomena.
	In that case, we do not know what happens to the vital-psychic principle of the plant, whether it dissolves immediately or survives. Everything suggests that the human psychic principle survives at least temporarily when it abandons the physical body. The same may be said of the vital-psychic principle of animals.
	A book by Ernesto Bozzano bearing the significant title Gli animali hanno un'anima? – Do animals have a soul? (B., 1952a) provides us with a vast and complex phenomenology that in many respects seems similar to the metapsychic phenomenology of man. It was found, for example, that – just like man – many superior animals (like cats and dogs) are agents and perceivers of telepathy phenomena: they not only appear and, in any case, manifest themselves to other animals and persons, but also perceive their telepathic messages. And they also have presentiments and premonitions of things that will happen, of dangers that hover over them. In short, it seems that they can also have extra-sensorial experiences. It seem that they can see and, in any case, perceive the presence of human phantoms. What is more, it seems that many phantoms of dead animals have been recognized and identified.
	Closing this parenthesis, let us now try to see what distinguishes a living being from a non-living being, or one that is not longer alive. I would aay that a living being distinguishes itself from non-living ones thanks to its threefold capacity of reacting, growing, being reproduced.	
	The reactions of a living being may be of a simple nature: for example, the pupil may restrict in case of excessive light, the mouth will fill with saliva at the moment of eating or even upon the simple sight or perception of the odour of food. The reactions may also be of a more complex nature. Man has the most complex reactions: reactions that can gradually accentuate their voluntary character and become configured in an ever less foreseeable manner.
	An object made of matter can likewise arrive at possessing a  structure, even a very complex one. But its reaction will always remain qualitatively very different from the reaction of a living being. In the introduction to his biology treatise entitled Living beings, the British biologist Richard Palmer proposed the following parable: An engineer once invented a toy that was endowed with the capacity of following a light in a dark room. This engineer could have done more, rendering the toy sensitive also to sound and touch. And yet, not even in that case could it have been called live (P., p.   5).
	The distinction between non-living and living beings is better clarified by noting the other two distinctive characteristics of the latter. Apart from being capable of reactivity inasmuch as they are sensitive in their own particular manner, all living beings, plants included, grow and reproduce themselves.
	What does growing mean? It is the capacity of transforming parts of the surrounding world, food, into substances forming part of them. Growing is not only an increase in size, but – in a wider sense – it is also the capacity of compensating the losses suffered due to use and wear of the body (unless, be it clear, these are not excessive and overwhelming).
	This "growing" includes nourishing oneself: a nourishment that, in its turn, comprises respiration and circulation. What follows refers particularly to animals, but, given appropriate variations, can apply to every living being. Nutrition, as Palmer explains, consists essentially of the sum of the work of the digestive, respiratory and circulatory processes, by virtue of which the substances introduced as food, of widely differing tastes and compositions, are broken down into their fundamental constituents; these are absorbed, transported and eventually used by our organism according to their quality.
	Very broadly, the foodstuffs are distinguished into body builders and energizers; the former, proteins for example, serve for the formation or the reconstitution of living substances; the latter, sugars and fats for example, are 'burnt' by means of the oxygen introduced by respiration and produce energy, the energy we need to perform our vital functions (P., Note on p. 26).
	Contending with each other for a place in the sun, can grow in height in an indefinite manner, Animals grow until they reach the size of adult age, and not beyond. But even when the animal has attained its definitive size, the compensation capacity continues to subsist. 
	Let me give some examples. Injuries heal in both animals and man and a layer of skin is reconstituted. Broken bones grow together again. The organism is sustained by foods and transforms them into skin, bone, muscles and everything else that forms part of it. For their part, plants assimilate carbon dioxide from air and water and salts from the soil.
	And there is reproduction, which at a certain level of evolution takes place by means of two types of fecundation: of a female gamete by a male gamete in plants; of an egg by a spermatozoon in animals. Inanimate beings can, at the very most, produce something, but never reproduce themselves. Machines can produce other and different machines, but never machines similar to themselves. 
	Growing is a very complicated process that employs the various apparatuses, systems, organs, tissues, cells, molecules, atoms for a common purpose. Here there is an evident work of organization. Wherever there is organization, one presumes that there is a subject who organizes by means of a conscious activity.
	In the absence of such a conscious subject, one would have to infer at least the presence of a corresponding principle, no less active, psychic, ideoplastic – that performs the work of organization at the subliminal level, at a level of unawareness. At least one organizing principle has to be there. We cannot content ourselves with explaining the phenomena of life with pure causality devoid of finalism (finality), brought about by mere random chance.
	This principle of organization, to which the entire phenomenology of life would seem to be entrusted, commits itself to an even more complex task when one passes from nutrition to reproduction: when organisms already supercomplicated in themselves have to bring into being similar organisms.
	Here creativity increasingly takes the place of the mechanism. >From something that exists only in germ, an elementary sketch, there issues something that is definite in a full and perfect manner in the sophisticated multiplicity of all its articulations and functions. Here we no longer have the mere transformation of the pre-existing, but implementation of the new. And even though the new being is generated by a male and female double-factor, it has a life that in a certain way is original, to a certain extent autonomous, autarchic, self-sufficient.
	But for as long as a living being reproduces itself without changing its structure, its creativity seems more limited. However, it tends to issue from its limits; and whenever it succeeds in freeing itself from the imprisonment of the conditionings that oblige it to remain there, it seeks new roads.
	Thus, little by little, the living being evolves. It gradually modifies its structure and perfects it. In the course of long eras of the history of our planet, a living species may modify itself even in a radical manner, so much as to give rise to a distinct and ever more different species.
	In L’evoluzione biologica e l’origine dell’uomo (Biological evolution and the origin of man), Piero Leopardi notes that we find ourselves face to face with two possible hypotheses: that of the old fixism, according to which all the species appeared simultaneously, inasmuch as they were created by God, each with its particular and unalterable characteristics; and that of evolutionism, according to which the living organisms appeared in different epochs, first the lower ones and then, gradually generated from them in the course of a long and gradual transformation process, the higher ones.
	Leonardi observes that in nature there are organisms that persist unchanged and others that change, that evolve. Passing in review the various hypotheses formulated to explain evolution, he highlights not only the limits of the external factors (influence of the environment, as held by Lamarck, and everything that is implied by the need of surviving in the struggle for life, as held by Darwin), but also underscores the importance of the factors inherent in the evolving organism. Evolution is a limited process that seems to have been rapid at the beginning, but then slowed down.
	Leonardi then recalls the hypothesis of Naegli, who introduced the concept of ideoplasm into the theory of evolution. As far as Naegli is concerned, evolution of organisms is the visible manifestation of the invisible evolution of the ideoplasm, principle inherent in each being that makes it realize itself in its own unique manner and tends and tends towards a gradual perfectioning (cfr. L., pp. 73-78 and elsewhere).
	Likewise related to internal factors are the orthogenesis of Eimer and the mutationism of De Vries, who holds that mutations take place in a sudden rather than a gradual manner. The hypotheses of those who stress the internal factors of evolution do not always receive the immediate comfort of the data that have so far emerged. They nevertheless seem to be suggestive and significant as a direction-pointing idea that seeks to take account of the totality of the phenomena.
	An overall vision may induce one think that a charge, an internal spring may be present in evolution: a "life drive", as it is called by Bergson (whose thought we shall consider in detail in the final chapter).
	It is a life drive that spreads to urge the evolution of individuals and species. It is a life drive that does not always succeed in finding its road and often remains imprisoned in the situations in which it is incarnated and operates. Nevertheless, it is a unitary impulse that drives the entire creation forward, be it even through difficulties and obstacles, through the meanders of involutions and backward steps, in the long travail of cosmic becoming.
	Leonardi recalls the phenomenon of mimicry, and considers it to be an important example of an action that, in order to safeguard the animal against a continuous peril for its life, has to take place in an immediate and total manner. If mimicry were to take place partially and by degrees, it would not have any effect: the defenceless animal would immediately fall prey to whoever wants to eat it (L., pp. 75-76).
	Consideration of all this autonomous, creative, ideoplastic activity that tends towards ever more complex and perfected forms confirms that deep within each living being there must be a vital principle of a psychic nature. It is a psychicness of which one can note the active presence in plants by virtue of experiments like those of Cleve Backster or, in a less scientific, though in my opinion no less valid and significant manner also on the basis of "mediumistic" experiments of the type carried out by ourselves.
	The reality of a psychic force inherent in each individual plant can therefore be both encountered live and argued (i. e, inferred by means of reasoning). This twofold approach is even more practicable in the case of animals, with whom it is possible to establish an empathy - or, as we might even call it, a kind of communion – and this becomes all the better the more we rise along the evolutionary ladder.
	With the superior animals it is even possible to establish a friendship.    One discovers that they are capable of sensations and sentiments similar to our own. With other human beings the communion relationship can become full.
	Thus, the while we "feel" the psychicness of a particular being (no matter what it might be), we can also obtain confirmation of the truthfulness of our perception and intuition by means of a rational verification procedure.
	The more data it brings out in support of our hypothesis, the more convincing will be a rational verification of this kind. The next paragraph will propose a series of such data concerning both animals in general and man.
	I am certain that both this paragraph and the ones that follow, dedicated to human phenomena, will be more than convincing in the sense just indicated. I think that the active presence of a psychic principle is destined to appear ever more evident as one gradually rises along the evolutional ladder and as one passes equally gradually from the phenomena of the vegetal kingdom to those of the animal kingdom, to the specifically human phenomena and the paranormal and paramystic ones.

4.	An ideoplastic action reveals itself 
      in a particular manner in animals 
      and in a very particular manner 
      in human beings
	
	A well known book, written in collaboration by Edmond Duchâtel and René Warcollier, illustrates a wide range of psychic phenomena that demonstrate the plastic (moulding?) force of the psychic principle in animals, in the human body and outside thereof.
	The two authors designate what we have called "psychic principle" or "psychic force" with the term "will": a word that, obviously, is to be understood in the widest sense, seeing that such a will operates substantially at the unconscious level.
	Indeed, the volume bears the title I miracoli della volontà (The miracles of the will). In the preface to the Italian edition the authors refer to a volume by Ernesto Bozzano, Pensiero e volontà forze plasticizzanti e organizzanti (Thought and will, moulding and organizing forces). They clearly take their cue from the themes of this book by the Italian metapsychist, themes already clearly indicated by the title. They are themes into which Duchâtel and Warcollier delve further, integrating and developing them in a very appropriate, original and, as I should like to add, undoubtedly genial manner.
	Ideas and information can be drawn from a vast and variously articulated literature; but it seems to me that the two mentioned books lend themselves to a particular utilization for the purposes of our present research.
	From the book by Duchâtel and Warcollier I shall borrow, first of all, a general scheme that the two authors break down into three parts bearing the following titles: 1) The moulding force of the will in animals; 2) The moulding force of the will in the human body: 3) the moulding force of the will outside the human body.
	The two authors note that among animals mimicry is a widely diffused manner of expression of the plastic force of the will. Here is a series of examples. The spider-crab of the French coasts adapts to the colour of the environment by forming for itself a dress in the proper sense of the term. The Mesonauta insignis, a small fish found in South America, rapidly changes colour in a total manner. The chameleon fish seems to paint its own body (D. and W., ch. 1).
	To these data provided by Duchâtel and Warcollier there can be added others drawn from Trattato di parpsicologia (Treatise of parapsychology) by René Sudre. This author notes that some butterflies of the family oxidia imitate dead leaves. Some Indian mantids imitate flowers. The Kallimas butterflies of South America imitate certain rust-spotted or gnawed leaves. A certain type of sea horse assumes the appearance of a fistful of seaweeds.
	Sudre speaks of homochromy, i. e, the fact that some animals can assume the same colour as the environment, as a first and more limited attempt at mimicry. Thus, insects are blackish in both arid lands and industrial areas. There are even acridiae that cover themselves with green strips when the first germs break ground. Certain molluscs that live on sponges are yellow and red. Shoal fish are invisible; and, more generally, many animals that live in the sea render themselves invisible by means of a certain transparency.
	It is impossible to explain the phenomenon of mimicry with simple chemical variations. Moreover, when one seeks a mechanicist or physico-chemical explanation of the development of new organs, one remains wholly disarmed. How can one explain the origin and evolution of a complex organ like the eye? How can one explain the mutation into a wing of a limb intended for walking?
	One is obliged to conclude, as Sudre does, that "the new organ responds to an idea that is itself the consequence of a need; the need of seeing, the need of flying. None of these organs could have created itself by successive improvements; they were undoubtedly made on one occasion only to respond to their function; or, if they were made gradually, they were the result of a plan like the work of an artisan" (S., p. 378; cfr. also pp. 31 and 377).
	Side by side with mimicry, one must here recall also the reconstruction of a part of the body. In the volume entitled Il vitalismo – Storia e dottrina (Vitalism – History and doctrine), Hans Driesch reviews the regeneration phenomena that he considers particularly significant.
	When an earthworm or a freshwater worm, like the naida, is cut in two at any point of its length, it regenerates the anterior part by growing forward, including the cerebral ganglion (Driesch, pp. 279-280). When tubularia, a three to five centimetre long hydropolypus in the form of a tube with a little head of slightly larger size with tentacles, is separated from its head, it completely regenerates it, often within eighteen hours (D., pp. 281-284). 
	When one amputates the gill pouch of a clavellina, a one or two centimetre long sea squirt living in colonies, it regenerates it in three or four days. The gill pouch, in its turn, transforms itself into a new sea squirt, minute but perfect, in the course of a few weeks. Even the individual pieces into which a gill pouch may have been divided, no matter how small, behave in exactly the same way (D., p. 285-290).
	Duchâtel and Warcollier produce two very significant examples. Crustaceans will regenerate their amputated legs. Lizards re-form their tail, but with an important difference: the caudal vertebra are replaced by purely cartilaginous substances that never attain the nature of bone, and not even its solidity. (D. and W., ch. II).
	One may note that, on the one hand, each cell in a certain way has an individual and autonomous life of its own, while, on the other hand, these lives become coordinated into a collective life that is their synthesis. The regulatory and animating principle is a psychism that we may call general or overall or integrated. The collective life that derives therefrom can be defined as not so much the sum, but rather the product of the individual lives and the respective actions and movements.
	This is true also of an organ (made up as it is of cells), and also applies to an organism (made up as it is of organs, apparatuses, systems), and is valid also for colonies formed by the association of individual living beings. Each element has a psyche of its own: and the association of several elementary psychisms (organisms or organs or cells as the case may be) gives rise to a polypsychism. Every complex can therefore be defined as polypsychic or polyzooic.
	Polypsychists are the philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Joseph-Pierre Durand (also known as Duran de Gros), whom the metapsychist William Mackenzie recalls before expounding the hypothesis he formulates in this connection.
	For Durand the human organism is a compound of simple organisms, each of which has a distinct soul of its own and is in a certain sense complete within itself. This can explain the apparent autonomy of many unconscious psychic phenomena with respect to the totality of the individual.
	For his part, Mackenzie prefers to conclude: "I note the undeniable polyzooic (and therefore polypsychic) character of the organisms: and I think that, similarly, some of these organisms, spatially united in a more or less contiguous manner, can in their turn give rise in particular cases to an organism that is 'superior' and polyzooic (and therefore polypsychic) with respect to any one of them (M., pp. 277-278).
	Mackenzie recalls the unicellular algae, which are capable of living isolated or in association with each other in colonies. When it is formed, this colony seems an equally complete and perfect organism, though profoundly different from the first (M., pp. 278-279).
	The same author mentions various species of algae (flagellae and diatomae) of which the colonies perform movements altogether different from those of the individual organisms living by themselves (pp. 278-283).
	Here it will be helpful to come back to Duchâtel and Warcollier. In the chapter following the one in which we left them, the two co-authors pass on to noting the character of the moulding force of the will prior to the formation of the embryo. When a pure-bred female (a mare or a bitch, for example) copulates with a male of a different race, not only the first birth will be a bastard, but also subsequent births will tend to be polluted by bastardy: one may say, as the two authors conclude in this connection, "that in developing the foetus, the functional memory of the mother has so great an importance as to succeed", as in a particular case mentioned by them, "in balancing the influence of the second male, seeing that the offspring of the second birth resemble the first inseminator" (D. and W., p. 46 and, more generally, ch. III).
	Sudre reports the case of a cat of Nice, attested by a veterinary and other trustworthy persons. In 1921 this cat put into the world a kitten that bore the four figures of that year in black hair on the white hair of its belly. How can this be explained? During the pregnancy, the cat had passed many hours in lying in wait for mice she could not see, because they were hidden in a sack on which this date was printed. Three stars had been designed above the number and these, too, appeared in the fur of the kitten in the form of three dots.
	Here is the author’s comment: "This phenomenon can be explained no more than the one of the grasshopper whose wings reproduce leaves. At the very most, one can say that the former was a kind of individual lusus (i. e, a joke) and that the latter was conserved in the species because it had a protective function" (Sudre, p. 378).
	Moreover, even in the human species, the first marriage can exert an influence on the offspring had from the second. Duchâtel and Warcollier consider this in the fourth chapter of their book, which is dedicated to the moulding forces of the will in the human body.
	Among others, they speak not only of the so-called "cravings" that the mother has during the pregnancy, but also of any impression she may suffer during this period. Among the cited examples there is the one of a woman who remained so struck by the blue hands of a wool dyer as to give birth to a baby with hands of the same colour.
	The next chapter (the fifth) of the book is dedicated to the moulding force that the will exerts on the human body after birth. Here they mention cases of dermographism like the one that follows. A small child was playing with the rolling-shutter of the fireplace, which eventually detached itself from its chain and nearly guillotined the imprudent youngster. The mother pulled him away and saved him, but on her neck there appeared an erythematous ring that a doctor could still see several hours later.
	Enrico Carreras dedicated a small volume entitled Le impressione materne (Maternal impressions) to an "experimental study of the psychic genesis of some 'cravings' and monstrosities". There are some truly frightening phenomena among the thirty-nine cases collected by the author. The impression that the mother receives from the accustomed sight of a female beggar with a mere stub of an arm, or the famous mutilated statue of Pasquino in Rome, makes her give birth in the first case to a baby girl without a forearm, and in the second to another baby girl with only stubs of the arms and the legs (C., pp. 32-33). Repeated sight of a certain animal provoked the birth of a male baby conformed in a manner that recalled the beast in an impressive manner (pp. 23, 29 and 30). These are limit cases of a long series of "cravings" that recall, as it were, many different "originals". Here we have a further confirmation that, especially at the level of the subconscious, the creativity of the psyche in moulding the tissues of the body is seemingly without limits.

5.	Ideoplastic action expresses itself 
      especially in the processes 
      of cicatrization and regeneration of tissues 
      and more exceptionally 
      in prodigious healings
	
	We can once more return to Duchâtel and Warcollier to note that they dedicate their sixth chapter to the influence exerted by the moulding force of the will on the human body in the case of illness. The moulding and even organizing function of this force seems confirmed by the processes of cicatrization, regeneration of tissues, healing by suggestion or self-suggestion, and even the healings said to be miraculous.
	Here we have a range of complex phenomena that cannot be treated, not even summarily, in the limited space available and I shall therefore limit myself to just a few rapid notes. Even the smallest cicatrization implies the regeneration of epithelial tissue.
	When a tissue that no longer exists has to be replaced by a tissue of a different nature, one may note that the transplanted extraneous tissue becomes transformed in such a manner as to lose its original characteristics and acquire the characteristics that the substituted tissue had before, when it was still intact. Thus a piece of peritoneum became transmuted into an aorta fragment, a vein become artery.
	A parallel with the animal world is suggested by some data that I found cited in Bergson’s Creative Evolution. When the crystalline of a newt is extirpated, it is regenerated by the iris. It should be noted that whereas the crystalline is constituted at the expense of the ectoderm, the iris is of ectodermic origin. When the same thing is done to a maculate salamander, the crystalline will be regenerated at the expense of the upper part of the iris; but when this is likewise suppressed, the regeneration takes shape in the internal or retinal layer of the remaining region (cfr. B., 1966, p. 76).
	We saw that the action of a psychic principle is attested by the tissue cicatrization and regeneration processes. Here one has to add that the intimate secret action receives a very particular confirmation, and this in the strongest sense, from miraculous or, in any case, prodigious healings.
	Duchâtel and Warcollier report three exemplary cases of "miraculous" healings that happened in an almost instantaneous manner. The first concerns a fracture of the tibia and the fibula with a gangrenous ulcer. The second concerns lesion and paralysis of the lower limbs (following an accident) with ulcers deemed to be incurable. And, lastly, there is the case of a woman suffering from purulent ulcers of a tuberculous nature both on the face and on a leg (D. and W., pp. 88-95).
	The two authors define the first fact as the most extraordinary of all three. And they note that it is so well documented as to leave not even the least doubt. The miracle happened in a "cave of Lourdes" reconstructed with a large church around it at Oostaker, near Gand in Belgium,
	Pierre Derudder, a peasant who lived at Jabbeke, in Western Flanders, where he broke his leg in 1867 due to the fall of a large tree trunk. It caused him the fracture of the tibia and the fibula just below the knee. There formed a gangrenous ulcer with bone fragments floating in the pus. Another ulcer had formed on the back of the foot. The doctors agreed in declaring the case to be incurable. Pierre was obliged to remain in bed for an entire year, suffering most atrocious pains. When he eventually got up, he could barely walk even with the help of crutches. Pierre eventually decided to have himself taken by train to that new Lourdes. As soon as he got there, he drank a little water and then, notwithstanding great pain and difficulty, made two complete rounds of the cave. He started a third, but did not succeed in going any further. He therefore sat down in front of the image of the Virgin. He asked pardon for all his sins and implored the grace of healing in order to be able to maintain both his wife and their children.
	Suddenly, overwhelmed by commotion, he got up and, walking without crutches, passed the long lines of pilgrims to go to kneel down in front of the image. It was as if he were outside himself and only somewhat later did he realize that he had walked and then knelt down and now could move quite readily and without pain.
	An accurate examination showed that the legs were now of the same length and that both legs and feet had re-acquired their normal volume. The ulcerations had become cicatrized and the bones well knitted together. The complete healing was ascertained also by two medical men, Doctors Affenaer and Van Hoestenberghe, who had repeatedly operated Pierre. Pierre lived in the best of health, tilling the land for many years, and eventually died at seventy-five years of age.
	Marcel Magnin relates that the autopsy, performed by Dr. Hoesterberghe himself, showed that the signs of the double fracture could clearly be seen. And comments as follows: As regards the length of the bones, measured on a photograph, it was found to be less in the case of the healed leg. This difference, when measured on the two bones, seemed to me to be about one centimetre. But had they taken the precaution of placing both bones at exactly the same distance from the objective? It would also have been important to compare the feet in order to be able to affirm that there was not only welding of the bones, but also creation of matter or, rather, materialization" (cited by D. and W., pp. 91-92.

6.	Ideoplastic action is also attested 
      by the effects obtained by means 
      of suggestion and hypnosis
	
	It will be helpful to commence this paragraph with two more cases reported by Duchâtel and Warcollier (ch. VI). As far as suggestion is concerned, they mention a case of chronic  rheumatism with articular lesions. Here it was suggested to the human subject that he would no longer have felt any pain when he moved his joints. And it was this suggestion that enabled him to fully re-activate his paralyzed members.
	The second of the two cases concerns a woman who had swallowed a pin. The doctor hypnotized the subject, suggesting to her even that she would have been capable of "seeing" the exact location of the foreign body within her organism. Thus, always by means of hypnotic suggestion, the doctor could command the muscle movements that made it possible for the pin to be gradually expelled.
	Hypnosis has a wide field of application. One of its pioneers was Franz Mesmer towards the end of the eighteenth century. He spoke of an animal magnetism and made it depend on the action of a fluid that emerged from the physical body of a "magnetizer" and passed into and healed the magnetized subject.
	The term hypnosis was adopted for the first time in 1842 by James Braid, a British medical man. He denied the reality of the fluid and reduced hypnosis to a pure modification of the state of the subject. He hypnotized his subjects by inducing them to fix a point of light.
	Following a long eclipse, it was the merit of Charles Richet that hypnosis returned to being an object of study of official science in 1875. Important contributions were made by Jean-Martin Charcot, a great neuropathologist. He deemed "great hypnotism" to be closely related with hysteria, characterizing it as a pathological state.
	Hyppolyte Bernheim of the University of Nancy later put this approach aside. He stressed that hypnotism was not by any means a pathological fact, and that almost all human subjects can be hypnotized. The subsequent greater insight into hypnotism and its relationship with the paranormal is bound up with the names of Pierre Janet, Frederic Myers, Julian Ochorowicz and Ivan Pavlov, to say nothing about more recent developments.
	Limiting ourselves to the more essential points, we can say that hypnotism is a lucid form of sleep provoked or self-provoked by means of a dissociation of the personality. Certain zones of the brain are depressed or made to sleep in order to exalt others. Everything that connects the subject with the external world, everything that can induce him to make any kind of comparison or critique, is suspended and left in the shade. Attention thus comes to be concentrated in an exclusive manner on the intuitive and emotive-affective part of the personality, which is the one it is desired to reach in order to modify the manner of being of the personality as such.
	Certain forms of hypnosis cause superficial and temporary changes. For example, the hypnotist may suggest to the subject that he is a cyclist engaged in a race, whereupon the subject, sitting astride a chair, will begin to pedal furiously. But when the hypnosis comes to an end, he returns to being exactly as he was before and will even be unaware of the show he has given if he has received the post-hypnotic command of not remembering.
	There are, however, commands and suggestions that the subject will not obey if he is inhibited by the education he has received, by particularly deeply rooted mental habits or considerations of an ethical nature. A hypnotic command to commit a bad action is very unlikely to be followed.
	Hypnosis has been successfully used also for anaesthesia. And it has been employed a great deal for curing psychic disturbances and, more generally, remodelling the personality.
	But the fact is that many psychic conflicts are so deeply rooted that hypnosis, at the very best, succeeds only in eliminating their symptoms. To all intents and purposes that is why Freud passed from hypnosis to psychoanalysis. Unlike hypnosis, which would leave the inhibiting barriers unaltered, psychoanalysis by itself opens the road to a more far-reaching awareness. This does not prevent other schools from appropriately and effectively associating psychoanalysis and hypnotism.
	Hypnosis is supplemented by self-hypnosis in a wide range of self-suggestive procedures, among which autogenous training merits special mention.
	The subject wants to heal a disturbance, emancipate himself of a vice, live more relaxed and serenely, or wants to increase his concentration and application to obtain better results in study or various other performances. He knows that he has to make a certain discourse to himself, though not only such as to convince his intellect at the level of the most lucid consciousness, but rather to have effects at the unconscious level on the emotive-affective part. Only this can assure him a certain control of himself, a certain self-dominion.
	It is however essential that he should learn to speak to the emotive part in an appropriate manner. An intellectualist discourse is of little help at this level, no matter how correct it might be. Emotivity is playful. The unconscious is a child. A child both in the sense of immaturity and in the sense of the sublime evangelical infancy that opens the kingdom of heaven to us. The emotive, affective, intuitive roots of the personality seem to be far more sensitive to a discourse that stimulates the imagination and appeals to feelings, to the "heart" and the "reasons of the heart", to poetry, music and every form of art, every attitude of believing, loving, imitating, obeying, entrusting oneself, fantasizing, dreaming.
	It is therefore useful to have recourse to images or music, or to poems or lullabies, which in some way are also musical. The subject will propose to himself visualizations of suggestive scenes in which he appears involved in the first person. Or, in addition to this, he will mentally repeat a phrase made up of two verses combined in phase with his breathing rhythm: the first with his inspiration, the second with his expiration. It is as well that the two verses should give rise to a rhythm and therefore rhyme with each other or, at least, produce the effect of a quasi-rhyme, an assonance.
	In what we may call a more lay ambit, autogenous training is connected with the ancient prayer that is mentally recited in eastern Christianity. It consists of two verses (Lord Jesus Christ / have mercy on me) that are to be mentally repeated without cease, once again not only in phase with the breathing rhythm, but also with the heartbeat. The aim is to realize the idea of praying without intermission and eventually to transform the man into living prayer.
	This ideal of continuously repeated prayer, which assures a condition of permanent contact with the divine, is pursued also in many other spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. There, just as in Christianity, use is made of the rosary, which is different in form but in all cases keeps the believer bound to prayer and the mere seeing it and touching it provokes a kind of conditioned reflex of a special nature, not concerned with corporeal food, but with its spiritual counterpart. A religious man thus enters into a state of devout concentration in an absolutely spontaneous manner. Spiritual man is engaged in a work of transformation of his own personality at every level. And at a certain point he clearly realizes that this transformation remains imperfect and precarious unless he involves the emotive roots of the personality that come to the surface, emerging from the profound terrain of the unconscious.
	Yoga, for example, is particularly aware of the need for involving the unconscious. Mircea Eliade comments in this connection that Yoga discovered the importance of the unconscious long before psychoanalysis and undoubtedly considered this aspect far more thoroughly.
	And it is precisely in the dynamism of the unconscious that this Hindu discipline sees "the most serious obstacle that the Yogin has to overcome" (Eliade, p. 55). Because it is from the unconscious that there emerge the "vortices" or "whirlpools" or "tumults" that inhibit the unification of consciousness, that hinder the suppression of his habitual "states" and therefore his liberation.
	Thus, "unlike Samkhya, Yoga sustains that the simple abolition of metaphysical ignorance is not sufficient to obtain the total destruction of the states of consciousness. And this because, even if the actual 'tumults' were annulled, others would immediately replace them, emerging from the immense reserves of latencies buried in the subconscious" (E., p. 52).
	Eliade goes on as follows: "Unlike psychoanalysis, Yoga retains that the subconscious can be dominated by ascesis and even conquered by means of the technique of unification of the states of consciousness". The Rumanian scholar concludes that, all considered, it is "probable that Yoga is right even on this point and that the subconscious – no matter how paradoxical this may seem – can be known, mastered and conquered" (p. 56).
	In Western Christianity the need for involving the subconscious both by stimulating the imagination and praying at the rhythm of breathing was realized in a very particular manner by Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Here is the "first preamble" to a particular "exercise of meditation" taken from his Spiritual exercises: "…Visual composition of the place. Here one should note that in contemplation or visible meditation, like contemplating Christ Our Lord, who is visible, the composition will be seeing with the sight of the imagination the corporeal place where the thing it is desired to contemplate is to be found. I say the corporeal place, as would be a temple or a mountain, where Jesus Christ or Our Lady is to be found, according to what one wishes to contemplate. In the composition of the invisible, sins for example, the composition will be a seeing with the sight of the imagination and a considering that my soul is imprisoned in this corruptible body and that all the composed is in this valley as if relegated among brutish animals, I say all the composed of soul and body".
	And here is the manner in which the "dialogue" with the incarnated and crucified God is to take place: "Imagining Christ Our Lord in front of ourselves and nailed to the cross, make a dialogue on how he, as creator, came to make himself man and from eternal life came to suffer temporal death and thus die for my sins. Thus, looking at myself, what I have done for Christ, what I do for Christ, what I have to do for Christ, and thus discoursing with him while seeing him hoisted on the cross". 
	Rather horrifying, and I don’t know whether really edifying, but of considerable interest for the matter we are considering, is "the composition that here consists of seeing with the sight of the imagination the length, breadth and depth of the inferno". All five senses are mobilized for infusing a healthy terror capable of inducing the meditator to keep well away from sin (First week of the Spiritual exercises).
	So far we have seen the importance that Ignatius attributes to the contribution that the imagination can give to meditation to render it more surely fruitful of concrete results. Let us now see the importance he attributes for the same purpose to the contribution of the breathing rhythm in prayer. 
	There are, so he writes, three essential ways of praying. And "the third way of praying will be of rhythmic measure". And he illustrates and exemplifies this as follows: "The third way of praying is that one prays mentally with every pant or breath by saying one word of the Paternoster or another prayer, which one recites in such a way that just one word is said between one breath and the next and that, while there lasts the time between one breath and the next, one looks above all at the meaning of that word, or the person to whom one is praying, or the unworthiness of oneself, or the difference between this great loftiness and the great baseness of ourselves and then, using the same form and rule, proceeds with the other words of the Paternoster" (Second week).
	A spiritual man who works on his own subconscious – or also, more simply, the subject who practices self-hypnosis – does nothing other than throwing a kind of seed into his own profound nature. It is a seed of which he, as it were, fixes the coordinates: that is to say, he fixes the directions in which the seed will be able to develop and germinate as an autonomous reality, as an active principle capable of taking its own initiatives.
	In this manner the subject brings into being, deep within himself, at the profound and unconscious level, a kind of secondary personality. Or even a set of secondary personalities.
	A secondary personality can represent an element of disturbance, or also of help to the subject. There are cases in which a fixed idea grows like a tumour and comes to occupy ever greater space within the subject and brings about a scission deep within him, this to the point in which it emerges at the conscious level as an alternate personality. At a certain point, two or more personalities will thus alternate in the subject, possibly each with a different character, in many cases each unaware of the other or in conflict with it. Here we are evidently in the field of pathology.
	But there is also the case in which one or more secondary personalities are of help to the one that essentially constitutes the subject.
	We must not forget that in a certain respect the personality of a human subject is never monolithic. In the intimacy of the subject there is always a dialectic. This is confirmed even by Freudian psychoanalysis with the distinction it makes between Ego, Super-Ego and Es.
	Moreover, no introspection that is only barely watchful, no phenomenology that sets out to be but barely accurate could fail to notice the tendentially "colonial" character with which the various elements of a personality associate with each other. And their relationship is likewise unstable, they are often in conflict with each other. 
	The personality of each one of us is a kingdom with very autonomous provinces, if not with restless vassals, sometimes in conflict with the king to the point of rebellion, to the point of usurping the throne.
	The intimate dialectics of our human personality should not be denied, but rather controlled, so that each part, though acting in relative autonomy, will operate at the service of the whole.
	This explanation was necessary, not least to clarify in what sense we may draw benefit from an intimate work on ourselves intended to remodel, to reconstitute ourselves. And we know what conditioned reflexes are: anything we perceive with the senses (an image, a word, a sound, a flavour, an odour, a tactile impression) can provoke in us a certain spontaneous, almost automatic reaction. Now, there are negative reactions that worsen us, but also positive ones that improve us. This makes us understand that everything we do to create a positive conditioned reflex in us can undoubtedly help us, can undoubtedly promote the evolution of our personality.
	It is very important to sow these positive automatisms in ourselves and make them grow. It is very important to make grow deep within us everything that can stimulate good thoughts and strengthen good behaviours. Acting well and, even more so, thinking well must become ever more a good habit, a natural and spontaneous fact: even better, it must become our mode of being. A new mode of being that sees us transformed at all levels. In such a manner that good actions and good thoughts are no longer something that has to be pursued with an effort, but something well rooted and spontaneous.

7.	Ideoplastic action reveals itself 
      in a particularly clamorous manner 
      in the variety of paramystic phenomena 
      that we shall now review 
      distinguishing them from 
      the corresponding parapsychic phenomena: 
      we shall begin with dermographisms
	
	Dermographisms are a paramystic, truly spiritual phenomenon of which the ultimate origin is pneumatic, i. e, divine. Phenomena that move from this level have as their counterparts phenomena that express themselves in a similar manner, but move from a psychological level: i. e, from what we may call a purely human ambit. One may commence from these psychic and human expressions to give a first idea of a more comprehensive and complex phenomenon that, at the pneumatic level, at the paramystic level, assumes a far loftier and far vaster significance.
	As I was saying, if we want to give a first idea of what may be understood by dermographism, we may make reference to a particular research carried out by Eugéne Osty, director of the Institut Mètaphysique International in Paris. The subject he studied was the well known Olga Kahl.
	In the course of certain experiments there appeared on the skin of the arms or the chest of this lady signs and also numbers and words that corresponded to words and signs that were transmitted telepathically to her by another subject.
	Osty reports that Olga Kahl suddenly had the vision or, more rarely, the audition of what another subject had conceived with thought and, acting on impulse, immediately expressed by voice. At other times she would grasp a pen and write the word or the number or sketch its elementary form. 
	But these modes of expression could become supplemented by yet another that was wholly unknown and which Osty characterized as follows: "On her skin, at the points defined by the experimenters, there appeared under their eyes and in full light a dermographic inscription of a red colour. Words, drawings, numbers appeared there in very conspicuous red lines and for the duration of one minute (Osty, p. 41).
	Anna Maria Turi notes in this connection that the far more significant phenomenologies of the mystics and the saints, who express themselves with the word of blood, because they possess a spiritual aspect of an intense and explosive life, can certainly not be reduced to the limits of such a dermography". She adds that "in certain cases the blood is ink for a mind freed from the thoughts and interests of this world, as is demonstrated by the content of the messages sent by means of the body and its principal humour, and is demonstrated also by the freedom, the wealth and the creativity of the expressive forms" (Turi, 1995, p. 139).
	This observation is contained in a book that Anna Maria Turi dedicated to a well known living mystic and which bore the title Natuzza Evolo, la mistica di Paravati (Natuzza Evola, the mystic of Paravati). The fame of this Calabrian is bound up with a very complex paranormal phenomenology that springs from her intense life of prayer, visions and colloquies with the divine, prophecy, clairvoyance, bilocations, spiritual healings, stigmata and haemographies. 
	The stigmata of Natuzza Evola emerge because every Lent and Easter week she personally and dramatically re-lives the Passion of Jesus Christ with extreme suffering. In those days, side by side with the stigmata, Natuzza has the haemographies
	Doctor Isa Mantelli declares that she assisted Natuzza Evolo for two successive years (from 1979 to 1980) in her Good Friday suffering. She specifies that she personally saw sacred images or writings that recall Holy Scripture form on the sheet from the blood of the stigmata. And the same happens on the pillow when blood from the head drops onto it. One of these writings was: "Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who turn to you" (Turi, p. 95).
	Another witness relates that Natuzza placed a handkerchief on her right-hand wrist that was pouring with blood and kept it there for about ten minutes. At the end she gave it back. There was a shapeless spot of blood. Slowly, slowly this blood began to move, delineating figures and writings. An image emerged on the right of the handkerchief, somewhat vague at first, but then more and more clearly delineated, accompanied by the diction "Saint Valerian Martyr". The blood molecules moved by themselves under the eyes of those present. Natuzza asked those present whether it was a saint of the Church. In fact, she did not even know who he was. In particular, Saint Valerian was the Protector Saint of the person, not present, who had asked the witness to procure him one of Natuzza’s haemographs (ibid., p. 141).
	On some occasions when the blood moved by itself on the handkerchief, often placed on the table at a distance of several metres from Natuzza, the blood expanded in such a way as to create writings and figures (ibid., p. 151).
	We have been able to see ideoplasty in action in some way. Here I have anticipated something that belongs more properly to subsequent chapters of what I have to say. But now it will be helpful if, closing the parenthesis of certain hemographies, we pass from dermographisms to stigmata.

8.	We shall now pass on to considering the stigmata
	
	As regards the phenomenon of the stigmata, we have to consider above all those of Catholic religious men, from Saint Francis of Assisi to Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, and of course Natuzza Evolo, in the context of a spirituality that tends to re-evoke the Passion of Jesus Christ. The religious desires to re-live it in the first person in all its various moments: and at a certain point there appear the signs of the Passion and become impressed on the body of the subject, on the hands, the feet, the ribs, the back, the top of the head.
	Let us briefly recall the case of Saint Francis, true prototype of all the stigmatization phenomena that were subsequently to occur in the course of the centuries. On 14 September 1224, having fallen into ecstasy, he saw an angel who announced to him that he was to be crucified like Jesus Christ. Some time later several persons saw his hands and feet perforated by nails. He had a large wound on the right as if he had been struck by a lance and often sacred blood issued from this wound to stain his tunic. These wounds on the hands and the ribs were painful, but never festered.
	More than fifty friars, the virgin Clara and her sisters saw the sacred stigmata when the Saint died.
	What is the value of these testimonies?
	Charles Richet raises the objection that we are concerned with witnesses of medieval days. But then he answers it as follows: as De Vesme rightly notes, scientists of the twentieth century will seem equally medieval to scientists of the thirtieth century. It would be easy to cast doubt on the stigmata of Francis of Assisi and one would undoubtedly have to do this if in the history of the saints, as also among ordinary individuals, there were not an impressive number of similar phenomena (Richet, p. 144).
	I think that the same conclusion can be applied more or less to all the paramystic phenomena of the past, even when they are very remote, that we shall review in the course of this chapter.
	In the dynamics of the stigmata Marco Margnelli notes a trend similar to that of an epidemic: so that the phenomenon, moving from a limited breeding ground, like an illness that can be transmitted from one man to another, becomes slowly diffused towards the north and the south, reaches a numerical peak and then slowly ebbs away (Margnelli, p. 45).
	Margnelli adds that here we have a rather objective proof of the passage from mouth to mouth, from heart to heart, of a mystico-mental project that could be the antecedent of stigmatization (ibid., p. 51).
	For my part I should like to observe that here, too, we have a confirmation of the ideoplastic character of the stigmata. Another confirmation is provided by the fact that the stigmata of the hands are not located on the wrists (where in actual fact the condemned were nailed to the cross), but on the palms, in an improbable position where the nails could hardly have sustained the weight of the crucified. The hands would have tended to rip without succeeding in sustaining the entire body.
	But iconography insists on giving us the customary image, which the stigmatized thus attains from tradition, moulding his own stigmata in this selfsame manner.
	The first stigmatized of whom we have knowledge is Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1246). His experience and the signs associated with it lasted for about forty days, from August to September 1224. Tommaso of Celano, who saw the stigmata of Saint Francis, describes them as follows in his biography. The hands and the feet of Saint Francis were perforated by nails; the heads of the nails, round and black, were on the palm of the hands and on the top of the feet; the tips, somewhat long, appeared on the other side, were bent and surmounted the remainder of the flesh from which they issued (Acta Sanctorum, October, vol. II, p. 709; cited by Margnelli, p. 55, Note 16).
	One may note that here ideoplasty does not limit itself to giving different form to particular points of the body, but creates something new: the nails, in fact, which are not made of iron, but of outgrowing organic matter.
	In the appendix to her book Stigmate e stigmatizzati (Stigmata and stigmatized), Anna Maria Turi, the previously mentioned scholar of paramystic phenomenology, provides us with a list of the stigmatized of the Catholic Church taken from the work of Antoine Imbert-Gourbeyre and appropriately updated. The names arrive at almost four hundred. The ratio between men and women is one to five.
	Contrary to expectations, Saint Francis occupies only second place in this list and the long series is opened by Saint Lutgarda (1172-1246). Born in Brabant, Lutgarda affirmed that Christ had appeared to her and changed her heart for his. In the course of her ecstasy she was inundated by a sweat of blood that ran from her face and hands.
	Jumping from one epoch to another, we may here recall a few cases, each with different characteristics. The Blessed Lucia of Narni (1476-1544) bore the complete stigmata for seven years, until she humbly asked and obtained the grace of their disappearance, leaving a single wound on the ribs that could be hidden, even though it still kept bleeding after her death.
	Her stigmata emitted a sweet odour, just like the rest of her body, even after death, when they were conserved on her corpse. The stigmata of Saint Caterina de Ricci (1522-1589) shone with a light that at times became blinding.
	But there are also invisible stigmata, like those of the Sicilian Lucia Mangano (1896-1946) and the Portuguese Alexandrina Maria da Costa (1904-1955), consisting of an intensely suffered participation in the Passion of Jesus that nevertheless leaves no marks on the body.
	And then there are the stigmata that remain invisible for a certain duration of time: as happened in the case of Padre Pio from 1911 to their appearance, which took place in 1918, after which they remained stably visible and eventually disappeared after his death. Teresa Musco (1943-1976), from the province of Caserta, first had a simple participation in the sufferings of Jesus, then bruises destined to disappear after a short time, and eventually the clearly visible and stable stigmata (except those of the thorn crown and the flagellation, which appeared only during the ecstasy of the Passion and then disappeared again).
	Lastly, there are those who, like Maria Rosa Ferron, obtain that the visible stigmata disappear to leave in their place an intense participation in the sufferings of the Passion.
	At times there occurs also an epigraphic stigmatization, where the form of the wounds may vary: for example, the one that Barbara Pfister had on her chest had a form between a cross and a flower. This contributes to underscoring "the individuality and originality of each case of stigmatization" and also "the intervention of the individual fantasy of the stigmatized" (Margnelli, pp. 171 and 191). Which decidedly confirms their creativity in the ideoplastic sense.
	Saint Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727) described to her spiritual father the stigmata she carried inside her heart. With the help of two fellow sisters she made a kind of drawing that was given to the bishop, who signed and sealed it. Thirty-six hours after her death the stigmata of her limbs had disappeared without leaving any scars. But the partial autopsy of her heart (of which it was desired to leave the rest intact) it was found that he description had been correct. What was found were the plastic formations of a cross with the letter C and also the letters I and M, a crown of thorns, seven swords arranged in the manner of a fan, a lance, a sponge, a standard, and a sharply pointed nail.
	Margnelli gives us a table where he lists thirteen stigmatized person of various epochs from the 13th to the 18th century that present widely differing cases of internal plastic stigmatization of the heart. The objects vary from the crucifix to all the instruments of the Passion, the lance together with the sponge and the rosary, and other sacred figures (M., p. 29).
	The results of the autopsy of the heart of Saint Veronica were markedly similar to what had been found in the heart of Saint Clara of Montefalco (1275-11308): a crucifix formed of fibrous organic material, contained in a kind of niche of the same shape in the ventricular wall; and then the reproduction of the whip with which Jesus had been flogged.
	Anna Katharina Emmerich (1774-1824), a Westphalian, had on her chest a Y-shaped cross similar to the one that could be seen in a church where she often prayed.
	The Belgian Louise Lateau (1850-1883) lost large quantities of blood from her hand every time the stigmata opened, which happened punctually every Friday. She had this phenomenon at eighteen years of age and it continued regularly for the remaining fifteen years of her earthly existence. After bleeding for thirty hours, the wounds closed and in the following days became covered with a pink and compact skin. Louise was specially followed and studied.
	Similarly to Katharina Emmerich, in the case of Maria Domenica Lazzeri (1815-1848), "Lady of Sorrows of the Tyrol", the blood dropped along the body as it had done when Jesus was nailed vertically to the cross: since, stigmatized, she was lying in bed, it therefore dropped in a horizontal direction. This is a phenomenon also noted in the case of the Bavarian Barbara Pfister (1867-1909): the direction of the blood was always along the line of the body, no matter what position she might assume.
	In March 1923, Sister Elena Ajello (1895-1961), a Calabrian, had on her front the stigmata due to a thorn crown with blood that flowed abundantly from the pores without there being any wound in this area other than a tiny hole in the form of a triangle. On Good Friday, about twenty days later, Elena received the stigmata on the hands and feet. She was hypersensitive in the area of the stigmata, which was in marked contrast with an almost complete lack of sensitivity in all the other parts of the body, accompanied by a total loss of the sense of smell and partial loss of hearing.
	In addition to the classical five stigmata on the hands, the feet and the ribs, Teresa Neumann (1898-1962) of Konnersreuth (Palatinate) also had the signs of the flagellation on her back. Her stigmata bled every Good Friday, but presented themselves in attenuated form on all other Fridays.
	At the Salpetrière Hospital in Paris Charcot had occasion to study a very interesting subject for as many as twenty-two years: Madeleine, suffering from religious delirium, had ecstasies in the course of which she mimed the scenes of the Crucifixion and on every occasion had the five wounds of Christ on the following day. The phenomena occurred with emission of serum even under impermeable bandages that represented one of the means employed by Professor Charcot to prevent faking (Sudre, pp. 280-281).
	It is true that very many of the stigmatized also display hysterical phenomena: and this induces far too many scholars to define stigmatization as a pure fact of hysteria. For many years and decades, the Holy Office, probably badly counselled and influenced by the summary judgment given by Father Agostino Gemelli, considered even the stigmata of Padre Pio as a purely hysterical fact.
	Even though Marco Margnelli severely criticizes the cases of many stigmatized or presumed such, whom he considers to be affected by a conspicuous presence of hysterics, he formulates considerations in this connection that seem to me to be both balanced and open to proper conclusions. He observes that, seeing that hysterics dramatize their problems and "recite" their complaints with a view to "secondary advantages", it seemed logical to the ecclesiastic authorities to forbid Padre Pio having any kind of contact with people.
	But the erroneousness of this way of seeing things was clearly demonstrated fifty years later, when Padre Pio still passed ten to twelve hours in the confessional each day, supporting an authentic torture as "secondary advantage" of his exhibitionism.
	Margnelli notes that the cases of true hysteria have a very different evolution, while their mental state and the behaviour are recognized and avoided by all in the course of the years, whereas true stigmatized attract crowds. While the importance that hysterics attribute to their Ego ends up by disgusting relatives, friends and those who concern themselves with them, what most convinces in mystics is precisely the lack of all egoism. Paradoxically, those who amputate their Ego end up by having extraordinarily more impressive personalities than what can be created by any kind of earthly honour (M., p. 144).
	Margnelli further comments that the hysteria of the stigmata, if it is an illness, is an illness sui generis. Although they effectively lead the lives of infirm, the stigmatized display lucid and healthy minds and their conduct is very different from those who stand in need of psychiatric treatment (M., p. 207).
	The various hypotheses formulated to explain the phenomenon bring out the irreducibility of the authentically religious stigmata to mere facts of hysteria, self-suggestion, concentration of the imagination, to pure psychosomatic phenomena. If there were absolutely nothing to authorize us to go beyond the narrow ambit of these factors, we would have to consider the stigmata as nothing other than a pathological fact.
	Now, Anna Maria Turi suggests a very different perspective: the stigmata as aspect of a physiology of health. This is the title of the final paragraph of Stigmate e stigmatizzati, where the final note, which seem to me to be of particular interest, recalls a lecture given by Luigi Gedda in 1961. Sanctity is related more with the health of our body than with illness. Therefore, considered as a whole and in a wider framework, the practices and phenomenologies of religion are a window open to the Absolute. On the Absolute that – if I may take the liberty of adding – for man is health and salvation and supreme positive realization. Gedda concludes that, in truth, there is nothing greater or equivalent in the world (Turi, 1990, p. 156).
	At this point I should like to recall certain considerations of Gastone De Boni. Even though this author does show himself to be very sensitive to the mystic perspective, the considerations he makes on the parapsychologic-metapsychic level seem to me to be particularly interesting. 
	De Boni reviews the possible explanations of the stigmata and eventually opts for the metapsychic hypothesis: here, so he says, we have a phenomenon that is due to the power of thought that acts on the central nervous system and the system of vegetative life (De Boni, p. 68).
	He then notes that the phenomenon of the stigmata does not occur either among Protestants or among the Orthodox and explains this by the fact that neither of these believe in the supernatural origin of the fact.
	In this connection he recalls a case mentioned by Vesme. A Protestant lady who had mediated the Passion of Christ for a long time saw appear on her hands and feet stains of a roundish shape that began to bleed, almost as if they were a stigmatization process in the early phases. At this point, however, seeing that as a Protestant she was convinced that these phenomena had to be attributed to the sole concentration of her thought, she deviated her thought from this dangerous subject and the stigmata disappeared (ibid., p. 68). 
	De Boni recalls cases of burns that appeared on the hands of persons whom a hypnotist had made to believe that they had touched boiling liquids or red-hot substances (ibid.).
	In this connection he also recalls the phenomenon of conditioned reflexes. At a certain fixed hour of the day, Pavlov placed meat in front of a dog, inducing him to secrete gastric juice. However, since the presentation of the meat was associated with a sound, on subsequent occasions it was sufficient for Pavlov to produce that particular sound (without accompanying it with the exhibition of any food) to provoke the same salivation phenomenon in the dog.
	In the footsteps of Pavlov, Metalnikov injected rabbits with substances that immunized them against cholera, accompanying the injections with a sound or by scratching the back of the rabbits. On subsequent occasion that sound or the scratching were sufficient to immunize these animals again without there being any need for the injections (De Boni, p. 69).
	Conditioned reflexes can be produced also in man. Bechterev carried out the following experiment: passing electric current through the sole of the foot of a subject, he caused the foot to contract. But, since the current was associated with a sound, on subsequent occasion the sound was quite sufficient to cause the contraction (ibid.). 
	The Italian metapsychist concludes that, once it is demonstrated that an intense physical action of the organism can be produced by a psychic excitation, there is no need to be surprised that an idea or a vision or a monoideism can create stigmata. As in conditioned reflexes, a new super-physiological pathway is created – something that was admitted by Pavlov – and this would also explain the origin of the stigmata, for which the idea would make it possible little by little to channel the nervous influx to the centres of cutaneous irroration (De Boni, p. 70).
	Margnelli goes on to say that among all the hypotheses formulated to explain stigmatization there remains valid only the one according to which the stigmatized, "consciously desiring the wounds of Christ, 'succeed in producing them’ with prayer, love and emotion" (M., p. 221).
	To bring to an end this discussion of the stigmata, as also of dermographism, let us say once more, together with De Boni, that it is not the nervous system that gives origin to the phenomenon, but rather the idea that avails itself of the nervous system to realize itself (De B., p. 70).

9.	We can now pass on to considering incombustibility

	Hypnosis and self-hypnosis, suggestion and self-suggestion can facilitate the phenomenon of the stigmata. And it can likewise promote a series of phenomena that are commonly defined as paramystic. They can also render the individual insensitive to physical pain by anaesthetizing him. In some way they can even render him invulnerable. And, more particularly, they can render him incombustible. At least within the limits of certain conditions, an excessive heat will not cause him damage, nor will fire burn him.
	There are manifestations of fakirism like those of subjects who inflict impressive wounds on themselves of which there remain only negligible signs. Signs that in certain cases are similar to pure and simple bruises or marks that may remain on our skin when we tie ourselves tightly with a thin wire or rope (cfr. Duchâtel and Warcollier, pp. 62-66).
	As to the phenomenon of incombustibility, in particular, one may distinguish four categories of cases.
	There are persons who due to an unusual joke of nature are insensitive even to the most frightful heat.
	But there are others who, in the course of particular experiments where theyrealize a "state of consciousness" that can be defined as "altered", neither burn nor do they receive burns.
	Among these individuals there are some who seem to derive this gift from an intensely religious life. A high level of sanctity can involve an individual even on the physical plane, giving rise to paranormal phenomena, here called paramystic and attributed to the action of the divine Spirit. One of these is, in fact, incombustibility.
	Lastly, one should here mention walking on fire. This is practiced in a strongly religious spirit among many peoples in all parts of the world. Walking on fire is also practiced in what may be called a lay context by groups who are specially trained by instructors and prepared by means of practices of hypnotism and self-suggestion.
 	In his book entitled Of the physical phenomena of mysticism, Father Herbert Thurston gives an example of this latter case by recalling the conjurer Richardson, who held red-hot steel bars in his hand and kept in his mouth a mixture of hot wax and pitch with sulphur that he eventually swallowed (Th., p. 230). No burn was ever found on him or on a Negro from Maryland who for a long time had kept a burning paddle under the sole of his feet (p. 231).
	Another example of incombustibility is constituted by experiments carried out by William Crookes with the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home in 1871. As Crookes himself tells us, in the course of an experiment carried out on May 9 Home at a certain moment slumped down on a chair with his eyes closed and remained there immobile for several minutes. Then he got up in a trance and made signs that he wanted to be blindfolded, and this was done.
	He then started to walk around the room in an uncertain manner, speaking to all those present and making some comments to them. He then moved towards the candle placed on a little table (by the side of the large table) and passed his fingers several times through the flame at such a slow speed that in ordinary circumstances he would have suffered severe burns.
	He then raised his fingers and smiled as if he were content, took a batiste handkerchief belonging to Miss Douglas, wrapped it around his right hand and then moved towards the fireplace. When he arrived there, he took the blindfold off his eyes, picked up a burning piece of coal with the tongs and placed it on the handkerchief wrapped round his hand. While he carried it around the room, he asked that the candle on the table should be put out, then knelt down beside Miss W. F. and spoke to her in a low voice.
	Every now and again he blew on the piece of coal to make it become incandescent. Resuming his walk around the room, he then spoke to Miss Douglas and told her: "We have to make a small hole in the handkerchief, and this for a reason that you cannot see".
	He then put the piece of coal back in the fireplace and gave the handkerchief back to Miss Douglas. It had a hole of a diameter of about half an inch at the centre and by its side there were two small stains, but elsewhere it was completely unmarked. (Crookes took the handkerchief and examined it in his laboratory: it had not undergone any chemical process to render it incombustible).
	Home then approached the fireplace again and, after having rummaged among the coals with one of his hands, pulled out a red-hot piece about as large as an orange that he placed in his right hand, which he then covered with his left, so that the lump of coal was almost completely covered. He then began to blow into this small furnace until the piece of coal became incandescent. He then drew attention to the flame that flickered on his fingers. He then fell on his knees, looking upwards in a reverent attitude, raised the piece of coal in front of him and said: "Is God not good? Are his laws not wonderful?".
	Having returned to the fireplace, he took another piece of burning coal in his hand and, holding it high, said to Crookes: "Is this not a fine large piece, William? Now, I’ll bring it to you?". But he never did so. Home said: "The force is leaving me", went back to his chair and woke up, (Crookes, pp. 125-126).
	In his extensive and detailed study entitled D. D. Home the medium, George Zorab cites other testimonies about the incombustibility of this subject and, for comparison, also another regarding similar phenomena produced in 1877 by a certain Mrs Suydam (cfr. Z., pp. 244-256).
	A hypothesis formulated by Zorab to explain the phenomenon of incombustibility seems to be of special interest. By means of his power of materialization, the subject creates an insulating layer between the incandescent objects and whatever has to be protected, be it the actual body of the subject or what he wears or carries with him (ibid., pp. 253-254). I take the liberty of noting that here we are clearly concerned with a particular expression of the creative power of the psyche that the present treatise seeks to study.
	To offer at least one example of incombustibility as a paramystic phenomenon, let me cite Father Thurston once more (pp. 226-228) to recall Saint Francis of Paola, who not only showed himself to be insensitive and incombustible, but – as it would seem – also communicated this gift to other people present. Witnesses affirm that on a certain occasion he kept an incandescent horseshoe in his hand for a long time, on other occasions he handled burning pieces of carbon and exposed himself to fire and excessive heat without suffering any harm. Noting that the hands of the saint would not burn, several people reacquired the religious faith they had lost.
	As far as walking on fire is concerned, Father Thurston recalls experiments in Ceylon, Mysore and the Fiji Islands (Thurston, pp. 238-239). To consider but one of these three examples, namely an event that occurred in 1921-22, the Catholic Bishop of Mysore arrived at the place ahead of time to control all the preparations. A ditch had been dug to a depth of about thirty centimetres; it was three metres and ninety centimetres long and had a width of more than a metre and eighty. It was filled with charcoal to a depth of twenty-three centimetres. There was no doubt about the authenticity of the flames! About two hundred people passed over the embers and about a hundred went through the flames without the least damage, including an entire band of musicians complete with their instruments and music scores, which did not suffer even the least burn (Th., pp. 239-241).
	As attested by the bishop, Monsignor Despatures, the fire that consumed the charcoal and reduced to flames the cart-loads of palm leaves thrown into it was undoubtedly real, but it was a fire that had lost all power of harming those who passed over it and everything they carried with them (Th., p. 241).
	By way of summary integration of what has been said about fire walking, I should like to recall that it is practiced each year at Langadhà, in Greek Macedonia, on the days of Saint Helen and Saint Constantine: there for centuries the descendants of a certain ethnical group pass in procession over the fire carrying sacred images. Other expressions of ritual fire walking take place in Tahiti, the state of Chitral, and in Natal among the Hindu communities.
	We have relatively recent information about ritual fire walking practiced as a periodic custom on the occasion of particular festivities in the places just indicated.
	An annual celebration in honour of the god Murugan and his consort or paredra is held at Kataragama, in Sri Lanka, in an ecumenical context that is both Hindu and Buddhist (many participate in the rites of both religions). The people prepare for it by visiting the temples and abstaining from meat, alcohol and sex.
	There are valid testimonies of similar ceremonies that take place in Indonesia, more precisely at Bali. And also in Tahiti. Also at Singapore in the Hindu temple of the Mother Goddess.
	Fire walking is also reported in Burma, Malaysia, Japan, and also in Spain, Polynesia and particularly on the island of Baratonga in the Fiji Archipelago.
	In Greek Macedonia, Thrace and certain villages in Bulgaria ritual fire walking has been practiced since very remote epochs on the occasion of the religious feast of Constantine and his mother Helen. The Anastenarids walk on fire. It is a challenge to fire, symbol of evil. Here, once again, there is a long spiritual preparation that may last for an entire month, further strengthened by strict observance of certain ethical principles and abstention from sex and inappropriate foods. Before actually walking on the fire, the people dance together, sometimes for an entire day. At Langadhàthe the rite of the Astenarids has been studied for many years.
	I obtained interesting information in this connection from the American review PSI Research directed by our friend Larissa Vilenskaya, a well known scholar and medium of Russian origin, as  also a maestro of fire walking! In the two issues specified in the bibliography, Larissa Vilenskaya not only printed reports by scholars about the experiences I have just mentioned, but also describes her personal experiments and what she noted when she participated in those of American instructors like Tolly Burkan and Tony Robbins. Nowadays there is a goodly and growing number of fire walking instructors, especially in the United States.
	The idea of these instructors is to offer fire walking seminars for ordinary people. The practice of fire walking, or even the fact of having practiced it on a single occasion, is a source of extreme gratification. It is a school of courage and self-dominion. It implies overcoming fear and transforming it into power. It is therefore an experience of an extraordinary power that man may pursue: similar, for example, to the power of spiritual healing.
	As a general rule, the seminar consists of a preparation that lasts a certain number of hours. At the beginning the instructors seek to establish a climate of friendship, inviting each participant to come forward and explain what induced him to take part in the seminar. The question is then further discussed and analyzed in theoretical terms. Then all the participants join hands and sing together. In short, efforts are made to promote in each participant a new and different manner of seeing things and also to strengthen this idea and transmit it to the unconscious, so that it may become vitally absorbed by the entire personality of each subject.
	After having laid these foundations, the instructors seek to induce in those present a frame of mind of faith and great desire for carrying out the test, so that not exactly all, but many of them come to feel a sudden impulse to cross the fire. Obeying this interior command, they start walking in a state of consciousness that is certainly vigil, but also undoubtedly different from normal.
	In fact, only few of the participants show signs of burns or scaldings or even simple blisters or reddening of the feet after having taken several steps over embers at a temperature of 300-350°C. The great majority or quasi-totality of the appropriately prepared participants crosses the fire completely unharmed.
	How can this seemingly incredible phenomenon be explained? As a general rule, there is a tendency to attribute this success to the facts I am about to explain. To faith first of all: who doubts burns. To the form of trance or, in any case, the altered state of consciousness the subject has succeeded in attaining. To a collective energy provided by the group: which is further strengthened and concentrated by means of particular techniques. To the charism of those who guide the experience and their capacity of transmitting to others a power they have themselves acquired. To the subject’s capacity of seeing himself in imagination, and yet in a concrete and clear manner, walk over the fire safely and invulnerable.
	In the text summarized by Larissa Vilenskaya in the June 1985 issue of her review (pp. 59-60), Dennis Stillings, a scholar, suggests that in the course of certain experiments there are generated fields of electrostatic energy capable of creating, as it were, a kind of refreshing electrostatic wind. The same author deduces from this that in certain altered states the subject mentally produces strong electrostatic fields around his legs and feet and that these are capable of protecting them by refreshing the coals and embers.
	But even in this more reductive interpretation we find ourselves face to face with the mental creation of something different. In other words, we are always concerned with the transformation of matter by means of an idea. With ideoplasty, to put it in a single word.

10.   Levitation
	
	The medium Home is well known for an entire series of phenomena he was capable of producing. Ignoring the others, it will here be appropriate to base ourselves once more on Crookes’ testimony to recall that Home also excelled in levitation. 
	As Crookes attests, the most marvellous phenomena of levitation he ever witnessed are due to Home. On three different occasions Crookes saw him lift completely off the floor of the room: once while sitting in an armchair, once while kneeling on a stool, and once while standing on it. On each occasion Crookes was able to observe how the phenomenon took place.
	At least a hundred cases have been recorded in which Home lifted off the ground in the presence of several persons. Crookes heard from the lips of three of the witnesses of this wonderful phenomenon – the Count of Dunraven, Lord Lindsay and Captain Charles Wynne – all the minute details of what happened. He concluded that not to take account of these statements would be equivalent to denying all human testimony, because no fact of sacred or profane history is convalidated by better proof (Crookes, p. 91-92)
	The testimonies of these three eye witnesses relate to a memorable seance held in London on 13 December 1868. The report left us by the Count of Dunraven is critically examined by Zorab, who deems it valid and credible (Z., 1976, pp. 275-281).
	I could add my personal testimony about the levitation of the medium Demofilo Fidani, which I saw in the course of séances on three different occasions in 1985.
	The levitation phenomena we have so far talked about took place in the course of experimental seances where the atmosphere was undoubtedly religious; but this does not in any way imply that they do not have to be clearly distinguished from levitation phenomena closely connected with sanctity.
	The saint expresses in an even more physical manner his instance his instance of elevation to a transcendent sphere, which he represents to himself in the symbol of something that is up on high. This has to be said, first and foremost, to give an idea of the significance that levitation can have for the saint. In his mind the significance of aspiring to the high is lived in a most intense, ardent and tormenting manner.
	Another point is the one that can be expressed by the following question: Where is the source of the phenomenon? In other words, are we here concerned with a purely psychic, human phenomenon, or rather with something that springs from the very action of God’s Spirit? Hence: whereas the levitation of a Home or a Fidani seems capable of being likened to a phenomenon of a parapsychological nature, it seems that the levitation of a saint has to be defined rather as a paramystic phenomenon. It is a fact that assumes concrete shape through man, but derives from a transcendental first source.
	Levitation as a paramystic phenomenon is present also in traditions different from Christianity. In the Catholic Church it is bound up, among others, with the names of saints like Francis of Assisi, Domenico of Guzman, Filippo Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier and Teresa of Jesus. But the most clamorous example is that of Saint Giuseppe of Copertino. As Father Thurston notes, this is by far the most stupendous case of levitation within our memory (Thurston, p. 37). Of Saint Giuseppe there have been handed down to us accounts of levitations that are incredibly like flights in the truest sense of the term.
	In 1645 the Spanish ambassador to the pontifical court, Grand Admiral of Castile, passed through Assisi, where the saint happened to be at the time. He went to pay him a visit in his cell. The ambassador’s wife also expressed the desire to see him, and the guardian father therefore ordered him to go to the church below. As soon as he entered, the eyes of Saint Giuseppe came to rest on the statue of the Immaculate Virgin placed on the altar. He therefore launched himself in flight to embrace her feet at a distance of twelve steps, passing over the heads of all those present; after having remained for some time in adoration of the Queen of Heaven, he passed over their heads again, emitting his characteristic cry, and then immediately returned to his cell, leaving the Admiral appalled, his wife in a faint, and all the others terror-stricken (Pastrovicchi, Compendio della Vita del B. Giuseppe of Copertino – Compendium of the life of Saint Giuseppe of Copertino, Rome 1753; cited by Thurston, p. 39).   
	This episode, corroborated by the testimony of many of those present, is but one of the many that have come down to us. Anna Maria Turi’s book La levitazione (Levitation) can be consulted for further details in this connection.
11.   Lengthening of the body
	
	Lengthening of the body occurred during certain ecstasies of the Venerable Domenica dal Paradiso and Sister Veronica Laparelli (16th century) (cfr. Thurston, pp. 254-255 and 252).
	Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre attests the following phenomenon of the stigmatized Frenchwoman Marie Julie Jahenny, which she had pre-announced in the following terms: on Friday, 24 September 1880, she said that on the following Monday her body would have become compressed, her limbs would have shortened and her tongue would swell to extraordinary size in expiation of the sins committed by men the previous month.
	The doctor decided to be present at her ecstasy and so did five other distinguished persons, who included a priest. Afterwards he declared that when the ecstasy came over her, Marie Julie’s head seemed to contract into the body, while her shoulders projected above the head in a wholly abnormal manner. Then her whole body assumed a strange form, almost like a ball, while her tongue swelled in an incredible manner. Lastly, the right half of the trunk became excessively dilated, while the left half reduced to almost nothing. All this happened in a very short time, after which the woman resumed her usual proportions (Thurston, pp. 256-257)
	In a more "lay" context the body of the medium Home lengthened on several occasions in a state of trance, arriving from the normal 165 centimetres at 190-195 and even about 205. At other moments, again, it contracted to 150. There is no lack of authoritative testimonies regarding these elongation phenomena of the Scotch medium (cfr. Thurston, pp. 247-251; Zorab, 1976, pp. 256-258).	

12.Fire of love

	Incendium amoris, fire of love, is the unbearable heat to which mystics at times fall victim following their effusions. The young Saint Stanislav Kostka (1550-68) felt so aflame that he had to apply pieces of cloth bathed in cold water to his chest. Saint Filippo Neri, again, was so ablaze and his hands scorched as if he were running a high fever that they sometimes had to open the windows in the middle of the night and in full winter. His autopsy brought to light a tumour below the left ribs, almost certainly caused by two broken ribs that projected outwards.
	We can find something distantly similar in the psychic techniques used in Tibet, especially in the intense cold of winter, in the endeavour of increasing the body temperature: this is the so-called tumo, of which we have been given extensive accounts by Alexandra David-Neel, who lived for a long time on the Roof of the World, studying the population and their religion, as it were, from the inside (D.N., pp. 176-186).
	But the fire of love of the mystics is a very different thing, and also its spirit and motivation are very different. Writing to another priest, Padre Pio confessed: "I feel my heart and my insides absorbed by the flames of a great fire, so that they become ever more ablaze. These flames make the poor soul burst into weak sighs. And yet, who would believe it? At the same time the soul feels, together with the atrocious martyrdom caused it by these flames, an altogether excessive gentleness that lets everything become inspired by great love of God…
	"Do not believe, then, that it is the mere soul that participates in this martyrdom; the body also participates, be it even indirectly, to a very high degree".
	In another letter the saintly friar confided that in his cold, frozen body he "continuously feels that in it there is enclosed a heart that burns". Its beats are "very strong", so that "at times it seems to me that it actually wants to leave my chest".
	As Padre Pio writes elsewhere, inside him there is an "ever lit volcano that burns me and that Jesus put into this tiny heart. It all boils down to this: I am devoured by the love of God and my neighbour. For me God is always fixed in the mind and printed in the heart" (Alessandro da Ripabottoni, pp. 267-268).

13.   Luminosity and transfiguration
	
	By its very nature, light can be readily associated with heat. Here I shall briefly describe a few of the many examples that are documented not only in the previously mentioned book of Father Thurston (ch. 5), but also in Mistica and metapsichica (Mysticism and metapsychics) by Vittorino Vezzani (ch. 8 of part I): another book that is particularly precious on account of its innumerable and precise references to the paramystic phenomena of all kinds that are recalled in hagiography.
	Of some female Christian martyrs it is said that at a certain moment their body shone with such a blinding light that, on being stripped of their clothing, they could not be seen by anybody (Saint Barbara and Saint Prisca); and that, exposed to ignominy, no libertine to whom they were abandoned could approach them.
	Of the Blessed Egidio of Assisi, one of the first companions of Saint Francis, it is said that on one occasion at night there shone around him a light so strong as to wholly eclipse that of the moon.
	Saint Giovanni Colombini (14th century) knocked at the door of a hospice in the middle of the night and was admitted to the dormitory, where however, when he opened his tunic to lie down on it, his chest emitted such a strong light as to startle and wake up all the other sleepers.
	The cell of Saint Bertràn, a Spanish Dominican (16th century) appeared on one occasion as if the entire room were illuminated by the most powerful lamps. One day the Archbishop of Ragusa took the hand of Saint Filippo Neri (16th century) between his own to kiss it and saw it shine like the sun.
	Saint Bernardino Realino (16th century) emitted an extraordinary splendour while in ecstasy.
	Of Saint Tommaso of Cori, a Franciscan (18th century), known also for his levitations, some witnesses declared that on a dark morning the entire church became brightly illuminated on account of the splendour emitted by his person.
	The phenomenon, which at the mystic level obviously assumes a very particular significance, has counterparts also in many parapsychic phenomena and, more particularly, the luminosities that occur in the course of many mediumistic seances.
	The Book of Exodus (34, 29-35) recalls that the skin of the face of Moses shone after he had talked to God on Mount Sinai and he normally hid this from the people by veiling his face.
	Even the transfiguration of Jesus Christ on Mount Tabor can in some way be defined as a phenomenon of luminosity, While Jesus prayed, so Luke tells us, "his face assumed a different aspect" and, as Matthew adds "became transfigured" before the three apostles who accompanied him. And, as Matthew goes on, "his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light", According to Mark, rather, "his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them" (Mt 17, 1-13; Mk 9, 2-18; Lk 9, 28-36).
	The expression "his face assumed a different aspect" could also refer more or less to what happened to the risen Christ, when he manifested himself first to Magdalene at the empty tomb (Jn 20, 11-17; Mk 16, 9) and then to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24, 13-35); Mk 16, 12-13). His face had certainly changed expression and lineaments, so much so that he was not recognized either by Magdalene at first nor by the two disciples, notwithstanding the fact that he had talked with them for a long part of the way. In a more explicit manner, Mark tells us that Jesus "appeared in another form" to the two disciples.
	The resurrection body is something very different from the physical body that Jesus possessed while alive on the earth. Unlike the latter, which psychic force can mould only in a partial and relative manner, the resurrection body is characterized by a total, absolute mouldability. 
	It is however probable that the body of Jesus – just like those of many saints, mystics, yogins and ascetics of widely differing traditions – even during his earthly existence was more mouldable at the moments when he was in a state of altered consciousness, especially when he was about to perform a miracle. And this explains his capacity of making his face "assume another form" at the moment of the transfiguration on Mount Tabor.
	At this point one could establish an analogy, though in actual fact a rather improper one, with another phenomenon that is likewise referred to as a "transfiguration", though with a different significance. I am referring to what happens in the course of a mediumistic communication, when the face of the medium changes expression and at times even the voice and the lineaments, the wile to all appearances he impersonates a certain communicating entity that had this voice and these lineaments during earthly life. To this phenomenon Ernesto Bozzano dedicated an entire book that bears the title Dei fenomeni di trasfigurazione (Of the phenomena of transfiguration). The initial form appears when the medium in trance adopts the expression of the deceased by means of a simple adaptation of the facial muscles. A far more advanced stage comes about when there occur temporary modifications of the lineaments and even the vocal chords. 
	Here we find ourselves face to face with "phenomena of transfiguration" with obvious signs of "ectoplasmic concretions or corrections". This is the title of the chapter of the book dedicated to these more advanced manifestations. We can get a clearer idea of these manifestations by recalling some passages from the accounts of these seances.
	First example: to his great astonishment, a witness noted that the head and the face of Mrs. Barkel [the medium] had become totally changed or, better, had become replaced by the head and the face of a man (B., 1963, p. 43).
	Second example: Another medium, Madame Picquart, becomes radically transformed as soon as the trance is induced and, when the effigy is a man, beard and moustaches appear on her face (p. 47).
	As third example, let me recall some remarks by Maurice Barbanell, Director of the periodical Psychic News. He watched the transfiguration of the face of Mrs. Bullock for almost two hours due to the work of numerous entities of deceased...
	The spiritual guides spoke with male and female timbres of voice that were altogether different from that of the medium.
	Among the other entities, the late Mrs. Kitson expressed herself with the characteristic timbre of her voice, speaking in Yorkshire dialect.
	Then came the turn of Lord Molesworth, who received a communication from his deceased father. All those present could see the father’s face, most distinguished, complete with side-whiskers that during the transfiguration appeared on the medium’s face.
	Speaking of side-whiskers, the witness did not want to affirm that the beard was effectively there, but rather that there was a curious concentration of ectoplasm that became distributed on the sides of the face, thus imitating the whiskers, which from a certain distance seemed to be just like them. Be it clear that we are here still concerned with an imperfect materialization.
	For the purposes of what we are considering, here is the most curious and also particularly significant aspect of the report. The witness said that when the late William Stead (a famous researcher in this field) appeared to him and began to converse, his face was perfectly reproduced except for the fact that it was without the beard. He replied as follows to those who made him note this: "I did not think that you needed a similar detail to recognize me. However, just wait a moment". While he said this, his face became covered with the whole of the beard he wore while still alive (pp. 51-52).
	The transfiguration phenomena can take shape also on the faces of those present. A French experimenter, F. Stellet, speaks of a particular seance where globular lights of the size of a coin that began to err around the surface of the table while the medium was shaken by convulsions. At a certain moment those lights brushed first against the left arm, then against the face and eventually the right arm of a certain lady who sat to the right of Stellet. Thereafter the lights did likewise to another lady sitting by her side. Lastly, they posed themselves on the gentleman next in line, illuminating his entire head and remaining there. The witness adds that the gentleman, who was blonde and had a simple moustache, suddenly seemed dark-haired and adorned with a complete and carefully groomed black beard, with a yellow hat on his head and a black necktie different from his own. There followed several other transfigurations, each lasting for about ten to twenty seconds (cfr. pp. 79-83).
	Everything induces one to think that the various entities, assuming those globular shapes for the occasion, passed the various persons present in review to see which of them was most suitable for undergoing the transfiguration.
	Stellet’s conclusion fully confirms the assumption that, not least for myself, renders comprehensible not only transfiguration as such, but the entire range of the ideoplastic phenomena. The phenomena he had observed were the work of an organizing force ultra-rapid in action, similar to the one responsible for the materializations of independent phantoms. It is an organizing force directed by an invisible intelligence and for a precise purpose: that of enabling it to be recognized.
	Everything contributes to showing that this organizing force is one; in other words, the same force that organizes, constructs and circumscribes, albeit with slow rather than rapid processes, all the living beings during the gestation phase. And even this latter is directed by the idea. Only the process is different, because the process is tributary to the will of the spirit (pp. 84-85).

14.   Odour of sanctity and incorruption
	
	Odour of sanctity is the perfume that issues from the body of saintly persons even after their death and from their tomb. It has some counterparts in the fragrance that can sometimes be noted during mediumistic seances and also during those that seem to reveal the presence of an entity in the home where it had lived beside the beloved left behind on this earth. This phenomenon gives us an idea of how spirituality is associated with all agreeable things. And, at least as far as Christianity is concerned, we can make reference to the words of the apostle Paul: "For we are the aroma of Christ to God" (2 Cor 2, 15).
	We said that the odour may at times be emitted even after the death of a saint, from his corpse, expanding all around. But there may also be an absence of rigidity in that lifeless corpse. And then an immunity from its natural corruption. This immunity may even last for centuries. Naturally we here exclude the cases in which recourse was had to artificial means (embalming, drying, use of sealed metal coffins, and so on). A persistence of heat and blood flow may also occur in the corpse.
	Two well known examples should suffice here. The most recent and famous case is that of Padre Pio; and then, going back several centuries, another friar of the same order, Saint Giuseppe of Copertino.
	A characteristic odour of violets emanated at times from Padre Pio and announced his presence also in his bilocations. Another Capuchin father, Raffaele da Sant’Elia a Pianisi, who knew him well, attests that an altogether particular odour that emanated from the folds of his hands could at times be noted in the choir during divine office. The same perfume pervaded his cell on several occasions.
	One evening, after supper, while the entire community transferred from the refectory to the choir for thanksgiving, as soon as they had climbed the stairs and were in the corridor, Padre Pio, who had passed at that very time, left behind him a trail of perfume that inundated the entire corridor. It lasted for a few seconds and then no more (Alessandro da Ripabottoni, p. 274).
	A characteristic odour of sanctity was also the one that issued from the person, the habits and the cell of Saint Giuseppe of Copertino and then propagated throughout the convent, remaining even on the persons who had come close to him. He is famous, above all, for his levitations, as we already saw, but a whole range of widely differing paranormal phenomena can also be recalled in connection with his person. According to numerous credible testimonies, Saint Giuseppe demonstrated posseance of the gifts of telepathy and clairvoyance, but was also able to read in the hearts of people; he bilocated and healed people even when they were far away; he caused rain to fall and tempests to cease; and his body lengthened and became heated to the point of the incendium amoris and yet proved to be incombustible; his heart appeared to be slightly burnt to those who, after his death, sectioned the corpse to embalm it (cfr. Turi, 1977, Part II).

15.   Extreme fasting
	
	To the first of Satan’s three temptations in the desert ("If you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread"), Jesus replied: "It is written: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'" (Mt 4, 3-4; Deut 8, 3). The extremely long and at times perpetual and definitive fasts of many saints seem to be a comment in terms of lived life on this evangelical episode.
	Indeed, it would seem that Saint Ludovina (15th century) ate absolutely nothing for twenty-eight years, while the venerable Domenica dal Paradiso (16th century) did the same for twenty years, Saint Nicola of Flüe for nineteen, and the Blessed Elisabetta von Reute (15th century) for fifteen. In the nineteenth century Maria Domenica Lazzari and Louise Lateau fasted for a long series of years, nourishing themselves with nothing other than the Eucharist (Thurston, pp. 411-412).
	Louise Lateau, who came from a family of simple peasants and was also stigmatized, felt supreme disgust for any food or drink, and did not succeed in retaining anything other than the eucharistic bread. She would not retain even a host that had not been consecrated (pp. 420-423).
	Likewise in the nineteenth century, Sister Marie-Marthe Chambon, a Savoyan, who lived solely of the Eucharist from 1869 to 1873, offers us an example of the not infrequent case of a mystic committed to the normal life of a convent and even the heaviest work.
	In the twentieth century we may recall in a very particular way the case of Teresa Neumann (1898-1962), who always lived at Konnersreuth, a small village in Bavaria, She re-lived the Passion of Christ every Friday, with stigmata and tears of blood. In the course of her trance, she bore witness to the succession of the events of the Passion, with precise references to things about which she could not have known anything at all. Furthermore, she pronounced words and phrases in Aramaic that must have been wholly unknown to her and yet corresponded to the language spoken in Palestine at that time.
	But fasting is the phenomenon that, above all, has to be recalled at this point of our considerations. In the biographical book Teresa Neumann that Paola Giovetti dedicated to her, the author, concerning herself particularly with her relationship with the paranormal, writes as follows: "From Christmas 1926 onwards, Teresa felt a total repugnance for food and drink and abstained completely from nourishing herself. Only after her daily communion would she assume a few drops of water to facilitate the swallowing of the host; Father Naher [her parish priest] nevertheless testified that, as from September 1927 onwards, even these were no longer necessary. Thereafter, for almost thirty years, Teresa lived without either eating or drinking: communion was her sole and indispensable nourishment. Father Naber, who gave her communion each day until her death, noted in his Diary that Teresa affirmed to live 'of the Saviour'. And added: 'the word of God: My flesh is true food and my blood true drink came completely true in her'" (G., p. 27; cfr. Richet, pp. 141-143).
	To complete the picture of Teresa Neumann’s fasting with a curiosity not devoid of significance, Paola Giovetti recalls that when food was rationed during the Second World War and in the post-war period until 1948, Teresa Neumann did not even have a ration card, though she was granted a double ration of detergents to wash the linen she soiled with blood each Friday (p. 32).
	Side by side with cases of fasting as a paramystic phenomenon, Father Thurston mentions also other cases of a very different nature: "fasts due to natural causes" lasting for months and even years that to all appearances have nothing that could be defined in supernatural terms (Th., pp. 425-430).

16.   Sleeplessness

	The Gospel also contains more than one invitation to keep vigil, almost like guards on duty, in expectation of the advent of the kingdom (Mt 24, 42-44; 25, 1-13; Mk 13, 33-37; 14, 37-42; Lk 12, 35-46; 22, 45-46). 
	Vittorino Vezzani observes that in all religious life based on ascesis for sanctity one can note a constant tendency to reduce the physiological need for sleep to gain time in favour of vocal and mental prayer.
	Let me mention a series of particularly clamorous cases. Saint Macarius of Alexandria passed twenty days and nights without sleeping, eventually desisting in order not to fall into delirium. Saint Colette sometimes conceded to sleep a bare hour a week; according to her biographer, rather, she resisted without sleeping for an entire year. The Blessed Lidwina is said to have slept only the equivalent of three nights in a whole year. Saint Peter of Alcantara slept only an hour and a half a night for forty years; and said that at the beginning there was no penitence he had found more difficult. Saint Rosa of Lima restricted sleep to two hours per night and at times to an even shorter time. When she was a girl, Saint Caterina de' Ricci slept no more than two or three hours a night, regretting them as time subtracted from Jesus; later, at the age of twenty years, absorbed as she was in a continuous ecstasy, she ended up by sleeping for no more than an hour a week and sometimes not more than two or three hours a month (cfr. Vezzani, pp. 143-144).
	As Vezzani notes by way of conclusion, doctors and physiologists are agreed in holding that the vital need of sleep cannot normally be avoided, certainly not in an absolute manner. When it nevertheless happens for weeks, months and years without reducing the vigour of the organism, one enters the field of the supernatural bordering on the miracle (V., p. 144).

17.	The paramystic phenomena 
        complete each other 
        and from the theological point of view 
        they all contribute to prefiguring 
        what could be the ultimate condition of man
	
	Maria Domenica Lazzeri, who has been mentioned several times in this chapter, was irreducibly sleepless. The mystic from Val di Fiemme did not sleep, eat or drink from 1834 to 1848, the year of her death. This stigmatized woman, whose beatification process is about to get under way, displayed an imposing series of paramystic phenomena, for the most part of a cognitive nature.
	On the one hand, sleeplessness and fasting, stigmata with significant letters of the alphabet and very simple drawings that remain impressed on handkerchiefs, a continuous excess of body heat (a kind of incendium amoris, as it would seem), no need to defecate or urinate (that her anuria was total is written, perhaps a little summarily, in a document of the episcopal curia, and I relata refero), no need to change sheets, which remained perfectly clean and in order for months and months, a facial appearance almost of a healthy person in spite of her many intolerable ills, always clean and combed and in order without any need for a daily toilette, extremely lively eyes, a serene mind, a cheerful and content expression (cfr. Sommavilla, pp. 60-62, 66-68, 87-88, 99-100 etc.).
	From the cognitive point of view: reading of hearts, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, xenogloxy. But also psychokinetic phenomena and, lastly, phenomena of an even more mysterious and prodigious nature, as we shall now see.
	Let us take a look at some examples. Her most recent and up-to-date biographer, the Jesuit Father Guido Sommavilla, notes that Maria Domenica, perpetually constrained to bed, saw and heard at a distance: persons who talked in the street six hundred metres away, what people said about her, even in the parsonage and, according to local traditions, also in other houses of the village. She saw and heard mass point by point every day and, on Sundays and feast days, heard the celebrant’s sermon and could summarize its contents. While she fixed her interlocutors with her penetrating and also embarrassing eyes, she would guess the confidence, the reserve even when it was only partial, the complete scepticism as far as she was concerned, or the internal moral-religious condition of the person. She "saw" Monsignor Freinadimetz at Trent, thirty-five kilometres away as the bird flies, and described him…
	She conversed in German, a language she had never learnt: once with a priest for a quarter of an hour, on another occasion with another priest for six minutes to the great satisfaction of the reverend father, and understood the German of another 'Anonymous' and the French of the de Ségurs. Lastly, time and time again, she gave proof that ‘with the will of God, while absolutely immobile in her bed, she could by herself open the closed door or keep it inexorably closed according to whether the visitor was good and desired or bad, undesired, unworthy (Sommavilla, pp. 121-122).
	But the most incredible fact is the disappearance of Maria Domenica from her home for a period of about one week. In fact, as Sommavilla relates, one day Domenica, who could not make even the least movement in her bed without unbearable spasms, could no longer be seen either in bed or in the room, or in the house or just outside it. She had disappeared: body and soul. Eight and a half days later, she was suddenly back in her bed in her usual unchanged position (S., p. 101; cfr. 101-107).
	What could have happened? Three days earlier she had told the chaplain, Don Santuari, that she was about to meet "in spirit" with Maria von Moerl, another stigmatized woman, at Caldaro, a village some twenty kilometres from Capriana, where Maria Domenica lived.
	"I saw her with her knees on the ground between two lit lights", she was to recount afterwards, "and saw all the pictures that adorned her room and remained greatly impressed on my mind" (p. 103). She described the room, which her sisters, going to Caldara, later found to be exactly as she had said. Then, together with Maria von Moerl and in the same prodigious manner, Maria Domenica had gone to Cermes to visit yet another stigmatized person, Crescenzia Nieklusch, after which all three of them had gone to meet other religious women in a sacred place on a mountain. And she also gave a faithful description of Crescenzia's room.
	Father Sommavilla stresses that the disappearance and subsequent reappearance after a certain period of time of the physical body of the subject implies something more than simple bilocation (phenomenon where the physical body remains and only the centre of consciousness travels). Maria Domenica's case expressed rather a property of dynamism that had previously been recognized only as peculiar of risen bodies, as in the case of Jesus Christ. Father Sommavilla therefore wonders whether the crucified body of Maria Domenica Lazzari, "always dying and always living", already behaved as if it had risen.
	Here we have passed from the ambit of scientific observations to that of theological speculation. At this level one may say that all the paramystic phenomena have their model in the bodily condition of the risen Jesus Christ. And they can therefore be considered as a prefiguration of what in the eschatological perspective is the state of humanity as risen at the end of time.
	These theological concepts are readily applicable to all the authentic saints who present one or more paramystic phenomena; and are even more applicable to saints who display many different and yet coherent and converging phenomena.

Chapter  II

THE ORGANIZING PSYCHIC FORCE CAN MANIFEST ITSELF ALSO OUTSIDE THE PHYSICAL BODY

1.	To the dreams and the hypnagogic 
      and hypnopompic images 
      there correspond realities 
      that can be defined as objective
	
	Let us now pass on to the variegated range of phenomena that can be cited to demonstrate what the moulding force of the will can bring about outside the human body.
	The subject can bring into being thought-forms and can exteriorize them, giving them some objective consistency. But he can also exteriorize himself in such a manner that other subjects will perceive him.
	Lastly, the subject may exteriorize himself in so consistent a manner as to be perceived, in the limit, as a material reality, as a true physical body.
	We could therefore speak, respectively, of exteriorized mental creations, of apparitions and materializations.
	Let us turn our attention first of all to exteriorized mental creations.
	Chapter VII of the book by Duchâtel and Warcollier bears the title "Dreams" and the subtitle of "Images of thought – Photographs of these images - Autoscopy – Collective hallucinations".
	The authors observe that it is precisely in dreams that one can note a first degree of materialization (D. and W. p. 101). They say that for Bergson normal dreams always have a retinal material substrate (p. 102).
	With dreams one has to associate the illusions that are called hypnagogic when they precede sleep and hypnopompic when they occur immediately after waking. One of the two authors, who made them an object of experimental study, considers them as authentic retinal images, often located in an eye (p. 102). The book also recalls the case – reported by Maury – of a hallucination deriving from a dream in which the image, like a true retinal image, is subject to the laws of optics (p. 102).
	A scholar dreamt that he was throwing into the fire a substance that developed violet light. At the end of the oneiric experience he saw the hypnagogic image of a yellow spot on a blue background: in other words, he saw the complementary colours of the image that he had dreamt as if he had really seen everything in a real experience while he was awake. A conclusion in this connection related by the authors and also shared by them is that the facts here prove that the hallucination is clearly sensorial (p. 102). Whatever may have caused the sleep (intoxication of the cerebral cells due to metabolic products, or suggestion or self-suggestion), one must positively recognize that, every time this phenomenon occurs, the subconscious will not limit itself to constructing and repairing the organism in this state, but… also begins to create beings no less endowed with life than the being of the sleeper: in other words, in hypnagogic illusion the images of the dream may also attain a beginning of materiality (pp. 102-103).

2.	Certain mental creations 
      assume a hallucinatory character 
      in the eyes of the subject 
      who brings them into being

	At this point we have come face to face with the theme of mental creations that assume a hallucinatory character. Here we can draw a great deal of material from the repeatedly mentioned work of Ernesto Bozzano. We may recall, first of all, the twofold distinction made above: there are thoughts and images that consist of simple memories of sensations and there are also thoughts that correspond to true mental creations.
	Let us for a moment dwell on the former. Bozzano observes that whenever a sensation is frequently repeated, it acquires an exceptional vivacity, and this in such a way as at times to persist for a long time even when the cause that produced them no longer exists (B., 1967, p. 12). They are the ones that he calls consecutive images.
	In this way Newton succeeded in "seeing" the disk of the sun in such a live manner even many weeks after he had interrupted his astronomic observations.
	Binet cites the case of Professor Pouchet, a microscopist, who, while he was walking in Paris, saw these real life images suddenly give way to superposed consecutive images of his microbes that were particularly clear and intense (cfr. p. 12 again).
	Such images are so clear and precise that they could even be projected onto a white sheet to mark their outline with a pencil. 
	Something very similar corresponds to the experience of certain painters, who objectivated the images of their conception of the painting to such an extent as later to be able to reproduce them on canvas without having the model in front of them.
	This is the case of the portrait painter who had a truly enormous number of orders and asked each model to pose for him at only a single sitting. A witness relates that he himself saw the painter execute the miniature portrait of a gentleman with whom the witness was well acquainted. And affirms that the portrait had been diligently completed and constituted a perfect resemblance.
	The painter himself explained that whenever he has a new model, he studies the person with great attention for half an hour, from time to time fixing some particular feature on the canvas. Half an hour is sufficient for him, and he does not need other seances. So that the painter puts the canvas aside and passes on to another subject. When he wants to continue painting the first portrait, he thinks of the person he saw. With his imagination he makes him sit on the chair and then sees him as clearly as if he were really sitting there. Rather, he sees the form and the colour in a more lively and distinct manner than if he were personally present. Every now and again he therefore looks at the imaginary figure, fixes it on the canvas with ease and, whenever this is necessary, suspends the work to diligently observe the model in the assumed pose (cited in Bozzano, 1967, pp. 13-14).
	If what has just been referred is a case of voluntary hallucination, the one that follows can be defined as a case of subconscious hallucination. It is reported in the review Luce e Ombra (1935, pp. 38-40). In the throes of inspiration, the painter Montevecchi of Bologna saw, for example, the Madonna to be painted already designed in every detail and projected onto the canvas as if the canvas had become transparent. He thus felt an impulse to reproduce her on the canvas with the greatest rapidity, as if he feared that he might not be in time to follow the evanescent image (cfr. B., 1967, pp. 14-15). 
	It should be stressed that, as Bozzano notes, all the forms in which the subconscious ideation is exteriorized are effectively characterized by an extreme lability (p. 17).

3.	Certain mental forms 
      are perceived by other subjects 
      endowed with sensitivity
	
	Let us now pass on to considering thought-forms inasmuch as they are perceived not only by the subject who produces them, but also by other subjects.
	Thought-forms can be perceived by people endowed with normal sensitivity only when these thoughts have attained an adequate degree of objectivization and substantiality. We shall come back to this case further on.
	For the moment it should be noted that only sensitives are capable of perceiving the thought-forms that have not yet attained the minimum consistency that renders them visible to the eyes of the body. For as long as they have not attained this minimum level of bodily or almost bodily concreteness, an intersubjective character may be attributed to perception only on a condition: that the sensitives, one independently of the other, concord in testifying more or less closely similar experiences.
	I speak of "similar" experiences and not of experiences that are "the same", because experiences of this kind always differ in some way from one subject to another. This is inevitable at certain levels, where a considerable contribution is always made by a subjective data processing factor and also by a factor of symbolic disguise (or, if you prefer, deformation).
	In this connection Bozzano refers to the theosophists, who – on the word of their diviners (seers), who include Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater – affirm that thought-forms are not limited to images of persons and things, but extend also to abstract conceptions, to aspirations of feeling and passionate longings, which assume characteristic and strangely symbolic forms. Noteworthy in this connection, as Bozzano continues, is the fact that the descriptions of the theosophists regarding this symbolism of thought agree in a rather surprising manner with the descriptions that in their turn are given by clairvoyant sensitives (Bozzano, 1967, pp. 25-26).
	By way of example, Bozzano compared a passage of Thought-forms, a monograph by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, with the statements of E. A. Quinon, another clairvoyant sensitive. He found that, among all the visualization of the thoughts and frames of mind of others, the feelings of avarice, greediness and ambition express themselves, both for the two theosophers and for Quinon, by assuming an uncinate form, as if the subject were bent on grasping this something he is longing for (cfr. B., pp. 26-27).
	The idea that the thoughts of a subject whom the sensitive has in front of him come to express themselves in images that seem to issue from his head, from his brain, receives confirmation from the testimony of Maria Reyes de Zierold, a Mexican clairvoyant, famous on account of the psychometric experiments conducted by Doctor Pagenstecker (B., 1967, p. 5; Pagenstecher, pp. 188 and 206).

4.	Lastly, there are mental forms 
         that can also be perceived 
         by a photographic objective
	
	If at a certain level of intersubjectivity one has to recognize experiences in connection with which there is agreement between the testimonies of several subjects, it is clear that with photography we pass on to a decidedly objective type of recording. Certain thought-forms arrive at leaving an impression on photographic objectives. Rather, it should be noted that to some extent the objective is found to be more sensitive than the human eye.
	As far as terminology is concerned, we should here recall the distinction, nowadays widely accepted, between "photographs of thought" obtained by means of photocameras and so-called "skotographs". The latter are impressions that are obtained directly on the photographic plate. The subject keeps it in contact with his forehead while he concentrates his thoughts intensely on the image that is to be exteriorized. Light-sensitive paper may also be impressed in place of the plate. The skotograph is obtained in full darkness, this in contrast with a photograph, which is taken in full daylight. 
	Bozzano dedicates a long chapter of more than fifty pages to thought skotography and photography. A good and more up-to-date integration can be found in the chapter that Cyril Permutt dedicates to the same topic in his book Beyond the Spectrum. Among the cases mentioned in these two works we can now choose a few to underscore some facts that are of particular interest for our discourse.
	Among the experiments carried out  by Commander Darget between 1883 and 1896 one may recall the skotographs of thought objects and geometric symbols, but also of a crisis of anger. The Commander, who had this crisis, immediately had the idea of exploiting it for the purposes of his researches, switched off the light and applied a photographic plate to his forehead for ten minutes. And thus, as he relates, when he had it developed and printed on sensitized paper, he found to his great surprise that on it there had remained a strange tumult of fluid vortices, wonderfully expressive of an emotional tempest (Bozzano, 1967, p. 40).
	Another idea and somewhat macabre idea that the Commander had was to go to a slaughterhouse and to apply photographic plates to the forehead and the heart of animals that were about to have their throats cut: among others, these yielded noteworthy impressions of fluidic emissions (pp. 40-41).
	Particularly significant are the experiments of Miss Felicity Scatcherd (pp. 43 et seq.). The Archdeacon Colley was upset by the fact that in certain "transcendental photographs" the entity that manifested itself in that manner with the head wrapped in a small circular cloud in the form of an aureole. But then, one day when he had gone to have himself photographed for reasons that had nothing to do with the experimental inquiries, he obtained a photograph in which he himself appeared with a rather similar aureole. Miss Scatcherd, who was present, asked him what he thought of at that moment. And he confessed that, greatly concerned for a friend of his, he had at that moment began to pray mentally for him.
	It should be noted that similar aureoles appear not only in the traditional images of the saints, as is well known, but also in the photographs that we have of several persons who at that moment had grave concerns or, in any case, very intense thoughts.
	As Bozzano notes, one would have to infer from this that in these circumstances the aureole corresponds to the fluidic or etheric substance emanated by the cerebral organ intensely excited by the thought; just as, in the case of photographs made with the intervention of a medium and transcendental apparitions, the aureole corresponds to the fluidic substance emanated by the medium, a substance that makes it possible to photograph the images created both by the thought of the those present and by the will of the deceased (B., p. 44).
	Another noteworthy experiment carried out by Miss Scatcherd is that of a photograph that Archdeacon Colley one day took of her in the garden of the presbytery. We are in July 1910. At the moment of the snapshot Miss Scatcherd thought that, having to leave home very hastily, she had forgotten to put on a more appropriate dress and regretted that she was not at that moment wearing an embroidered blouse she kept locked up in her wardrobe. When the photograph was developed, it was found that it not only reproduced a phantom by the side of Miss Scatcherd (which is here mentioned only by the way), but that she was actually wearing the greatly desired blouse with its embroidery, which appeared somewhat diaphanous, but nevertheless clearly distinguishable and indubitable.
	What is reported under the title "The experience of Mr. Bradbrook" seems similar to this experience of Felicia Scatcherd. This gentleman had sent to the review Light the photograph of a soldier in which by the side of the seated soldier one could note another figure, attenuated and transparent, of the same soldier on his feet. When the latter was questioned about this, he limited himself to saying that at the moment the photograph was taken, he had thought with a certain regret that he should have had himself photographed in a standing position (pp. 55-56).
	Another noteworthy point of this treatment of thought photography is, as Bozzano sustains and documents, the principle that the conscious will, rather than facilitating the projection of thought-forms, tends to hinder it. In many experiments of thought photography one either does not obtain any reproduction at all, because the subject had intentionally set out to think, or one obtains images of what seems to be the expression of a subconscious mental activity.
	This does not mean that it is impossible to photograph thoughts on which the subject is concentrating in an intentional manner; it only means that photographing a conscious thought is far more difficult and that one succeeds in reproducing it only when it consists of a very simple image. When the conscious thought consists of a complex image, it sometimes happens that only some of its elements appear on the plate to the exclusion of others.
	Among others, one may here recall an attempted skotography in which the subject had been asked to project the Japanese castle of Ohgati onto the sensitized plate: in that case only the architectural lines of the turreted roof of the building remained impressed on the plate (cfr. B., 1967, p. 66) and, more generally, the paragraph entitled "The extraordinary experiences of Professor T. Fukurai", pp. 63-67).
	The Japanese adolescent Masurabi Kiyota possessed the capacity of transmitting mental images to an unexposed film. Of him it is said that one day there was placed in front of him a small table with a loaded Polaroid camera with its objective closed and with nobody touching the shutter: and thus Kiyota, with the sole force of his thought concentrated on the film, produced photographs that showed the aerial view of a nearby hotel, the Tokyo Tower, and other images (Permutt, p. 116). Other Japanese subjects have displayed this capacity of producing photographs of thought in  sealed Polaroid cameras. 
	Very clear and detailed, on the other hand, may appear the images that the subconscious accepts with pleasure and holds dear, or images that impressed it far more profoundly, and which it restitutes in a much more vigorous and lively manner.
	An example is that of Mrs. Dean, who was studied by F. W. Warrick. One day she observed for a long time and with admiration a pair of swans swimming with their little ones in a canal and on the following day left on a photographic plate the stylized but richly annotated image of a swan (cfr. B., p. 69).
	In his book Experiment in Psychic, Warrick compares this case with the one of an Australian photographer who also made experiments of this kind by keeping a photographic plate in his hand. One day while in the port of Sidney, he saw something that was unusual in Melbourne where he lived: a man in a canoe who was paddling with great skill. The same evening he carried out a skotography experiment, holding a plate between his hands: and the day after, when he developed it, he found the complex but exact reproduction of a man paddling a canoe impressed on it (B., 1967, p. 70).
	A similar phenomenon occurred in the experiments of Professor Ochorowicz with the medium Stanislawa Tomczyk. Miss Tomczyk set out to mentally impress the image of a small hand, but the image that appeared on the plate was that of the moon, which a long contemplation of the full moon had stored in her subconscious, from which it had emerged in a wholly spontaneous and involuntary manner (Bozzano, 1967, pp. 79-81; Duchâtel and Warcollier, pp. 103-104).
	All this only further confirms the principle that unconscious obseances emerge and impress the photographic plate with a far greater force than conscious obseances, i. e, the images on which the subject concentrates in a conscious and voluntary manner.
	As Bozzano notes, Professor Ochorowicz, basing himself on his own experiments, arrived at the conclusion that thought possesses the faculty of exteriorizing itself and that mental images reveal actinic (i. e,, in their own manner. radioactive) properties, since photographic negatives remain impressed by these images (B., 1967, p. 75).
	At this point we can come back to a more general comment of Duchâtel and Warcollier. As the two authors of The miracles of the will observe, if thought can produce exterior images that can be photographed, there is no reason to be surprised that these images can in some cases be so "plastic" and so alive to be seen not only in the eye of the subject (case of Maria Martel, a French clairvoyant, 1896) or on a photographic plate (as is the case of Stanislawa Tomczyk and many others), but even in the atmosphere of the environment and believed both by the subject and the persons around him/her to be real objects or living people (D. and W., p. 104).
	At this point it may be interesting to mention a parallel formulated by a scholar engaged in psychic research, Mary Monteith, once again in the review Light (1938, p. 586) and which Bozzano both quotes and adopts as his own. The two terms of the parallel are the thought-forms inasmuch as they are capable of being objectively and also photographically recorded and the telepathic manifestations.
	Bozzano writes that the parallel that Mary Monteith draws between thought-forms that can be photographed and the apparitions of telepathic phantoms even at considerable distances is theoretically interesting: it confers new life upon the primitive hypothesis according to which a considerable part of the telepathic phenomena, rather than deriving from vibrations of thought perceived as such by the cerebral centres of sensitives, which would project to the exterior transformed into the corresponding hallucinatory phantom, could rather consist of something phantomogenous having a consistency of its own (B., 1967, p. 58).
	The American Ted Serios proved to be a particularly valid subject for thought-form photography. Son of a wrestler of Greek origin, of poor culture and given to drinking, Ted was a hotel messenger boy in 1955. Together with a colleague under presumed spiritual guidance, he dedicated himself to the search for pirate treasures. He viewed geographic maps with the eyes of the mind, but the search did not produce any concrete results. However, he said that those maps were so precise in his mind that he could have photographed them.
	His colleague thought that the defect consisted of the lability of those mental images and that, consequently, it would be appropriate to photograph the walls onto which Ted had seen them projected. Some photographs were taken with a Polaroid, but in them there appeared vague images of Indian life rather than geographic maps. A professional hypnotist whom the two had consulted, surprised to see these Indian scenes appear also on further Polaroid photographs, suggested that that they should point the objective on the face of the subject rather than the wall.
	Doctor Jules Eisenbud began to take an interest in these experiments from 1963 onwards, later assumed their direction and eventually reported them in his famous book entitled The World of Ted Serios. Here we have a treatise that, apart from describing the experiments in a complete and convincing manner, also presents us with this singular personage and live character and delves into his psychology.
	From 1967 to 1069 Ted Serios was studied in conditions of full and absolute control at the University of Virginia, Charlotteville, by Ian Stevenson and Joseph Pratt. Even in these extremely rigorous conditions, he succeeded in producing images and scenes, many of which were recognized. This took place, above all, in 1967. A second series of experiments was carried out in the same place in 1968 and yielded good mental photographs. But by this time the capacities of Ted Serios proved to be declining and nothing was obtained in the course of a third series the following year.
	Other producers of thought photographs studied with the necessary rigour are Willi Schwanholz (a Canadian citizen of German origin, who had been instructed by Ted Serios), various members of the Veilleux family of Maine, and lastly also Uri Geller, who, pointing a photocamera at his own face, obtained his portrait, albeit somewhat out of focus, but nevertheless quite unmistakeable.
	To come back to Ted Serios, it should be noted that the photocameras, together with all the other material, were supplied by the experimenters. To the objective of the camera Ted added a section of a plastic (or cardboard) tube that he called "gismo". He said that it served to prevent him from touching the objective with his fingers and to diminish the quantity of light that could enter the camera. It also constituted a kind of psychological support for him.
	It was Ted himself who released the shutter when he felt himself to be immersed in the "hot state", a kind of conscious trance characterized by an extreme tension: face reddened and bathed with sweat, swollen veins on his forehead, and eyes injected with blood.
	The results obtained were undoubtedly intermittent, but became more significant when Ted Serios was allowed to work at his ease and to regulate the seances himself. Heavy drinking also contributed to better performance.
	Ted Serios was presented with photographs that were unknown to him. Chosen by the experimenters and enclosed in envelopes. He concentrated on each one of them and at time succeeded and at others failed to photograph an image of them obtained by extrasensorial, paranormal means. But the figure could also be a figure that had already been seen or glimpsed on some other occasion.
	The photographs obtained in this manner proved to correspond not so much to the original figures, but rather to the manner in which Ted Serios interpreted and remembered them, rendered more evident by drawings he made from memory. Every now and again the photographs expressed thoughts already conceived by Ted’s mind at the conscious level or also images emerging from his unconscious. At other times they were dark and black, or formlessly white, or limited themselves to showing the face of the subject: these are the cases when the experiments did not prove successful.
	Permutt observes that a wholly white positive Polaroid photograph can be obtained only by exposing it to a strong source of light. But certainly not as was done by Ted, who photographed his own face at the average light of the room. Leaving aside the fact that they cannot be obtained by normal means, photographs that came out all black should have shown something of Ted’s face. Apart from the truly exceptional cases in which his face appeared, he seemed to create a mental barrier that arrested every trace of light passing through the objective (Permutt, p. 134).
	Between the image obtained by Ted Serios and the original there could also be an associative or symbolic link. For example, when the image of the Declaration of Independence was requested, there appeared three soldiers of that war with the characteristic uniforms and insignia.
	These "errors" seemed very significant, as Eisenbud observed. They follow the lines along which the mind operates in dreams, to give but one example; and they also exactly reflect the substitution of ideas with the association that frequently occurs in common cognition, in perception and creative thought.
	In particular, these errors come close to what one often notes in experiments of telepathic drawing. What happens in these experiments? One subject concentrates on a figure to suggest its image to another subject situated at a distance, and the latter then makes a drawing of the first idea that comes to his mind. Often the drawing corresponds to the suggested image: very often, however, the relationship between the image of the percipient and the target is more ideational and associative than figurative (Eisenbud, pp. 50-52).
	The most unforeseeable associations and distortions may occur between the target and the produced image: some element of the original is conserved, but re-elaborated in accordance with a symbolism that is anything other than simple and easy to interpret, a task that only a psychoanalyst can dare to undertake (cfr. E., ch. IX).
	As can be seen, an authentic mental creativity is exteriorized even in the paranormal photographs of a Ted Serios. So that the entire development of our discourse has here added yet another most significant stage.

5.   Thought-forms or creations of the mind 
      can arrive at manifesting a certain initiative 
      and autonomy of action

	The fact that it is possible to photograph a thought-form shows that this has attained a certain objective consistency. And here is the problem that we now have to face: can a thought-form also associate some autonomy of action with this objective consistency? It seems appropriate to me to tackle this aspect by degrees. First of all, let us therefore consider what may happen in a more subjective ambit.
	The mental life of a man is complex and variegated, it sweeps and wanders from one thought to another, from one feeling and frame of mind to another.
	As it develops on the conscious level, mental life proves to be essentially creative. Bozzano notes that thought is not only a resurrection of anterior feelings (B., 1967, p. 11): it is also the product of a creative activity by means of which all these images are reprocessed and combined in such a manner as to continually form others. This proves the existence in the intellect of an individual initiative in the truest sense of the term (ibid.). In relation to experience the intellect demonstrates a relative freedom (ibid.).
	The intellect not only imagines, but also abstracts and compares: and it is from this complex activity that the locutions and the discoveries, the inspirations and the creations of a genius draw their origin.
	Thought proves to be creative not only at the conscious level, but also on its subliminal counterpart, as we shall now see.
	The creativity of thought at the conscious level can be grasped by means of even the most elementary introspection. At the subliminal level, on the other hand, we can infer it only from its fruits. But we can also try to reconstruct it by analogy, commencing with a careful of analysis of how the process of intellectual creation takes place.
	Thinking is the continuous production of something new. Nevertheless, there are thoughts that recur. These end up by laying out a kind of track over which the subject is induced to travel time and time again.
	Now, the repetition of a thought, especially when coloured with emotivity, can in the limit become an obseance. Having become a fixed idea, that thought grows on itself like a kind of tumour and attracts ever greater attention to itself, and this to the point of almost monopolizing the mental life of the individual concerned.
	It may happen that a secondary personality is developed around the nucleus of a fixed idea.
	This secondary personality may assume a true autonomous consistency. It may assume it in various forms, and we shall now review the more important ones.
	It often happens that an individual worries about a problem the whole day long and eventually goes to bed without having solved it, but then finds it resolved when he wakes up. This shows that something has been at work deep within him while he was sleeping.
	And it is not just a problem that may be resolved by this subliminal alter ego, but an entire literary work can be conceived and defined at this level, so that it will suddenly spring forth like Minerva from the head of Jove.
	And it is interesting to note that Frederick Myers defines the phenomenon of genius in Chapter III (not surprisingly entitled "Genius") of his fundamental and extremely elaborate work Human personality and its survival of bodily death.
	A first definition he gives of genius is as follows: a power that enables those who are endowed with it to make greater use than other men of faculties that in a certain way are innate in all; a power of appropriating the products of subliminal mental processing and introducing them into the supraliminal thought channel. The "inspiration of a genius" is therefore really a subliminal uprush, a subliminal eruption: an emergence in the flow of ideas that a man manipulates consciously of other ideas that he has not created, that rather formed by themselves and independently of his [conscious] will in more profound regions of his being (§ 302, p. 71 of volume I).
	Let us now consider what are generally deemed to be genial creations, though bearing in mind also the manner in which they spring from the mind of the various men of genius. Very well, at the opposite limits we can undoubtedly distinguish two types of elaboration that intervene to different extents in each work.
	There is a type of elaboration that takes place more at the conscious level. In this first case the gestation occurs, as it were, more 'on the drawing board', i. e, in a reasoned and gradual manner.
	The opposite elaboration mode takes place in a flash. The idea of the work seems to emerge suddenly from the subliminal regions, already fully elaborated, complete with even the detailed finishing touches. Thus the poet hastens to write a long series of verses as if they were being dictated. And the painter, in his turn, paints in an equally rapid manner, as if each stroke of his brush had been planned in advance. 
	There are even cases in which the writer or the artist does not even know what he has written or painted or modelled, etc., and becomes aware of it only when he reads or contemplates his finished creation, just as would be done by any other reader or beholder of the work.
	In this latter series of cases it was not only the work that was unconsciously conceived, but – at least in a certain way – also its actual implementation:: for example, the editing or redaction work in the case of a book or other literary work.
	There are, of course, also many intermediate cases.
	I now want to say very clearly and underscore that the degree of effective geniality of a work has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the fact that it was elaborated at the unconscious level, or that – to put it in other words – it was created in a flash. Works created on the drawing board, compared with others composed in a flash of inspiration, may prove to be no less genial or, rather, at times even incomparably more genial in this sense.
	It should therefore be clear that when we speak of inspired geniality, this is intended to refer to a pure psychological category without implying any value judgment whatsoever.
	Even Myers himself confirms this when he specifies that he does not in any way want to say that subliminal mental elaboration is of itself "superior", ipso facto superior, to its supraliminal counterpart, nor that it accounts for a larger proportion of what are considered to be the valid human achievements (cfr. M., § 302, p. 71 of volume I).
	As Myers clearly specifies, the productions of genius that operate at a predominantly or essentially subliminal level constitute a psychological class where works of even abyssally different value cohabit on equal terms (cfr. § 305, p. 75, of volume I).
	Rather, Myers actually comments that this so-called inspiration may be of itself insignificant or devoid of all value, while the name of genius will be given quite naturally to what is the initial stage of a phenomenon in which there are present also certain rare characteristics" (§ 306, p. 77 of volume I).
	Having made this clear, it will be helpful to recall certain examples that Myers offers us of a subliminal mental elaboration that in certain individuals reaches levels that, to say the least, are altogether impressive. He proposes a table of child prodigies who displayed unthinkable calculation capacities at an age of ten years and even as few as three.
	The "intelligence" of these children, which in the case of Ampère and Gauss has to be considered "eminent", may be "good", as in the case of Bidder, but also "very poor" in the case of Dase, who nevertheless, both as a boy and throughout the rest of his life, proved to have prodigious calculation capacities at the unconscious level.
	Among all these prodigies, Myers thinks that Dase was perhaps the one who had the greatest success. And yet he showed himself to be singularly devoid of mathematical intuition at the conscious level. But this fact did not prevent him from receiving – on the recommendation of Gauss - a cash gift from the Hamburg Academy of Sciences for the important mathematical work he had performed (§ 310, p. 83, of volume I).
	An example of the complexity of these calculations are the answers that the ten-year-old Sicilian shepherd boy Mangiamele gave in 1837 at the French Academy in Paris, always within the space of less than a minute, to questions of the following kind posed to him by Arago: "What is the cube root of 2,796,416?". Answer: "156". And again: "What number satisfies the condition that its cube plus 5 times its square is equal to 42 times itself plus 40?" Answer: "5".
	A committee consisting of Arago, Cauchy and others complained afterwards that the calculation methods employed by Mangiamele had always been kept secret by his teachers (§ 310, p. 84, of volume I).
	But Bidder, a subject of "good intelligence" who maintained his prodigious calculation capacities for the whole of his life, declared that he could not explain how he obtained his results and that he seemed to be guided in this by a kind of natural instinct (cfr. § 319, p. 81, of volume 1).
	This complex, rapid and spontaneous hustle of the unconscious seems to operate not only in the prodigious calculators and authentic mathematicians, but also in scientists, artists, composers, writers and poets.
	In this chapter on genius Myers cites a whole series of cases in which unconscious elaboration seems predominant, decisive, essential: a series of cases that we can compare with those mentioned by Serge Voronoff in his book entitled Dal cretino al genio (From morons to genius). 
	As far as mathematics are concerned, the conclusion reached by the Russian surgeon, biologist and psychologist is that every mathematical invention is always due to the inspiration, the suggestion of the subconscious, so that work at the level of the conscious I takes place only at a later stage (Voronoff, p. 75). A mathematician may try for years to find the solution of a problem, and yet he will not succeed until an inspiration comes to his aid. This may happen at any moment,
	Voronoff recalls that the great mathematician Hamilton had carried on a research project for as long as fifteen years without ever arriving at the essential formula, but then this suddenly flashed into his mind while he was crossing a bridge at Dublin. Voronoff therefore concludes that "it is always inspiration that determines the discovery, and this irrespective of whether the mathematical genius begins with it or when it comes to conclude a long and patient search" (V., p. 61).
	Even in the composer, as in every genius, it is the subconscious, inspiration, that sustains the principal part (V., p. 61). This is particularly true in the case of Mozart. The great musician confesses that at certain moments thoughts crowd into his mind without his being able to say where they came from. Indeed, he said that he knew nothing about it, played no part in it at all.
	And adds that once he has a motif clearly in his mind, another motif quickly comes to join the first according to the needs of the composition, the counterpoint, the instrumental part, and all these ingredients end up by forming the bulk of the work.
	As Mozart goes on, the work then grows, he hears it all the time, perceives it ever more clearly. Lastly, no matter how long it may be, the composition becomes completely formed and concluded in his mind. He then embraces it with a single overall look, just as if it were a fine painting, not in succession, not in the detail of its parts, as he would do later on, but as a whole, just as his imagination had made him hear it (pp. 61-62).
	Saint-Saens, as Myers notes, had only to listen to his demon, just like Socrates. Passing on to literature, Myers recalls a testimony by De Musset: "One doesn’t work, one simply listens, it is as if someone unknown were whispering into your ear" (M., § 313, p. 89, of volume I). He also cites Lamartine, who says: "It is not I who thinks, it is my ideas that thinks for me" (M., § 313, p. 89, of Volume I). A dramatist, indicated only by the initials M. S., says: "When I wrote these dramas, it seemed to me to be a spectator in the theatre: I kept looking at what was happening on the stage in anxious, surprised and curious expectation of what was about to happen. And yet I felt that it all came from the very depth of my being" (§ 313, pp. 89-90, of Volume I). Myers recalls Stevenson's Brownies, his Little People. They populated and agitated his interior theatre. In a certain way they told him about themselves, little by little, a kind of novel in instalments, and yet kept him wholly ignorant of their intentions and of how the story was going to end (§ 314, p. 91, of volume I). 
	Balzac represents a limit case. The great French writer identified himself with his characters to the point of living alternatively his own life, the life of Honoré de Balzac, and that of the character whose story he was writing at the time. According to a precise testimony of René Benjamin, the while he was writing Papa Goriot, he would at times speak like this character, pronounce his phrases and, just like him, handle and "see" the other characters enter the room, conversing with them, wholly identified with a story that he lived in the first person, immersed in a hallucination that seemed full and perfect (cfr. Voronoff, pp. 55-58).
Chapter  III

THE ORGANIZING PSYCHIC FORCE MAY ALSO BRING TO LIFE SECONDARY PERSONALITIES ENDOWED WITH 
AN AUTONOMOUS EXISTENCE OF THEIR OWN

1.	 Here we shall review what can be defined 
       as provoked secondary personalities: 
       for example, provoked by means of hypnosis 
       or the creation of a character by a writer 
       or, lastly, the interpretation of an actor.
	
	We know very well that the human personality is anything other than monolithic. And yet, in the absence of scissions of a pathological nature, the personality seems to be a kind of republic, always united, but with many autonomous regions.
	Psychoanalysis has been of great help in making us understand this highly dialectic internal mechanism. One only has to recall the Freudian vision with the well known conflicts, contrasts and tensions that can occur between the Ego, the Es and the Super Ego, as also between the various complexes.
	Psychoanalysis has also helped us to understand the centrality of the unconscious. The creative operations of the mind take place above all in the unconscious, and it is above all from the unconscious that they draw their strength and sustenance.
	The conscious mind may give orders and make suggestions to the unconscious, just as it may address invocations to it, in the vain hope of controlling the executive processes. The less detailed the orders, the more efficacious will all this prove to be.  These are unconscious processes, and the unconscious knows what it has to do far better than we.
	It will therefor be helpful if suggestions and invocations are as spontaneous as possible and, what is more, resolve themselves in placing full trust in the unconscious. The unconscious operates in an autonomous manner. It operates, as I would say, by grace. It knows what it has to do, for it falls to the unconscious to organize all the complex executive mechanisms of the action. It therefore has to be invoked with faith: with a faith that involves the entire personality, especially its most profound and unconscious part. Let the command be essential, and the suggestion strong, intense and attractive. Invocation, command and suggestion are powerful to the extent to which they reach the unconscious and make an impression on it. It is there that the psyche has its true centre. It is there that the execution of all its initiatives is coordinated in the capillary manner that assures their efficacy.
	If the subject limits himself to considering what he wants at the level of conscious decision, if he does not transmit his will to the unconscious operating centres in a truly incisive manner, everything risks remaining nothing other than a pious intention.
	From what has just been said one can deduce rather clearly what can be obtained by means of hypnosis. Hypnosis aims at directly reaching the unconscious. It therefore seeks to make suggestions to the unconscious rather than giving it commands in the true sense of the term. To this end it will make its suggestions in a form that is affirmative rather than imperative. It is a case of not saying that things have to be or have to come to be in a certain manner, but rather of affirming that they already are so. Hence hypnosis will seek to organize the unconscious psychic forces in such a manner that they can effectively act not only at the mental levels but, in the limit, also at the physical levels of the personality and thus to heal illnesses and disturbances and assist development in the direction deemed to be positive. 
	No matter what may be the widely differing ends pursued by the various hypnotic techniques and therapies, we here have to concentrate attention on the fact that hypnotic suggestion is immediately creative. We may here be concerned with a suggestion made by the hypnotist to the hypnotized or a self-suggestion made by a subject to himself: in either case, at the very moment in which the hypnotized or self-hypnotized subject thinks that certain things are effectively in a certain way, his creative thought will tend to make them de facto become so.
	In a more precise and proper manner we could say that it tends to make them be so at the mental level, as thought-forms. But they are thought-forms that in certain conditions can vary their vibratory state: they can become concrete and condense and materialize themselves and act on matter that already exists as such and transform it.
	Each suggestion, irrespective of whether or not it is made in a hypnotic state, is immediately creative in the mental ambit. And a wide range of parapsychic phenomena suggests that indirectly it can also be creative in the physical ambit.
	If it is suggested to the subject that he sees only certain things, it is as if all the others were hidden behind a high wall that remains invisible to us, but is very real for the subject in question.
	If it is suggested to him or if he suggests to himself that he sees things that "do not exist", those realities will exist for him from that moment onwards in the most live and concrete and tangible sense. What is more, one could here add that these are realities brought into being as thought-forms. And the consistency of these thought-forms would make it possible for other subjects to perceive them.
	Of course, these other subjects would have to be endowed with very special sensitivity of a paranormal nature. That thought-forms can materialize to the point of attaining a physical consistency such as to render themselves visible to anybody is something that can happen only in altogether exceptional limit situations.
	Furthermore, if recording instruments of particular sensitivity were available, they could likewise grasp something of these thought-forms; and this time they would do so in a form that is no longer solely intersubjective, but altogether objective.
	Under hypnosis it can be suggested to the subject (or he can suggest to himself) not only to see new realities around himself, but also to feel himself in a new manner: namely to feel himself to be what the hypnotist tells him he is, or what he commands or suggests he should be. The subject may suggest to himself or have it suggested to him that he can see certain things, encounter certain persons, find himself in a certain place and also to be a certain person, a different person.
	A theatre hypnotist may suggest to his subject that he is a cyclist: and the subject will put himself astride a chair, back to front, and grip the two ends of the backrest as if they were the handlebars of a bicycle, starting to peddle furiously.
	This and an infinity of others are personifications that last for the duration of the experiment and assume the form of a wholly exterior mimicry without affecting the personality of the subject, who in his normal state will be exactly as he was before. Such personifications are the so-called provoked personalities.
	I could not say in what precise cases a hypnotic treatment pushed beyond reasonable limits could provoke the emergence in the subject of a secondary personality, i. e, personifications not integrated with his essential personality that to a certain extent live an independent life in the latency of his unconscious. I could not even say in what precise cases such an abuse, together with the intervention of other factors, could provoke a psychic dissociation in the most gravely pathological sense. Nevertheless, this is a danger that is always lying in wait.
	However, it should be clear that well oriented hypnotic (or self-hypnotic) treatment can prove to be particularly suitable for promoting the strengthening, the consolidation of the personality in the most positive sense.
	And it also remains firmly established that hypnotic suggestion is creative at the mental level (and indirectly, as we saw, also at the physical level). It is creative in relation to the personality of the subject, which may be disintegrated in the worst of cases, while in the best cases it will be effectively reconstituted, healed, strengthened and enriched.
	Hypnotic suggestion is concrete, active, creative thought that, even though at the negative limit it can disintegrate the personality of the subject, can also reconstitute it in the opposite direction, integrating it with thought-forms that are similarly concrete and operative.
	They are thought-forms that within the ambit of a subject determine the provoked personalities and, in the limit, also the psychic dissociations. They are thought-forms that give rise to the creation of imaginary characters and make them act together in the interwoven tangle of a story developing in an ambit that is likewise imaginary or, at least, to some extent transfigured by  fantasy. Characters, action, story and environment thus constitute a coherent and dialectical agglomerate of thought-forms.
	We saw earlier on that the characters and the entire story of many novelists and dramatists end up by living autonomously and developing and narrating themselves on their own, leading the writer by the hand, as it were. In the end the writer thus finds himself reduced and confined to the mere function of annotating what is happening under his eyes and what he hears said by the characters. They are characters that undoubtedly live the life that the writer gives them instant by instant, but speak and act in a clearly autonomous manner.
	The characters of the novel or drama, the environment in which they move and the entire story by then constitute a single articulated whole that lives an autonomous life within the ambit of a structure in which each individual is given a particular character and entrusted with a particular part.
	One could draw a parallel between the manner in which a character is generated in the psychism of the writer and the one in which a provoked personality is generated in the psychism of a hypnotized (or self-suggested) individual. A third term of analogy could be the manner in which a character takes root in an actor the while he studies the part, not only learning it by heart and exercising himself in speaking and moving like him, but also and above all assimilating, delving into and reliving that character ever more closely and – in a certain way – transforming himself into that character.
	A hypnotized person may bring to life a provoked personality for the mere duration of the experiment, but a writer and an actor live together with their characters.
	The subject is undoubtedly himself; he is not truly the character; but one can also say that he is the character he brings to life. Obviously, Alessandro Manzoni is not Don Abbondio; but he is also Don Abbondio: just as – at one and the same time – he is Padre Cristoforo, who is the very antithesis of the fearful curate. 
	Similarly, Laurence Olivier obviously is not Henry V, nor is he Richard III or Hamlet, while in a different sense he is also all of these. As he studies and recites the part of each, he becomes increasingly incarnated in them. What is more, he always carries them with him and inside him: I am certain of this, for otherwise I just could not see how he manages to infuse into them the life that makes them leap out of the Shakespearean text almost as if they were their own creations.
	The character should remain within the limits of its specific part: at least, one would suppose this. It ought to "remain in its place". But the character is a live being, endowed with a psychic life of its own that, even though it continues to be nourished by the psychism of the subject, nevertheless acts in an autonomous manner.

2.	Honoré de Balzac and Papa Goriot: 
      how a writer can identify himself 
      with one of his characters 
      to the point – in a certain sense – of 
      transforming himself into that character
	
	Unforeseeable things can happen. Gabrielli, a famous theatre hypnotist, suggested to a subject that he was a bricklayer, and the subject thereupon started to work happily with his imaginary trowel and bricks: but at a certain moment he then accused a companion of stealing his bricks, started grappling with him and threw him down from the imaginary height of I don’t know how many floors and, with his eyes wide open, watched him crash.
	If we now want to propose the example of the relationship that can become established between an author and his character, the most classical always remains the one of Honoré de Balzac. I briefly mentioned it earlier on, but at this point a closer look will prove helpful.
	At alternate moments Balzac transformed himself into his character, spoke and acted like Papa Goriot, saw in a hallucinatory form what the character was seeing, saw in front of him the other characters of the story and often spoke to them in a dramatic manner.
	I think that it is really worthwhile here to quote the contents of almost all the pages that Serge Voronoff dedicates to the description of this phenomenon in his previously mentioned book. Balzac split himself in two while he was writing Papa Goriot. He escaped from his own nature, as it were, to penetrate that of another. He became Papa Goriot, he no longer was Balzac, no longer felt the weight of his large limbs. At that moment he was stretched out on a bed in the Pension Vanquer. Balzac-Goriot kept on invoking: "I want to see my daughters. Get the Police to look for them. Justice is on my side, as also nature and the civil code!". While he wrote and his pen moved on the paper, he really said with half a voice and a wheeze in his throat: "Oh, they will come! Come, my beloved, come to embrace me once more, a last kiss, encouragement for your father who will pray God, who will tell him that you have been good daughters, who will intercede for you" […]
	By the side of the bed where he was writing, there appeared Bianchon and Rastignac, seemingly so alive that he thought he could see them move. "After all", he said, "you are innocent. They, too, my friends, are innocent". The hallucination was so complete that he pronounced the whole this phrase without remembering to write it. And the phrase was followed by moans during which, just like old Goriot, Balzac swayed his head on the pillows.
	Then Balzac’s pen resumed flying, while he kept on gesticulating, speaking and this time flying so fast that he did not even look at it any more to avoid disturbing his inspiration, so that it only traced the first letters of the words. "It’s all my fault", sighed and sobbed Balzac-Goriot. "I accustomed them to kicking me". He burst out into a desperate cry: "I wanted to be maltreated!".
	And then he suddenly shouted: "Write to my daughters that I have millions to leave to them!". Trembling, the hand that was holding the pen wrote: "Sure, write at once". The pen scraped the sheet. The writing, which at first had been serried and tight, had by then become so rapid that he filled an entire page with just two lines.
	"Let me drink, let me drink", shouted Balzac-Goriot. "My head is sore. My insides are aflame. Oh, oh, put something on my head. The hand of my daughters; that, indeed, would be a salutary remedy!"
	Lastly, feeling that death was near, he let his pen drop to the floor: he stretched out like a man tormented by his sufferings, let his arms dangle on both sides of the bed, By the side of which he saw the widow Bianchon and Rastignac and… then, suddenly, returned to being Balzac. The sense of his art and the joy of the artist took hold of him again…
	René Benjamin, who related this episode, added that Balzac finished the novel during the hours of night that remained to him and continued to associate himself with the obscure forces of nature, participating in two different worlds, living in one and seeing in the other, creating here and seeing there (Voronoff, pp. 56-58).

3.	Rudolph Valentino: how an actor 
      interpreting a certain character 
      can get into its skin to the point 
      of becoming its medium
	
	A phenomenon similar to the one that takes hold of the writer may occur in an actor. Here we have the case of the interpreter who identifies himself with his character, lives with him and carries him about with himself and even – as it were - takes him to bed in order to make him work even during sleep. This is the conditio sine qua non for achieving that high degree of assimilation from which alone there can spring the more original creations.
	One may say that that this phenomenon occurs to some extent with all true actors, more with some, less with others, and in various forms. But I should here like to concentrate on an altogether particular case: that of Rudolph Valentino, who remains the most famous of all the silent-film actors. 
	The peculiar feature of his case is constituted also by the fact that what I am about to say has been taken from nothing less than the mediumistic communications of the supposedly surviving personality of the deceased actor. These communications are said to have been obtained by his wife, Natasha Rambova, and were published by her in a book entitled Rudy: an intimate portrait of Rudolph Valentino by his wife Natasha Rambova. 
	Ernesto Bozzano, who in Pensiero e volontà (Thought and will) cites some passages of these post mortem conversations, notes that the communicating personality had provided "admirable" proof of identity. I see no reason why we should here discuss the effective merit of these proofs. Nor do I see any reason for attributing value to certain affirmations made by the entity "Valentino" for the pure and simple reason that they seem to come to us from the beyond rather than from this world. I consider them solely from the point of view of what seems to me to be their intrinsic interest and value as an example.
	Having said this, let me pass on to the actual affirmations under consideration. In the tenth mediumistic seance the presumed spirit said that the characters of a novel or a comedy, to the extent to which they are moulded by the imagination of the writer, end up by becoming true beings that live and subsist in themselves, even though they are limited in their expressions and their actions by the part assigned to them, the personality they have received.
	The entity then passed on to saying other things that will gradually be explained and confirmed by what I am saying in these pages: the attention and the love of the readers, the spectators, etc., can strengthen the psychic consistency of these novel or comedy characters to an ever greater extent. But to what point? To the point where these selfsame characters become capable of manifesting themselves in the course of mediumistic seances, though always expressing themselves within the limits of the role and the manner of speaking defined for each of them.
	These characters could also materialize to different extents. They would thus make it possible for them to be perceived at least by clairvoyants. They could thus be mistaken even for the disincarnate souls of deceased persons.
	But let us close this introductive parenthesis and come to grips with what we are really interested in. Let us give the floor to the presumed entity "Rudolph Valentino". Speaking to Natasha, the entity expressed itself as follows: "Now I will show you how this curious race of thought-beings (for there is a whole race of them) connects with my acting. […] Whenever I used to read over a script that interested me, I began to concentrate my whole attention upon the character I was to portray. The first reading or two never seemed to do more than to awaken within me a responsive interest in the role. […]* "But it was when I was away from the script, when I was by myself, sometimes during the day, more often at night, that the stranger side of acting presented itself to me. Once I had read the part I was to play I could think of nothing else. What I then took to be a mental vision of how the character should look (but what I now know to have been a clairvoyant view, due to my mediumistic powers, of the thought-entity created by the writer of the story) haunted me day and night. I could not free myself from it, nor did I want to for the sake of the work, even though I was then ignorant of the true conditions of the matter" (Bozzano, 1967, pp. 176-177: cited from Rambova, pp. 213-214).
	At this point one might note that the thought-form of a certain character created by a certain author – for example, the thought-form of Hamlet as character created by Shakespeare  - is not as such the only one to be perceived by the clairvoyance of an actor who finds himself in a situation similar to the one just described.
	As the actor assimilates this character, he makes the character his own but also gives it something of himself. It follows from this that the character in some way becomes transformed and enriched, becomes Hamlet interpreted by the actor X, which can be very different from the Hamlet interpreted by the actor Y (in the context, among others, of a different company, a different director, etc.).
	Consequently, if the actor X possesses the clairvoyant faculties that the supposed entity "Rudolph Valentino" claims to have possessed in his earthly existence, it seems clear to me that the clairvoyant actor must perceive ever more clearly the thought-form not of a generic Hamlet of Shakespeare, but of his own Hamlet, that is to say, the Hamlet that he himself, with his altogether personal interpretation, has contributed to creating in that particular manner, which remains unique and unrepeatable.
	But let us for a moment come back to reading this presumed communication. At a certain point the presumed Rudolph Valentino says that in the spiritual world he learnt that "actors who are only slightly mediumistic easily throw off the influence of the thought-entity when they are not actually working in the part" (B., 1967, p. 177; R., p. 214).
	But here is what was different in his own personal case: "...I was a real medium by nature and instead of being able to shake off the control of the entity, I fell more and more under its compelling spell as my interest in it grew. Clinging tenaciously to my super-sensitive responsiveness, the thought-entity quickly merged itself into my very being, where for the time it became life of my life and dominated entirely my actions" (ibid.; R., pp. 214-215). 
	Up to now we have defined certain premises of a parapsychological nature that, in the thought of the entity "Rudolph Valentino", are capable of explaining a phenomenon that expresses itself in like manner in many other actors. It is a phenomenon that more often than not is explained in a different and purely psychological manner, without in any way involving parapsychology, rather, far too often ignoring it altogether.
	No matter which one considers to be the most valid explanations in each case, here is the phenomenon as described by our entity: "It was my gift of impressionable negativity being controlled by the living, acting, character-entity as I worked out its life-mission in its little world of the story. For the duration of the entity’s control, my own individuality slumbered. I know that often it surprised you to find me carrying out the details of a characterization when away from the studio, in the quietness of our home life" (B., 1967, p. 177). 
	Quite irrespective of the source, here we have statements of extreme interest that are perfectly in line with what we have so far said. Irrespective of whether or not one wants to consider the phenomenon in a parapsychological or even spiritist framework, there can be no doubt that at times the character seems so live as to possess the actor, to obsess him just as in the cases that parapsychology defines as posseance and obseance. 

4.	Saint Genesius: how a comic actor of ancient Rome 
      became a Christian and martyr of the faith 
      by playing the part of a Christian
	
	A limit case, but this time to be considered in a religious light as the possible irruption of the sacred, is the well known one of Saint Genesius Martyr. A comic actor at the court of Emperor Diocletian, Genesius recited the part of a sick person who, feeling himself close to death, asked to be baptized. Once baptized, the man was hauled before Emperor Diocletian as a violator of the law. The play in question was satiric and sought to cover Christians with ridicule, so that even this scene was full of wisecracks and jokes that should have had considerable comic effect. Genesius transformed himself into a sincere and authentic witness of Christ and ended up by becoming a true martyr.
	I am personally convinced that grace played a decisive part in causing his conversion. But we must not forget an important psychological aspect that serves essentially to explain, if not the reason for the conversion, at least how it must have occurred.
	To the extent to which it was at work, divine grace must here have incarnated itself in the character in such a manner that the character got the better of the actor and englobed him in itself. The actor, engaged in reciting the part of a funny caricature, suddenly found himself in the midst of a part of a completely different nature. And, generated by grace and prodigiously invigorated and rendered charismatic, the new character completely absorbed the comic actor Genesius, transforming him into Saint Genesius Martyr.

5.	The character created by an author 
      as also the one interpreted by an actor 
      and the one with which a hypnotized subject 
      identifies himself and in a certain way transforms himself 
      are mental creations or thought-forms 
      liable to acquire an ever greater vitality 
      and autonomous consistency
	
	Apart from these limit situations that may or may not be generated, let us now consider the process by means of which the new character is brought into being in the three cases about to be described. That is to say, first case, in the hypnotized subject in whom a certain personification is provoked. Or, second case, on the stage where an actor is about to bring to life a part assigned him by the script. Or again, third case, on the paper where an author is about to trace the development of a personal story within the framework of a wider and more complex story.
	I think that one can draw a not by any means far-fetched parallel between the process of creating a character (and the entire narrative environment in which that character moves) and the process by means of which a provoked personality (likewise with its own particular environment) takes shape in the psychism of a hypnotized or self-suggested subject.
	The subject created by the author, the one interpreted by an actor and the one in which the hypnotized subject transforms himself are all mental creations: they are thought-forms that can acquire ever greater vitality and consistency, an ever greater incidence and efficacy. One only has to think, one only has to affirm a reality as existing, it is even sufficient only to imagine it as existing, and it already exists. Its existence is mental and for the moment limits itself to producing effects at the mental level, but nevertheless an existence that is already concrete and very real.
	How are these thought-forms generated? Through acts of thought. We saw that thought is immediately creative at certain vibratory levels. One only has to think, one only has to affirm a reality as existing. It is even sufficient to imagine it as existing, and it already exists. Its existence is mental and, at least for the moment, limits itself to producing effects on the mental level, but it is an existence that is already concrete and very real.
	It should be strongly stressed that the most vital thought-form creations are the ones that spring as directly as possible from the unconscious. That is where the creations of genius come from. That is whence there spring the most vivid images, the ones best capable of leaving an impression on a photographic plate or other sensitive recording instruments.
	And it is by operating on the unconscious that hypnotic suggestion succeeds in affecting the psychism of the subject and obtaining thought-forms from what could be defined as its psychic, energetic, ectoplasmic material.
	It would seem, moreover, that in the course of mediumistic experiments the ectoplasm emerges from the physical body to form a thin material that mysterious forces subsequently utilize to model ever more definite and concrete and complete and in the limit even solid human forms. Now, to all appearances, this ectoplasm emerges from the unconscious part of the psychism of the medium, especially when the medium is immersed in a profound, unconscious trance.
	If it is true that thought seems always creative, it is also true that its creativity can become accentuated to the extent in which the process is generated in the unconscious by a suggestion (or a self-suggestion) that operates directly on the subconscious.
	An essential mode with which mental creation can be provoked is the suggestion that the subject may receive from another subject or also make to himself (self-suggestion).
	As is well known, if the suggestion is to be rendered as effective as possible, it will be helpful if the subject places himself in a particular, altered state of consciousness that in a certain way can be defined as a state of trance.
	On the other hand, the inspired writer or artist finds himself in a similar state. It is always in a kind of trance that he can best and most directly draw on the profound and unconscious part of his personality.
	But the inspired actor also recites in a kind of trance. Everything that is thought by a subject while he finds himself in this condition affects his subconscious far more directly and creates far more lively and concrete thought-forms	 that, in their turn, exert a far more efficient effect on the subconscious and mould it for their purposes.
	The thought-forms mould the unconscious and its effects in a far more incisive and lasting manner than what the subject could do in a more vigil state of consciousness, with all his psychism pushed downwards onto the submerged bed that it normally occupies the while the subject remains in the fully awake state.
	Let us therefore consider the moments in which a subject (a hypnotized person, a writer or an actor) is immersed in this altered state of consciousness that permits his unconscious to come to the fore. These are moments when the subconscious is far more vulnerable to any suggestion or self-suggestion and can be moulded more readily by it. 
	Very well, if in those particular moments a subject brings to life a new character, or encloses himself in a character already brought into being, that act of thought is strongly creative. Can we define it as a suggestion?
	Certainly, the hypnotized person receives a suggestion, while the self-hypnotized subject makes a suggestion to himself. But even the writer who creates a character or characters (with the entire narration and the whole of the environment in which it takes place), whenever he starts doing this in a succession of inspired moments, gives to himself and to his own subconscious something that in a wider sense can certainly be defined as an authentic form of suggestion.
	The character or the characters therefore begin to exist as thought-forms in the psyche of the writer. They are thought-forms destined to acquire ever greater concreteness to the extent to which they receive sustenance from other thought-forms, from ever new characterizations that complete the characters as such.
	Sown in the submerged and unconscious part of the writer’s psyche and left there to sleep, these thought-forms draw nourishment from this psychic humus not only to strengthen themselves and attain ever greater consistency, but also to grow and develop in an autonomous manner.
	Their mode of growth is undoubtedly autonomous, just as the reactions of these characters and their way of speaking and acting are autonomous. As a general rule, however, all this takes place within the framework that has been traced right from the beginning, ever since the character began to take shape and to define itself in profound psychism of its author. And it is indeed in the author’s psyche that the character comes to life. It is there that it draws its origin from those acts of thought that, precisely on account of happening in the unconscious, or at least on account of their producing effects in the subconscious, are as forceful as hypnotic suggestions and can be defined as suggestions in the wider sense.
	Equivalent to hypnotic suggestions – and capable of being defined as suggestions in the wider sense – are also the acts with which an author commences to insert himself into his character. This happens inasmuch as these acts commit the author’s unconscious, which is the level at which the thought-form of the new character obtains a true grip on the actor’s psychism, establishing itself there and partly modelling it for its own purposes.
	It is from this moment onwards that, respectively: the provoked personality dwells in the hypnotized subject (be it even for the mere duration of the experiment); the character dwells in the writer or the actor.
	As we have seen, these personalities or characters can lead the subject by the hand. In any case, they can assume an ample margin of initiative, though always continuing to live in the psychism of the subject where they came to be constituted.
	But now, limiting our discourse to the characters of narrative works and those of theatre works and their interpretations, we have to specify that, if it is true that the character takes shape in the author’s or the actor’s psyche, it is also true that it emerges therefrom to the extent to which the work is read or recited or projected or transmitted and to the extent to which it finds really passionate readers, spectators or televiewers, radio listeners, etc.
	 Thus the work that came to life in the author’s spirit re-lives in the spirit of those who read, watch, listen to and follow it with authentic participation The character that the author has brought into being and to which the actor has given life on the stage or on the screen becomes established in various ways also in all of these.
	At this point the character no longer lives only of whoever has created it, but also of all those who are interested in it and follow its vicissitudes with due participation. It lives in their spirits. It nourishes itself of their psychisms. It lives in all and in each, of all and of each. By now it belongs to all and not only to the writer or the actor.
	Such a character continues to live also after the author (as a pure hypothesis) has allowed it to fall into oblivion in order to concentrate his attention on other characters and stories. It continues to live even after the actor has excluded it from his repertory. It continues to liven even after the death of the actor, when the interpretation has been recorded in a film that even future generations can see and enjoy with pleasure and enthusiasm.
	The characters of the most famous poems, novels, comedies, dramas and films continue to live independently of the subjects (authors, actors) and the creative acts by means of which these subjects brought them into being. They continue to live for as long as they receive sustenance from the more or less lively new interest of other subjects. Thus, though first brought into being and kept alive by their authors and interpreters, the characters can continue to live in a manner that is not only autonomous, but also independent.
	The same may be said of the story taken as a whole, with all its plot, with all its environments of which the representation can be suggestive right down to the most minute details. And thus characters and environments, episodes, dialogues, notations, overtones and even elements that appear altogether secondary and marginal are equally dear to the imagination. This means that all these elements, if re-evoked by a renewed reading, audition, projection or transmission (broadcast), can re-live on each occasion and survive for a long time.
	The creative acts that brought these characters, environments, stories, etc., into being conferred not only life upon them, but also initiative. And, more particularly, the characters have been endowed with such an initiative that at times they can lead even their creators by the hand.
	Together with their vitality, these characters could also conserve a certain capacity of initiative as the existence of these psychic formation becomes gradually re-actualized by the public of passionate readers, spectators, listeners, critics and other admirers. 
	At this point particular interest attaches to recalling an observation that Bozzano makes in the book that here constitutes our principal point of reference and, more precisely, in the Appendix entitled "Vitalizing thought-forms and 'novel heroes'".
	As Bozzano deems proper to conclude, this shows that in certain circumstance the power of thought of novelists of genius proves capable of creating characters that, even though they are ephemeral, are also real up to a certain point inasmuch as they consist of vitalized thought-forms capable of a certain temporary independence, as also capable of being photographed and perceived by clairvoyants; characters endowed with a certain intelligence and activity, even though somnambulistically circumscribed to the part assigned to them by the novelist, seeing that in these characters there could not exist any reminiscences of a non-existent past; just as happens in the case of similar creations of somnambulistic personalities in experiments of hypnotic suggestion, personifications that in their turn are intelligent and active, though only within the limits assigned to them by the hypnotist (B., 1967, p. 162).
	Everything I have so far said in this connection in these pages is thus confirmed by Bozzano. And it receives further confirmation from the annotation that follows. Bozzano goes on to say that in the case of ephemeral characters created by the novelist with the power of thought, these characters sometimes succeed in keeping themselves in existence for as long as there endures the lively interest they arouse in a multitude of readers that becomes continually renewed; interest that, maintaining integral the vibratory tonality from which it draws its origin, contributes to preserving them (ibid.).
	And here is Bozzano’s final conclusion, which interests us in an altogether special manner as a bridge of passage to the topics to be treated further on: pseudo-mediumistic manifestations of novel characters are possible whenever the experimenters include persons who are in the grips of a temporary passion for a character created by a novelist of genius (B., 1967, p. 162).
	Over and above this, there is also the other theoretically important possibility of the creation of guide spirits consisting of somnambulist objectivizations concretised and vitalized by the subconscious thought of the medium combined with the sympathizing though of the experimenters (p. 162).
	Both these possibilities are theoretically admissible and can also be practically demonstrated on the basis of a goodly number of cases of this kind that have already been collected (ibid.).

6.	My own "Cynthia" is a good example 
      of how the protagonist of a comedy 
      can acquire such autonomous consistency 
      as to manifest itself in a mediumistic seance 
      expressing itself as a person who has a character 
      a will and opinions of her own
	
	This autonomy of the characters that a writer may bring to life is something that I have personally experienced. Many times. Especially when I want to relax from study, I amuse myself by writing little poems, sketches, minicomedies and other trifles of this kind, all in a humouristic key. Especially when I concern myself with theatre, what almost invariably happens is this: I imagine a starting situation; then I sketch two or three or at the most four characters and give them life by writing their first few words; thereafter the characters I have set on their way seemingly go ahead by themselves. It is they who act, while I limit myself to writing what they say and do.
	This may happen to me even when I am not writing. I imagine a character, identify myself with it and speak as the character would speak in harmony with his personality, mentality, culture and vocabulary. It may be that at first I have to make a little effort to find the right tone; but once I have performed this preliminary operation, the character proceeds on its own with a maximum of naturalness and without requiring me to make any effort at all. 
	Is it I who speaks in this case, or is it the character? It is certainly I who have identified myself with him; nevertheless, every now and again I remain a little surprised by the words that come out of my mouth, almost as if I limited myself to the discourse of another.
	One day I was in bed with influenza, running a fever round about thirty-eight (100°F). I had no will whatsoever of engaging in 'serious' study work. It is said that idleness is the father of vice, but at times it can also be a virtue that I decidedly lack. My incapacity of remaining idle induced me to write a minicomedy. 
	Having taken pen and paper, I imagined a dance party in a club of employees of the Municipality of Rome and, while the dancing was at its height, placed two of these employees, a youngster by the name of Mario and a girl called Cynthia, in another room, writing the first lines of dialogue. An entire minicomedy in four acts and entitled Second-class love story came forth in a gush almost of its own accord and in the space of just a few hours. Modesty apart, I think it turned out to be rather lively.
	I read this minicomedy (which, bearing in mind the number of pages, was not even all that mini) to my wife Bettina and then also to a friend, Gianni, who came to see us the day after. It had by then entered the atmosphere of our home.
	Two days after I had written it, my wife (who has mediumistic faculties) were about to start a telewriting seance with board and glass. Although at that moment there was no expectation of this kind in either of us, it was nevertheless Cynthia who presented herself.
	But why this name with its English spelling? Though Cynthia has a typically plebeian surname, she is anxious to seem a sensible and refined person. In the third act we find her married with Mario, but there is not exactly a happy ending, because Mario is a  rather rough-hewn and unsophisticated young man (though endowed with a fine brain) and there is thus a character incompatibility between them.
	The third act is wholly occupied by a tremendous quarrel. The fourth act sees Cynthia receive her best friend in the living room, while her son Carletto is doing his homework in the kitchen, and confide all her resentment to her. Just before the end, Mario comes home, the friend takes her leave, and between the two spouses there takes place a very sad and squalid final dialogue that generates humouristic effects for the simple reason that its excessive squalour is such that it would be difficult to imagine anything more squalid.
	I had to explain this in order to make clear, at least in summary form, the premise of the mediumistic communication. One has to add that in her own office (the mayor’s cabinet) Cynthia had made the acquaintance of an engineer working for the Municipality, had fallen in love with him and had even had a brief relationship.   
	In the mediumistic seances Cynthia presented herself by writing her name impeccably in the English fashion. "Which Cynthia", I asked, taken a little by surprise. "Yours", she replied. "And where are you?" "Inside you". "But what is this Cynthia?" "Your creation".
	I could also think to be the victim of a joke, possibly conceived by a spirit more playful than the others. But then I had confirmation that I was talking with a psychic formation of mine, i. e, with thought-form created by me that had in some way rendered itself autonomous to the point of intervening in a mediumistic communication just like a real human personality.
	With all simplicity I asked her: "How are things going with Mario?" And she: "Badly". "Explain yourself a little better, please". "He is an egoist". "All wives who respect themselves say this of their husbands". "Calculator". "If I remember rightly, it is he who says of you that you are an electronic calculator or something like that". "He transfers his worst defects to me". "But surely you, too, must have some little defect: why don’t you examine your conscience?" "Beh, I’m a little nervous". "Just that? And then…?" "A little worried about the financial side". "Yes, a little too much. That is the accusation Mario levels against you, and in this I think he is right". "Life is very expensive". "Alright, but is there anybody today who doesn’t have at least a mortgage?" "I should like him to find a second job".
	This new brilliant idea was altogether novel. Cynthia never even hinted at it in the comedy. In the mediumistic communication she thus tells us something more, displaying a creativity of which she was later to give us confirmation in other ways.
	It was an idea that I immediately contested: "Ah, here I can no longer follow you. You keep going over the accounts with him every day and never talk about anything other than money. Why don’t you speak to him of love? Is it possible that a person of your sensitivity…" "That’s fine talk. But he only thinks of sport".
	The sport that the athletic Mario practices with passion is also the excuse he uses every now and again to go out and meet other women. When I asked: "Is Mario at home", she replied in an ironic tone: "No, he’s gone running with his friends, so he says".
	I shall now skip some parts of the conversation and note that Cynthia gave me some further information, new for me, also about her best friend: she is called Patrizia (whereas I had not yet given her a name) and likewise works at the Municipality of Rome, in the mayor’s secretariat. When I asked her the name of the mayor, she just said that it was the recently elected one, but did not mention his name: sign that her personality, though created by mine, does not possess all the notions and therefore gets out of her difficulties like a schoolboy who has learnt only half his lesson.
	At this point I took the liberty of suggesting that she should not keep the company of this friend. I share Mario’s reserves in this connection: "If you will permit me, dear Cynthia, I have strong doubts that this Patrizia is an authentic and valid friend of yours". "Don’t dare to touch her", came the brusque and somewhat irritated reply of my creature, who can dissent from her creator when she wants and can even squabble with him when the occasion presents itself.
	"For goodness sake, she’s all yours", I replied. And immediately changed the subject. "Tell me rather about the engineer concerned with buildings in danger of collapse and tell me all". That was when Cynthia provided me with a series of new details, but all perfectly in line with the character that I had left more in the background and simply mentioned by the spouses in the course of their tremendous quarrel in the third act and then by Cynthia and her friend in the fourth: "He called me often, was always cheerful and called me 'Miss'. One day he came into the office, made my acquaintance, took me to the bar and asked me if he could see me again".
	I asked her: "Did he know you were married and had a son?" "I did not tell him either about Mario or Carletto". "Do I have to tell you that you behaved badly with regard to both: don’t you agree? "I took the thing too lightly. Then I found myself in the mill, as it were". "Were you his mistress?" "Yes". "But was there something special you saw in this man?" "He was a great gentleman. He had fine ways and many gentle thoughts". "You undoubtedly saw something in him that was not a strong point with Mario. Then somebody probably told him that you were married with offspring. Did you ever tell him?" "No, I didn’t. But he was quick in the uptake and probably went to the Personnel Office to have a look at my card". "Would you have wanted to marry him?" "I did give it a thought or two".
	In actual fact, the relationship did not last very long, for the engineer just took to his heels. Cynthia’s words in the mediumistic communication give us a portrait of her in action, and make very clear the motivations that the comedy had left in the shade and of which even I had only a rather vague idea.
	What I have here said should be sufficient to define the relationship between Cynthia and myself, her creator. Let us say that she sees her father in me. Though her notions are more limited, she makes up for this by informing me of things I didn’t know, and which I find fully in keeping with the situation of the comedy. As can be seen, just like many flesh-and-blood children, Cynthia displays a certain independence. She accepts my advice and also my reprimands, but does not fall in line with them. At times she opposes her own reasons, argues and answers back. At times she avoids the point. That, in any case, is her character: that’s how I created her. My creature, in her turn, is creative.
	I have here given you the example of an individual literary creation that acquires further consistency from the mind of the two persons to whom the work was read. I had read the comedy twice: the first time to my wife, the second to her and the friend who had come to pay us a visit. In the atmosphere of our home the character had acquired a certain density, a certain compactness that came to the fore on the first occasion on which we had provided a mediumistic channel of expression. Though Cynthia left us with the words "Thank you, see you soon", she never appeared again. This shows that her consistency, though substantial at that particular moment, thereafter quickly dissolved again.

7.	In "Father Christmas", our other case 
      we have a psychic creation: 
      this time a collective one 
      capable of similarly manifesting itself 
      in the course of a mediumistic experiment
	
	Let me now propose the example of a mental creation that is no longer individual, and therefore not only ours, but collective. Once Bettina and I had sat down to communicate, always by means of telewriting, just before Christmas, namely on the 20th of December. On that occasion we were the first to present ourselves and our subsequent question "And who are you?" elicited a wholly unexpected answer: "Father Christmas".
	Let us follow the dialogue. I replied: "Father Christmas, nothing less" "With a red tunic and a white beard", replied the strange personage. "Are you by any chance a spirit who says that he is Father Christmas?" "No". "Are you the one of those men with a fake beard whom we met out in the street today?" "No". "Excluding these possibilities, can you explain a little better who you are?" "The essence, the soul of all the Fathers Christmas in the world".
	"Alright, but who brought you into being?". Skipping some of my questions, here are the answers I obtained: "Now we are all in being: it is our magic moment … I come out of those who crowd the city… In this period you see Father Christmas on TV, in publicity, in the press, on posters, and in flesh and blood in the streets. All think of us, talk about us and our essence lives.
	At this point I got the idea of asking him to let himself be interviewed and he agreed. And thus, seeing that I was talking with Father Christmas, my first question was: Well… what do you think of Christmas?"
	"It ought to be without us. It is an event to be lived in the spirit" "It seems to me that you are speaking against your own interests". "Yes". "But is it possible that Father Christmas should speak badly about himself? Are you not cutting your own throat?" "It is becoming an exclusively economic affair". "When things had not yet taken this ugly turn, were you content to be there?" "Yes. When you go to cheer up sick children or old people abandoned in a home for the aged, that’s fine by me".
	"Father Christmas, try to be completely sincere with us. If you were to do nothing other than serve squalid commercial interests, would you in the limit prefer to cease existing? Would you prefer to die? Or not?" "Existence is gratifying: non-existence makes you not be… One accepts compromises for the sake of existing… Consumism overwhelms everybody, ourselves included. And thus, to feel yourself at least partly less guilty, one day you make a collection for the handicapped, and the day after you publicize the most useless and costly toys for a firm that pays you". 
	The poor old man was seemingly in a crisis. I felt in duty bound to cheer him up: "Dear Father Christmas, we well realize that you, too, have your problems, your interior conflicts, to say nothing of the cold. Courage, don’t worry and…  Merry Christmas". His final reply was: "You are very likeable, cheerful and… warm".
	Whereas Cynthia had seemed an individual mental creation (even though strengthened by the thought of two other subjects, Bettina and Gianni), Father Christmas seemed a collective mental creation. He derived not only from the totality of the thoughts concentrated on his figure, but also from his innumerable incarnations that we encounter in the streets at Christmas time.
	Nevertheless, the personage of Father Christmas must have filtered through us two, Bettina and me, who were the channels of the mediumistic communication. He seemed ad modum recipientis: that is to say, made to our measure, lowered into our mentality, into our language and culture and sense of humour, into our anti-consumist idiosyncrasies. Father Christmas is a collective mental creation to which we add something of our own, being in some way his con-creators.

8.	The well known case of "Philip" 
       concerns a collective mental creation 
       once again capable of 
       manifesting itself in the same manner
	
	Cynthia and Father Christmas came into being by means of a wholly spontaneous process. I should now like to say something about a character that is the result of an intentional and planned collective mental creation. This is the case of the famous Philip constructed by a group of Canadian researchers of the Toronto Psychic Research Society headed by Alan Owen and Joel Wilton and consisting of eight experimenters: five men and three women.
	In 1972 the experimenters decided to bring to life a wholly nonexistent personage. They called this personage Philip, attributed him a precise aspect, a passionate character and a tumultuous biography set in Oliver Cromwell’s England. They concentrated on him for a long time, trying to visualize him. It is clear that that they wanted to do everything possible to bring him into being as a live thought-form endowed with an autonomous consistency of his own.
	The eight researchers met every week in a room of which the walls were adorned with photographs of the places where they imagined that Philip had lived. Often they sang songs of the epoch in choir. Following a series of meditation seances, in subsequent meetings they passed to conversing also while laughing and joking and, every now and again, also singing. In this phase of the experiment they remained for a long time seated around a small table with their hands resting on its surface.
	Following three or four seances of this type, the table was felt to vibrate and began to move. One of the female members of the group said: "I’m wondering whether it is Philip who is doing these things". The immediate answer was a very loud knock.
	It was agreed that a knock meant "yes" and two knocks meant "no". All the possible questions that could be answered with a "yes" or a "no" were formulated in the course of the subsequent seances. In this way the experimenters obtained ever new and richer information about Philip’s imaginary biography.
	The historical information provided was always within the bounds of the limited historical culture of those present. "Philip" commented jokeful remarks with a crackle that resembled laughter. When the experimenters talked to each other, almost forgetting him, "Philip" made himself heard with a series of rapid beats. In short, "Philip" not only proved sensitive to affectionate attention, but also proved to have preferencew and things he would not suffer. There were things that pleased him and others that did not please him at all. At times he would not hesitate to become spiteful, as on the occasion when he tried to prevent one of the experimenters to take his jacket that he had forgotten in the room.
	"Philip" did not always stick rigidly to the scheme of his personage. The experimenters were surprised when one day he denied having been enamoured of a certain woman for whom, according to his story as elaborated by the team, he had lost his head. At times the table slipped, danced and arrived at standing on just two legs and even levitating altogether. A documentary film was also shot. These induced and controlled manifestations lasted for some years.
	One may note that "Philip" limited himself to saying "yes" or "no", whereas "Cynthia" and "Father Christmas" employed far more articulated language. This fact induces us not to exclude that a new and purposely created "Philip" could express himself with the greater creativity of which the two personages that emerged in a wholly spontaneous manner during our own experiments gave proof by means of telewriting.

9.	The case of Alexandra David-Neel’s "tulpa" 
       is that of an autonomous personage 
       created by means of special psychic 
       techniques elaborated in Tibet 
       a personage that not only 
       behaves in an autonomous manner 
       with consequences that are not always pleasant 
       but also proves capable 
       of appearing to third parties
	
	Mental creation – unconscious or conscious and desired – is a practice particularly well known in Tibet, where these psychic formations are called "tulpas" ("phantoms"). There, for example, many witchdoctors create a phantom for themselves and use it for their purposes, turning it into a blind executor of their will.
	Alexandra David-Neel, who travelled in Tibet and stayed there for a long time, acquiring profound knowledge of every aspect of the life of the local people, notes that according to these occultists, "once the phantom is well formed, it tends to liberate itself of the tutelage of the witchdoctor. And it can happen that it becomes a rebel son. Mention is made of struggles between the creator and the creature with outcomes that are often tragic for the sorcerer".
	As the author adds, cases are cited in which the phantom, asked to carry out a mission, did not return and continues its peregrinations like a semi-thinking and semi-conscious puppet. At other times there occurs a dissolution that gives rise to dramas in the truest sense of the term. The sorcerer tries to destroy his work, while the phantom does everything possible to conserve the life it has been given.
	The author wonders whether all these dramatic accounts of rebel materializations are pure imagination and does not exclude this possibility, but does not guarantee anything at all: she limits herself to reporting what she has been told by persons who on other occasions proved to be trustworthy. But, even assuming that these persons may be mistaken, she does not personally feel justified in casting doubt on their possibility of "creating a phantom". She wanted to try this experiment herself. To avoid being influenced by the omnipresent images – impressive, when not altogether terrifying – of the lamaist divinities, she chose an insignificant personage: a shortish and corpulent lama of the innocent and jovial type and dedicated herself methodically and intensely to the necessary psychic exercises.
	Here, then, is her adventure: after a few months the little man was formed. Little by little he 'fixed' himself and became a kind of permanent guest for Alexandra. He would not wait to appear only when she was thinking of him, but turned up even at times when her mind was concerned with altogether different matters. The illusion was above all visual, but it also happened that she felt as if the cloth of some habit had brushed against her or to feel the pressure of a hand placed on her shoulder. Little by little, the presence kept becoming more awkward and negative: a change gradually took place in the lama. The features that Alexandra had given him started to modify, his complexion became more minute and the man assumed an expression that seemed vaguely mischievous and bad. He became undesirable. In short, he could no longer be controlled by his creator.
	One day a shepherd brought butter to Alexandra, saw the phantom and mistook it for a lama in flesh and blood.
	What was she to do? Alexandra should perhaps have left the phenomenon to run its own course, but the undesired presence of the lama made her nervous and was becoming transformed into a nightmare. She therefore decided to dissipate the hallucination that she could no longer completely dominate. She succeeded, but only after six months and great efforts. Her lama proved to be very tough (David-Neel, p. 238).
	The author wonders whether all this might have been a pure hallucination; but then observes that, as we have more or less seen, in this materialization case the thought-form was also perceived by others.

Chapter  IV
	
IN WHAT SENSE UFO PHENOMENA HAVE TO BE INTERPRETED 
AS MENTAL CREATIONS CAPABLE 
OF ATTAINING A CERTAIN PHYSICAL CONSISTENCY

1.	 The so-called UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) 
       seem in substance reducible to collective mental creations
	
	A thought concentration, especially when it involves several people and – even better – an entire multitude, proves to be capable of generating new beings, who can even acquire material consistency to the point of being seen and recorded and photographed and to leave traces and produce physical effects.
	There has been a great deal of talk about UFOs ever since the end of the Second World War. UFO is the acronym of Unidentified Flying Object. All considered, it would seem that the question of these "flying disks" can be summarized in the following words: the UFOs represent an unknown but real phenomenon (Hynek and Vallée, p. 5).
	Here we have a phenomenon of which the reality is confirmed by innumerable testimonies, including those of some highly quakified persons. UFOs have been observed for the duration of half an hour, in some case even an hour and a half, both by individuals and by groups, at times by large numbers of people.
	Nobody has yet thought that a sighting of flying disks could be reduced to an optical illusion or a collective psychosis. Many of the witnesses are well known persons who are considered to be totally reliable. Among them there are pilots and cosmonauts, control tower operators, astronomers and other scientists and technicians. On many occasions the presence of strange objects was recorded by radar. And among the innumerable photographs there abound those of an altogether inequivocable content, above all suspicion of a possible fake.
	Hynek and Vallée (pp. 18-26) hold that the problem can today be summarized in the six points that follow:
	1) Truly unidentified sightings have been made in the air or near the ground or actually posed on the ground.
	2) The reported sightings that remain devoid of an explanation even after a careful analysis constitute a relatively small number of clearly defined appearance and behaviour patterns.
	3) The more the individuals are educated and knowledgeable, the more the UFO reports become articulated and coherent, the greater is the tendency to take the UFO problem seriously.
	4) The UFO phenomenon is worldwide, and the most expert researchers agree about certain fundamental and common characteristics (see, in particular, pp. 20-23).
	5) The UFO problem has been ignored or studied very imperfectly by the scientific community.
	6) The data collected and analyzed with care are worthy of a scientific study of an interdisciplinary nature, but will probably call for new methodological approaches.
	According to all appearances, UFOs are a reality that can assume very objective consistency. But there now arises the problem of determining the original source of this reality.
	In these pages I shall take the liberty of proposing a very particular hypothesis. In the last resort, I take the view that even UFOs can consist of particularly strong psychic formations (or thought-forms) generated by the convergence of many human thoughts. All this induces us to consider them as a kind of collective "tulpa": product of a collective mental creation, even though, be it clear, an involuntary and unconscious one.	

2.	Such an interpretation seems convalidated 
      by testimonies describing facts 
      that, if considered real, would seem unlikely 
      and appear capable of being interpreted 
      as contents of hypnotically induced subjective experiences 
      or as the result of experiences 
      of impact with psychic formations
	
	When I expressed this idea to a person who believed in extraterrestrial beings, he objected that it is extremely improbable that in such an incredibly vast universe our earth should be the only one where forms of life exist.
	Each time I replied that I have no arguments for excluding the presence of forms of life, even intelligent ones, on other planets. What I feel justified in excluding is rather the reality of extraterrestrials so clearly modelled on the personages of our books and science fiction journals or the books of, for example,  George Adamski!
	When I was a little boy, I too was anxiously waiting each week for the next instalment of the adventures of Flash Gordon on the planet Mongo. I had left him in the prisons of the cruel Emperor Ming or surrounded by a group of fearful falcon-men. And I confess that even today there are times when I still peruse with pleasure these fine volumes designed in such suggestive colours by Alex Raymond. All this is fine as an evasion of fantasy, substitute of the fables of former days; but to turn them more or less into a scientific hypothesis… would be equivalent to confusing two decidedly different planes.
	What, then, should we say about an Adamski? There is nothing to object as regards the quality of his sentiments. And one can only appreciate his heart as vast as the universe, his love that springs from the Divinity to reach all beings right through to the most distant galaxies. So that I shall not launch any stones, since I do not want to become associated in any way with the ufologists who have been so merciless with him.
	But, for heaven’s sake, let nobody come to tell me that he has encountered extraterrestrials at Los Angeles who have our selfsame appearance and live side by side with us in our cities and speak perfect American English, having even eliminated a slight initial accent that could have distinguished them (A., p. 31).
	Nor to have gone on space trips in spacecraft of perfect science fiction style accompanied by them and their extremely beautiful women (blondes and brunettes, perfect examples of earth-like female beauty).
	Nor that Martians, Venusians and Saturnians are more similar to each other than our various human races.
	Nor that the landscapes of Saturn and other planets of the solar system are almost perfectly the same as those of pictures and photographs of their earthly counterparts with mountains, valleys, streamlets and oceans (p. 106).
	Nor that there are several cities on Venus… some large and others small with beautiful buildings and people who are just like us, dress more or less as we do, albeit not quite as frenzied, in the midst of far less congested traffic" (p. 177).
	Nor, lastly, to forget all the rest, that even the moon has an atmosphere and that its face that we cannot see is inhabited by men (not enclosed in spacesuits, be it clear), who are highly organized and live in cities in the midst of a pleasant countryside with snow-capped mountains, lakes and rivers and forests populated by animals (pp. 118-119 and 170-172).
	Readings and, above all, direct experience have thoroughly convinced me that many human subjects have a vast and almost unlimited capacity of daydreaming and letting their imagination run freely, ending up by confusing, in memory above all, their daydreams with reality. And I fear that the case of Adamski is such as to cast shadows not only on his own testimonies, but also on innumerable others.
	Adamski seems to be in good faith, but is undoubtedly a visionary. Now, a vision with eyes wide open, just like a dream while sleeping, can certainly have a content of truth. But the fact is that this content expresses itself in a clearly hallucinatory form. We have conspicuous examples of this in many visions of religious men and women.
	To mention but one example, Anna Katharina Emmerich was an authentic mystic and saint; and her visions were undoubtedly of great significance: like those of the tree, the meadow with many flowers and then the muddy road, the mountain, the heavenly Jerusalem. But they should not all be taken literally in everything. Certainly not the one in which she saw many forms similar to human creatures on the moon, as also countryside places, bush and forests inhabited by animals (Mantegazza, vol. II, pp. 46-47 and, more generally, pp. 24-57).
	There are visionaries, indeed, they are not few in numbers! The fact that their visions seem very real is for the most part due to the altered state of consciousness in which these subjects find themselves. They are in a state that can be described as hypnotic to various degrees.
	Francesco Granone notes that today hypnosis comprises not only the classical somnambulist states with amnesia and alternating consciousness, but also states of 'vigil' in which, due to self- or hetero-induced facts and particular monoideisms, some functions become blocked or other exceptional functions are aroused, cases in point being the mystic and parapsychological and, according to some, also the creative artistic functions (G., p. 826).
	In hypnosis, even when self-induced, the field of consciousness becomes limited and concentrates on a single idea. And this idea presents itself to the subject and is lived by the subject as something absolute of which no other idea or experience, in any case suspended in the state under consideration, can limit the importance. And thus even the fruit of pure imagination can be lived as a reality.
	We well know that the subject may make the self-suggestion wholly on his own or because he is induced to do so by a hypnotist. Now, we have to bear in mind that the subject may practice an induction also by simple thought transmission.
	Referring to a case discussed by him, Granone recalls that during "the relationship" with a female patient in somnambulism, as also in other cases, he had noted once again, albeit not very frequently, the possibility of extrasensorial and telepathic transmission between the subject and himself. Having noted that the subject perceived the doctor’s thought before he formulated it in words, adding that the patient had her eyes closed as if she were asleep and could not therefore have deduced what he was thinking from his facial expression (G., p. 825).
	Accepting self-suggestion by a given subject as a fact, this means that the experience he or she is personally living can be transmitted to a different subject by means of a form of telepathic transmission. The same author notes that, in accordance with the laws of mental contagion, the regressive behaviour of an individual can easily provoke a regressive behaviour in an another (G., p. 827).
	He recalls the authentic "ollective hypnosis" that characterizes episodes of generalized frenzy that occur in certain discos or, more generally, in certain human crowds. In these cases the participants influence each other with extreme facility (ibid.).
	Speaking of telepathy and the paranormal influence that one subject can exert on another, there takes shape a possible hypothesis to explain the suggestions that come from the reality of the UFOs rather than from a subject.
	Preliminary question: In what sense do we here have to understand the reality of these "objects"? The answer can be found by returning to the previously expressed thesis according to which the UFOs are not a material reality, but rather psychic formations produced by the concentration of innumerable human thoughts.
	At this point I should also want to pose the following question: If each one of us men incarnate on this earth is a psychism, could this definition not be applied also in a similar or not very different manner to an individual or collective psychic formation constructed by our mind?
	In other words: Could a psychism (definable as such in a wider sense) not be constituted also by a tulpa, i. e, a psychic formation of the type already considered and produced by the concentration of psychic energies, no matter whether they are individual or collective? In the previous chapter we spoke about Alexandra David-Neel’s tulpa (an individual mental creation) and the entity "Philip" (a collective construction of the experimental group in Toronto). And also, more modestly, of my individual creation "Cynthia" and the collective creation "Father Christmas", both captured in the course of our mediumistic experiments.
	We saw that these mental creations show themselves to possess a certain autonomy of initiative and at a certain point arrive at demonstrating a kind of thinking and speaking personality.
	And now I ask myself whether these quasi-psychisms constructed by ourselves could not exert telepathic influences on us or rather, and more precisely, telepathic hypnotic inductions of a kind similar to those the Granone spoke of a moment or two ago.
	In the course of this chapter we shall see that the UFOs prove to be capable also of emitting blinding light and exerting influences of both an electromagnetic and parapsychic nature, provoking not only psychic and physical discomfort in men, but also phenomena of a paranormal or at least unusual nature. Among the latter one must include telepathy and clairvoyance, self-hypnosis, dissociation of the personality, hallucinations and daydreams, extracorporeal experiences, instantaneous healing of illnesses and injuries, stigmatization and even levitation.
	In the light of all this, great significance seems to me to attach to something I found in a book by Richard Boylan. This American psychologist-ufologist says that the extraterrestrials can cover the persons with whom they want to establish intensive relationship with a kind of powerful emotive and selective field. He calls this process "link". When a human has been "linked", he feels a particular affinity for that ET (B., p. 47).
	Boylan is clearly of the contactist faith. Here he speaks of how a personal relationship can become established between a single human being and a single ET. The human is attracted by a kind of magnetic force unleashed by the extraterrestrial.
	But, as one has to add, the human could be attracted also by a group of ETs: or, better, by that particular collective mental formation that here manifests itself as an UFO phenomenon.
	In other words, the UFOs would become reduced to collective mental formations capable of assuming visible form and very concrete consistency, and also of influencing the psyche of human beings, so as to communicate to it the perfect illusion of experiences of close encounters that the subjects will live as if they were altogether real.
	The "telepathic" influence exerted in this sense by the UFO as a human mental formation, associated with the telepathic influence of one subject on another or on others, can jointly explain how a hallucinatory episode of a close encounter can be jointly lived by a group of several subjects in the manner of a "reciprocal dream" or "shared" between several persons who take part in it and then give similar accounts of it.
	Without prejudice to what has already been said, many well ascertained facts could call for an explanation that goes beyond a mere subjective experience that, let me say it once more, could also be merely hallucinatory.
	Therefore nothing prevents us from assuming that the UFO phenomenon – always inasmuch as it is a mere psychic formation – can not only influence and persuade subjects (i. e, hypnotize them telepathically), but also manifest itself to them in more concrete and objectivizable forms.
	Just as in our days one hears a lot about UFOs, in former centuries people talked a great deal about witches and their relationship with the devil. In that case, too, it was a question of "close encounters" in their particular manner. Were they wholly illusory?
	Can the sexual relations of women with "incubi" and of men with "succubi" be reduced to pure and simple dreams? Or do they not rather imply phenomena of materialization? Can one wholly exclude that an entity (or also a pure psychic formation) could materialize precisely for the purpose of having these physical relations with human beings? What is more, can one wholly exclude other types of encounters of men and women with entities that have likewise materialized in human form?
	When we speak of materialized manifestations of entities, nothing can induce us to exclude that in these cases we may be concerned with fictitious entities: that is to say, formations produced by aggregations of human psychic energies, i. e, human thoughts concentrated on the demoniacal. Such an intense concentration of thoughts can explain the vastness and the obsessive impact of the demonism of former days and the contactism of today.

3.	This interpretation has to be compared 
      with the research results of "ufologists" 
(i. e, those who study 
the associated phenomena scientifically) 
      and the experiments of the "contactists" 
      (i. e, those who profess a faith 
      in their nature of extraterrestrial vehicles)
	
	Face to face with the facts, there are two attitudes that may be assumed in a positive key: limiting oneself to studying the phenomena as such, afterwards possibly drawing up as rational as possible an interpretation with a serene effort of objectivity; or hastening to give the phenomena a amore or less markedly religious interpretation of the science fiction type.
	The first attitude is that of the so-called "ufologists"; the second that of the "contactists". The latter identify the UFOs with presumed spaceships occupied and piloted by extraterrestrial humanoids. But the ufologists who proceed with a more accentuated scientific methodology seem far more cautious and hold that the extraterrestrial hypothesis is nothing other than one of the many possible ones. A coherent ufologist will reply to the question "UFO equal to extraterrestrial space vehicle. Is that one of your hypotheses?" just like Poher, namely that we know nothing, and that all the hypotheses that have been made are equally unacceptable at the present state of the science (Bourret, p. 97).
	Pierre Luigi Sani, on the other hand, declares that we have not yet gone beyond the threshold of a pure and simple working hypothesis. In this connection, rather, Sani observes that the picture has become more complicated, because the passage of time has put an end to theories – like the one of the secret weapon – that at the beginning of the ufology era seemed to be very solid; or has redimensioned others, including the extraterrestrial one, that until a few years ago seemed the most appropriate to explain the observed facts (Preface to Pinotii, 1976, p. 7).
	In contrast with the attitude of the ufologists, which aims at serene objectivity, in the mind of the contactists motivations of an existential-emotional type undoubtedly prevail over those of pure and cold intellect.
	Science seems to have swept every trace of the divine away from the world. Neither gods nor angels can be seen to descend from the sky to help us, we humans are left alone with our miseries and our anguish, prey of our ignorance and stupidity and wickedness. No force helps us to face up to injustice, prevarication and violence and the evils that derive therefrom. But then: not only our desperation, but also many strange phenomena suggest that benevolent beings from other worlds, more developed than our humanity, keep vigil over us and come to visit us. They present themselves as our new guardian angels. We expect a beneficial and salvific intervention from the presumed contacts that we can have with them. This is the hope from which the religious faith of the contactists seems to draw sustenance.
	All this contributes to keeping the attention of innumerable humans fixed on the manifestations of the extraterrestrials. And it is highly probable that this concentration of thoughts gives rise to and continuously sustains the collective tulpas of which the presumed manifestations of the extraterrestrial seem to consist.

4.	When observed with attention 
      the UFOs seem highly evanescent 
      and phantomatic mental realities 
      but also capable of 
      materializing to various extents 
      and attaining a rather solid consistency
  	
	In other words, the mysterious realities studied by ufology seem to be of the same nature as certain realities studied by parapsychology. I am referring particularly to apparitions or, if you prefer, phantoms.
	There are phantoms that are purposely produced, provoked or seconded in particular environments, where efforts are made to promote favourable conditions. 
	But as we have already seen and will also see later in a different connection, there are also spontaneously produced phantoms: they correspond to "apparitions". And the manifestations of UFOs have all the appearance of apparitions: and they probably also behave like them, have their possible phenomenology.
	UFOs have an incredible resemblance with a so-called elliptical galaxy, namely an object of which the edges have a diffused luminosity of gradually decreasing intensity. Their aspect is that of a slightly blurred object, characterized by a condensation at the centre that occupies about a third of their total size. An interviewed astronomer expressed himself in these terms (Bourret, p. 17).
	There are those who see UFOs without material compactness and made up only of light: light that does not seem connected with any solid body.
	On the whole UFOs seem to oscillate between a more defined solid form (in the limit: a metallic object) and a more undefined and nebulous form. So much so that one speaks of hard UFOs and soft UFOs. In the course of one and the same sighting a UFO may sometimes assume both these characteristics, varying from dense and compact to fluid and translucent. It would seem that this essentially mental and phantomatic character renders a UFO invulnerable to projectiles and at times enables it to pass through walls and even the people present.
	At a meeting of specialists, Vallée one day presented a paper entitled The Psycho-Physical Nature of the UFO, where he noted above all what appears to be a physical dimension of these objects that co-exists with an anti-physical dimension (cfr. Stringfield, pp. 47-48).
	Stringfield goes on to say that in the course of a conversation he had with him, Hynek "stressed the will of seeing UFOs as a mental 'thing' or 'form' of another dimension or another kingdom and seemed more open to the extraterrestrial hypothesis…". But in what sense and what connection? He holds that this can be realized by connecting the behaviour of the UFOs with the principles of psychokinesis (Stringfield, p. 6). And what is psychokinesis if not the provocation of psychic phenomena by a reality that is itself psychic? 
	A further clarification of this concept is provided by a remark that Hynek made in the course of a conversation with Vallée and Hastings. He said that psychic projections probably lack mass. Why do poltergeists displace objects and yet do not appear on radar screens? Perhaps poltergeists possess a physical reality? And yet they have very clear physical effects! In other words, we are here face to face with a phenomenon that undoubtedly produces physical effects, but also possesses the attribute of the psychic world (Hynek and Vallée, p. 258). I would take the liberty of making a little addition to this phrase of Hynek’s, namely "… possesses also or, rather, above all and essentially the attributes of the psychic world". 
	Hynek and Vallée agree that the UFOs are at times captured by radar and are missed at others (p. 257). It seems to me that this depends on the degree of materialization that they attain on each particular occasion.
	For Vallée the concept of conventional extraterrestrial means that visit the earth must now be considered "ingenuous". He prefers to say that the UFOs constitute both physical realities and also "windows" opening onto other planes of reality (Pinotti, 1976, p. 245).
	As Sani goes on to note, a disconcerting fact has been observed: the manner in which UFOs manifest themselves tends to evolve in the course of time. What presented itself as a phenomenon of essentially technological characteristics until the end of the ’sixties, is now increasingly assuming the appearance of a phenomenon fluctuating between the "paraphysical" and the parapsychologic, so much so as to induce various leading scholars to see UFOs as simply a different aspect of the same basic reality responsible for paranormal manifestations (Sani, Preface to Pinotti, 1976, pp. 7-8).

5.	This materializable mental nature of the UFOs 
      is confirmed by an examination 
      of the size that UFOs assume 
      as also of their colours, movements 
      speeds and their apparent occupants
	
	For the most part, the UFO occupants appear as immaterial beings made of light, transparent, capable of levitating and flying, crossing walls and disappearing suddenly.
	To give some examples, their form may be that of a pyramid or a mushroom or also of a parallelepiped surmounted by a kind of ovoidal head; more generally, however, human or at least humanoid. In that case the hair may be long or very short, and there is no lack of occupants of a female aspect.
	At times the individuals are complete with wings, but in many other cases they may lack the mouth, the nose, the ears, and even the head. They may have just a single eye. Whatever may be their intimate feelings, their exterior aspect is at times that of true little monsters. 
	Their clothes often seem luminous and silvered. At other times they resemble the model of our flying suits. And space suits are also reported. 
	Their stature may vary between ninety centimetres and a good two metres and, in some rare case, even three metres. More frequently, the testimonies speak of small personages.
	Some beings seem more similar to us humans of this earth and capable of expressing themselves in our language. But communication is more often telepathic.
	The more informed witnesses at times say that these men can reproduce themselves by clonation or, in other cases, that they consists of mere robots placed in the vehicle and are telecommanded from their planet.
	As regards the UFOs as such, i. e, the presumed vehicles wandering in space, their diameter may be one metre, but also three or twelve; and it may even arrive at about fifty and, far more rarely, at a hundred, with a volume corresponding to a large block of flats. And the conformation may be ovoidal or spherical, and also bell-shaped and ring-shaped, or cylindrical, or like a spinning top, sometimes longer than a cigar.
	This said, one should note that at times the outline may change. To give an example once again, at the beginning the object may have the form of a cigar that, following a series of evolutions, becomes like a rugby ball.
	UFOs may be sighted as single vehicles, in pairs or in formation, in Indian file, a V-pattern or other figures, in numbers that may vary from three to about twenty, but may go up to hundreds of units in successive waves. A pair of UFOs may join and become transformed into a single vehicle of the same shape and size as each had before. 
	Even the colours change. For example, if on its first appearance the object seems luminous and of a dazzling white, it can happen that for the duration of a minute it becomes surrounded by a kind of blue aureole, that eventually fades to return to the initial dazzling white. And then, only a brief time later, the white pales, becomes opaque, shades first towards yellow and eventually towards a colour intermediate between red and orange. All this in a few minutes.
	These changes of consistency, colour and shape seem very similar to those that can take place during a materialization.
	Making a brief digression that I do not consider altogether superfluous, let me add that in the course of many seances one may note a whitish and amorphous substance issuing from the body of the medium that, from one moment to the next, may assume the form of a certain personage (i. e, the presumed entity with which one believes to be communicating). The outline of the personage may at first appear as if it were barely sketched; but subsequently I may become more and more clearly defined right down to minor details. The consistency may vary and eventually become more compact, communicating the sensation to the touch that the phantom is no longer an evanescent figure, but a living being.
	As a general rule, UFOs are luminous. They often emanate a blinding light. For the most part they appear at night: the "peak hours", if one may call them such, are between ten at night and three in the morning.
	Coming back to the comparison with materializations, one should note that even these are facilitated by darkness incomparably more than by light. One should also note that luminous manifestations take place especially in mediumistic seances that are held in the dark.
	Just as may happen in mediumistic seances, the light obeys not so much the laws of physics but rather a logic of its won. The light beams may lengthen or shorten like the horns of a snail; or they may seem truncated, terminating like tubes that have been cut by means of a hatchet. The presence of a UFO may manipulate an existing light, that of the headlights of a motor vehicle for example, curving it or bending it at a right angle. The intensity of the light may vary in the course of one and the same manifestation.
	The mental-phantomatic character of the UFOs receives further confirmation from their strange movements and their incredibly high speeds, even superior to that of light. A UFO may fly at five hundred kilometres an hour and suddenly accelerate to ten thousand. It can pass to a vertiginous speed all at once, without any gradual acceleration, and also come to a halt in the same manner. It may hover in the air. It can make a right-angle turn and change direction without having to slow down. It may climb vertically like a candle for several kilometres in a couple of seconds. It can follow undulating trajectories and descend in jumps or as a dead leaf. It can penetrate into the ground. It may appear and disappear in a flash.
	A UFO may materialize or dematerialize from one moment to the next. The occupants, i. e, the presumed extraterrestrials as persons, may suddenly appear inside one of our habitations or in a motor car and then disappear again. 
	If they were bodies that are always in the solid state and obey the laws of physics, the UFOs would not only be unable to perform certain evolutions that are aerodynamically impossible, but would burn in contact with the atmosphere and disintegrate within the space of a few moments.
	Another characteristic of the UFOs is that they move even at very high speed without making any noise or, at the very most, produce a hum (like a swarm of bees) or a slight whistle. There is no bang when they pass the sound barrier. This further confirms the non-physical character of these flying objects.

6.	The interpretation here proposed 
      is confirmed by an examination 
      of the effects produced by the UFOs 
      at both the psychic and the physical level
	
	When a UFO presents itself in soft form, i. e, in a more markedly phantomatic manner, various types of paranormal or, in any case, unusual phenomena may occur among the witnesses: cases of telepathy and clairvoyance, self-hypnosis, dissociation of the personality, hallucinations and daydreams, extracorporeal projections, levitation, stigmatization, and also instantaneous healing of injuries and diseases.
	As Pier Luigi Sani notes, the problem that arises from these case histories is to establish whether the manifestation of the "psy" faculties in the witnesses is the effect of an intentional stimulation by the UFO (on the assumption that the extraterrestrials have a real existence) or sign of a substantial identity between UFOs and paranormal phenomena (Déttore, 1978-79, p. 1334).
	Though they are of mental origin, UFOs materialize to the point of leaving imprints, crushing grass, breaking branches, debarking trees, leaving holes and signs of burning on the ground, and burning various objects. UFOs may not only be photographed, but also recorded by radar. But not always: because at certain moments they may be sighted as phantomatic forms and nevertheless insufficient to leave impressions on this equipment. It is reasonable to suppose that those moments correspond to stages of an as yet imperfect materialization.
	Unlike what we said before about the softer states, whenever a UFO materializes beyond a certain limit, it may happen that it opposes a resistance when it is touched and that, on being struck by a projectile, it emits a corresponding noise. It may be that an occupant, in his turn, gives a sensation of rigid flesh when touched; and that he jumps backwards on being struck by a projectile, possibly with a kind of whine, and then immediately escapes and disappears. Aimedieu comments as follows: "Here, then, we have phantoms that obey the laws of ballistics and mechanics!" (Bourret, p. 142).
	Side by side with physical effects, the UFOs seemingly also produce electromagnetic effects: a compass needle will move and, in the limit, seem to have gone crazy; a telephone call or a radio or television broadcast will be interfered with or interrupted; a motor car engine will stop and the headlights will become weaker or switch off altogether. The same can happen with the electric lights of an apartment or a storehouse, which will go off while the object is overhead and come on again when it has passed. Even the energy distribution of an entire inhabited centre may become interrupted.
	There are cases of human persons who remain as if they were paralysed for the duration of the manifestation. They may feel a sense of suffocation or intolerable heat. They may feel itches in all parts of the body, feel cold or even freezing or, on the contrary, feel their face, their limbs or their stomach aflame. They may feel a sense of irritation in the eyes, weakness and somnolence, and also rather unpleasant olfactive sensations of ozone, sulphur or burnt metal. Both men and animals may feel restless and terrified. The presence of a UFO may nevertheless produce also true therapeutic effects, including the instantaneous healing of an injury.
	The cases I have here reviewed confirm the variegated influence that may be exerted by a reality capable of assuming different consistencies, passing from a pure mental state to a condition of different degrees of materialization.

7.	The UFO phenomenon 
      conceived in the aforesaid terms 
      may also be placed in some relationship 
      with the phenomenon of the "crop circles"
	
	The closing of a wound and the healing of an illness are the work of a vis medicatrix naturae, as it was called in former days, namely an invisible force that acts by virtue of a logic of its own. It is a logic similar to the one that causes an entire organism to function. It is a force that operates at the unconscious level and nevertheless expresses an intelligence, as if it were executing a plan, a project.
	It is well known that at the unconscious level there also operates the force that produces a wide range of different paranormal phenomena. The materializations, for example, which often reproduce the image of a deceased persons with great fidelity. Or the stigmata, which reproduce the wounds of the Passion of Christ.
	Or, again, the dermographisms, where brief writings and elementary but very clear drawings traced by blood appear on the skin of a person (Madame Kahl, for example) and also on handkerchiefs applied to parts of the cutaneous surface (Natuzza Evola).
	Hagiography likewise offers us cases of symbolic drawings that remain impressed within the heart of a saint and are discovered after his death by means of autopsy. Exemplary is the case of Saint Veronica Giuliani, who died in 1727.
	This apparent digression can serve as an introduction to the at least brief mention that must here be made of the recent phenomenon of the crop circles. In various zones, especially in England, but also in the United States, Germany and other countries, it may happen that in the morning we find ourselves in a wheat field where some ears of grain have been bent during the night in various directions in accordance with a vast, complex and very precise pattern. The photographs taken from a helicopter show a kind of large Italian-type garden: true works of art obtained only by bending the spikes without ever breaking them.
	Attempts have been made to imitate these works with a view to limiting their paranormal relevance, with results that seem very limited and poor in comparison; but the patterns of the circles that may be considered "authenticated" are far too precise and perfect of their kind to think that they could be the work of pranksters completed during the night in such a short time and without attracting attention.
	In twenty percent of the cases UFOs were sighted precisely during the night in question. People hastened to establish the usual connections. But one still has to explain the remaining eighty percent: invisible UFOs? If not, what else?
	At this point we shall do well to give the floor to Michael Hesemann, author of the work bearing the German title Botschaft aus dem Kosmos (Message from the cosmos). Hesemann is considered one of the world’s greatest experts in this field.
	He discards the idea that such complicated patterns could be simple traces of the landing of a UFO. He also notes the number of cases in which there do not appear any of these "objects". He accepts Roy Dutton’s idea that the circles are designed in the grain by a ray of energy projected from a very high level (Hesemann, p. 99).
	He also accepts and adopts an observation made by George Wingfield: very often the circles respond to the negative judgment of a sceptical scientist, if not the express desire, an order as it were, of a more open-minded researcher (p. 101).   
	Lastly, Hesemann cites an observation by Stanley Morcom: for very precise reasons, the whole of the pictogramme was undoubtedly produced by means of a single blow.
	The energy that came into play at the moment of the bending cannot be very different from the one that acts in microwaves. It was ascertained that when they are left in a microwave furnace for two seconds, the stalks of wheat and other plants become sufficiently soft to permit them to be bent with ease.
	And it is by virtue of the application of an energy of this kind that matter acquires the plasticity that renders it readily mouldable. And thus even a mild ideoplastic action is quite sufficient for giving to each zone of wheat the inclination it needs, gradually bending it in the right directions to complete an undoubtedly grandiose and complex work of artistic gardening.
	And it should also be noted that the ripening and production process of the grain remains unchanged, does not suffer any harm, not even from an economic point of view, from the bending of the ears.
	To conclude this topic: if it is true that darkness facilitates paranormal phenomena, especially physical ones, this undoubtedly gives us a better explanation why the formation of these crop circles takes place at night.
	UFO phenomena may or not have some bearing on this; and yet, in all these cases one may assume that the two phenomenologies of the UFOs and the crop circles substantially coincide as different aspects of the wider and more comprehensive phenomenology that we are here trying to characterize.

8.	The interpretation that has been given 
      of the UFO phenomenon as a mental creation 
      provides us also with the key 
      for interpreting the damage 
      attributed to these mysterious objects 
      and also certain presumed disappearances
      due to dematerialization
	
	Passing on to another topic, it is very rare that a UFO produces destructions as conspicuous as the one that on 7 August 1970 damaged some fifty buildings, killed a child and injured other people in the village of Soladare, about fourteen kilometres from Asmara. Trees were uprooted, grass was burnt (though there was no outbreak of fires), the asphalt of a road was melted in an area measuring two metres by seven and the stone wall of a bridge was crushed to pieces (Hynek and Vallée, p. 165).
	The damage caused by UFOs to things and persons can be compared with what is done by poltergeists. There, too, we have material damage produced by a psychic cause. To what can we attribute the occult will of causing harm? Can a UFO of itself have such a negative will? Or are we here concerned with a simple behavioural error of an elementary entity so brimful with force and vitality?
	Otto Binders observes that it has not yet been demonstrated that the UFOs deliberately harm human beings or discharge rays against people. Certain unfortunate cases seem to be of a purely accidental nature: they occur when humans come within a certain radius of action of the UFO within which the effects of its powerful field of electromagnetic propulsion can cause damage to living matter (David, p. 197; cfr. pp. 193-198).
	It is said that the occupants of the UFOs seem pacific and innocuous, but that they react when provoked. Can we in this very particular case assume that there comes into action a typical defence mechanism that acts more or less in all the organisms that move on the material plane inasmuch as it seeks to safeguard their survival? Here we have a mental principle that whenever it incarnates itself in matter, lowering itself into it, in a certain way also adopts the logic of matter.
	There are also episodes of disappearances, of true dematerializations. Be it even in grand style, as in the case of the disappearance of nothing less than a dwelling house (though in actual fact not inhabited, because it had yet to be inaugurated), a power plant and a great amusement park. These facts are said to have happened in New York, in the Bronx to be precise, from 1968 onwards. They have their counterparts in similar disappearances said to have occurred in other parts of the United States.
	One also hears about persons said to have suddenly disappeared with or without the presence of UFOs: and of others who on dematerializing, in Argentina for example, found themselves in Mexico, a not inconsiderable distance further north.
	What shall we say about all this? Relata refero. Testimonies do not lack and the facts are well summarized by Roberto Pinotti, an esteemed ufologist known at the international level, in his book entitled UFO: missione uomo (UFO: mission man) (pp. 172-186).
	Paying particular attention to cases of teleportation, Pinotti annotates some precise elements, like the presence of a whitish nebulous-gaseous substance similar to smoke that envelops the object destined to disappear and the seemingly almost instantaneous nature of the teleportation. These elements, so he says, induce us… to believe that something, manipulating matter, space and probably also time, has on several occasions carried out a series of abductions of men and means that culminated in the translation over a great distance, perhaps with characteristics that can be likened to those of the parapsychological phenomenology known as "apport" (P., 1976, p. 186). In fact, parapsychology tells us about "asport" phenomena (by means of a "dematerialization") and "apport" phenomena (by means of a "materialization") and therefore of a transport effected by means of the latter following the former. Since I cannot check the data, I must limit myself to saying that, if facts of this kind were really to happen, one would have to attribute them to the phenomenology that has just been mentioned.
	The discourse could be further amplified when one passes to facing the terrible enigma of the "Bermuda triangle". According to an extensive documentation offered by tens of books concerning this subject, it would seem that more than a hundred aircraft, many ships and more than a thousand persons have disappeared there without leaving a trace since the end of the Second World War. Some people have also connected these disappearances with concomitant UFO phenomena and interpreted them as the work of extraterrestrials aimed at a more thorough study of us humans. But we have already seen that facts of this kind can be explained, albeit somewhat imperfectly, also in another manner.

9.	The accounts of "abductions" 
         collected as a general rule 
         by means of hypnotic regressions 
         hardly confirm the extraterrestrial reality of UFOs

Speaking of disappearances and paranormal transports, one is spontaneously led to think of the abductions said to be  due to the work of UFOs. These are abductions in the proper sense of the term, i. e, carried out against the will of the victim. As it would seem, they form part of the most recent UFO phenomenology. Unlike what we are told by many contactists, namely that that they were courteously invited to take part in a raid of the flying disc, in the case of an abduction a person is carried into the spacecraft without any great compliments and at times even by force. There he is subjected to questioning and experiments. It seems that the extraterrestrials are studying us; and they do so not only by means of flights and landings, but also by close observation of samples of our humanity. At times some person is even killed for further experiments on his body. There are also presumed abductions without return
Richard Boylan notes that, as regards the effects that UFO abductions cause on human subjects, there are two very different interpretation possibilities: the "trauma school" and the "consciousness expansion school". The former sees the ETs as a menace. The second is fascinated by them and rendered curious in a positive sense: it sees the ETs as friends who worry about peace and human and cosmic solidarity, anxious about terrestrial ecology and the destiny of mankind, committed to promoting a consciousness expansion also in us humans (cfr. Boylan, pp. 52-53).
The abducted terrestrial may remain overwhelmed by the abduction to the point of removing the traumatic memory of the experience. So that he can be made conscious of it only by means of a hypnotic regression.
It is known that a hypnotic regression can help a good subject to remember everything that he did or saw the day before or even the week before. But, when we speak of hypnosis, we have to be very careful as regards the fact that the hypnotist, without even realizing it, may suggest far more to the subject than one generally thinks.
Talking to Hynek and Vallée, Hastings clearly warned them in this connection, using quite inequivocable words. He says that the most obvious thing that happens under hypnosis is that the subject becomes extremely susceptible to even the slightest unconscious suggestion, just as if they were verbal suggestions of the hypnotist, and that he has a strong desire to comply with it. If you ask the subject to return to a previous life and he has never had such a previous life, he will simply invent one for you! If you suggest to him that he has seen a UFO, he will have seen a UFO (Hynek and Vallée, p. 123).
I have personally dedicated a book to examining the phenomena that suggest reincarnation. Among others, I considered them to be the presumed memories of former lives that may emerge from hypnotic regressions. I can say that, mutatis mutandis, the words of Hastings I have just cited fully confirm the conclusions of my study.
I find a further confirmation in what Vallée observes in Messengers of Deception: hypnotic regressions applied to presumed abducted have indeed brought to the fore memories of a certain kind that seemed to be quite inequivocable, at least until similar regressions were carried out on eight subjects selected from among volunteers who were wholly unaware of the UFO phenomenon. The experiment carried out by Doctor Al Lawson yielded surprising results: not only did these imaginary "abducted" provide a coherent and fascinating story of the UFO abduction, but their stories were surprisingly similar to the most classical UFO abduction cases, like those of Betty Hill or Charlie Hickson. And when the transcriptions of the hypnosis were compared in detail with those of "real" UFO cases, the analogies proved to be even more evident.
Vallée comments that this study, if nothing else, shows that many aspects of the experience can originate in the mind of the witness. These noteworthy experiments therefore cast serious doubt on the validity of hypnotic regression to which many excessively enthusiastic investigators had subjected UFO witnesses (V., pp. 46-47).
Boylan dedicates a book bearing the title Close Extraterrestrial Encounters to UFO abductions or close encounters of the fourth type (CE4). These are contacts that he describes with an abundance of details, examples and testimonies. Among the author’s observations there is one that he proposes almost by the way: but on which I nevertheless want to dwell a little, because it seems to me that this particular consideration, when considered in greater detail, brings out a flaw such as to throw the whole of his approach into crisis. 
Boylan says that once the contact has terminated and the subjects who experienced it are brought back to where they were before, at home or in their bed, they do not generally realize that something has happened or that time has passed without their being aware of it (B., p. 5).
In other words, the subject remembers nothing about UFO abductions. How can this be?, asks the author. And goes on to explain that many people, especially middle-aged persons, forget the contacts they have had because the mind tends to repress into the subconscious any memories that seem too bizarre or frightening to face. In other cases the suppression of the memory is caused by post-hypnotic suggestion made by the ETs. In yet other cases the subject received a substitute memory screen from the ETs by telepathic means (B., p. 6).
How then is it that at a certain moment there emerge the memories of what really happened? They emerge thanks to the hypnotic treatment. The explanation seems even more suspect than the hypothesis that just a little earlier was formulated to explain this strange forgetfulness.
And how is it that, even though the abductions can occur at any time, "the most complete emergence of these memories of EC4s occurred in the course of the last few years, especially from 1990 onwards"? For another very simple reason, as the ineffable author tells us: these episodes of retarded memory and memory screens concord with the messages in which the ETs warn that the contacts would not remember their encounter until a subsequent and more appropriate moment. The greater part of the contacts who recuperated this memory at the beginning of the ’nineties suggest that this was precisely the proper moment (B., p. 7).
The reader may wonder whether the massive collective emergence of all these presumed renascences ought not to be considered to be connected with the latest wave of UFO psychosis and the altogether new form that it assumed. But nothing of this occurs to the author: because, indeed, there is no obvious nonsense that cannot find an explanation in a perfectly rationalized system of lucid folly.

10.   The mental character that has been attributed 
	to the UFOs enables us to interpret 
         the USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects) 
         in a similar manner, and to interpret many legends 
         of "monsters" in seas, lakes, plains and mountains 
         in the light of whatever sensible phenomena 
         may express themselves in their appearance
	
	Side by side with the UFOs, there are also USOs or Unidentified Submerged Objects. There are those who attest that they have seen large masses of a circular shape, a solid consistency and with a metal lining covering their greater part emerge from the sea in a whirl of bubbles and towering waves. In another case, however, the submerged vehicle made no noise at all and seemed more phantomatic (see, for example, Pinotti’s UFO: visitatori da altrove (UFOs: visitors from elsewhere), pp. 143-149, and Stringfield’s Assedio UFO (UFO siege), pp. 137-142. And the paper entitled UFO subacquei (Underwater UFOs) by Jim and Coral Lorenzen in Gli UFO (The UFOs) edited by David.
	If we want to attribute the nature of a psychic formation also to these vehicles, we could extend this characterization even to similarly phantomatic animals like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti, known also as the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas.
	Bigfoot, subject of many legends of the Red Indians, has been seen by numerous lumbermen and campers ever since the early years of the nineteenth century. Even today he is still seen every now and again in the more savage parts of many areas (and often very distant from one another) of the United States. He is described as ape-like in appearance and of a gigantic size, a height of up to three metres. Endowed with Herculean force, Bigfoot also possesses the power (very significant for our thesis) of suddenly disappearing and vanishing as if he belonged to the world of the spirits.
	A further extension seems equally legitimate: namely to attribute the same mental-phantomatic character of a psychic formation (albeit capable of the appropriate materializations) also to many monsters and mythological figures that were said to have been sighted by navigators of a distant past. It may well be that the testimonies regarding this matter cannot be wholly ascribed to pure fantasy. It may be that these navigators really saw something: something that can be objectivated in some respect.
	If the hypothesis of the mental formations that in some way become objectivated and materialized confirms itself as applicable to UFOs, why should one exclude the reality, admittedly phantomatic, though not excessively so, of mental formations that even in the distant past drew their origin from very strong concentrations of the thoughts and fantasies of men?.

11.   The interpretation so far proposed gives us a key 
         for sieving certain similarly paranormal phenomena 
        that we find both in the Bible 
        and in various sacred scriptures 
        and chronicles of other times
	
	Let us now consider the Bible and many other sacred texts, and the testimonies regarding Marian apparitions still abundant today. We shall there find extensive mention of prodigious facts, interpreted as powerful manifestations of the divinity. Though only locally visible, the phenomenon is noted by a very large number of persons. The sun stops at the command of Joshua: "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon (Josh 10, 10-14). The same sun revolves in a whirl around itself and starts to dance (Fatima).
	The prophet Elijah is taken to heaven on a chariot of fire drawn by similarly fiery horses (2 Kings 2, 11-13). Another person was carried by a mysterious "something" that appeared between the clouds and "would have been called fire" (relates Conchita Gonzales, one of the three diviners of Garabandal). This person was the Madonna herself who said: "It is in this fire that I have come to visit you" (Pinotti, 1976, p. 210).
	The Bible reports phenomena that can be reduced to strictly subjective experiences, like the visions of Ezekiel (Yahweh’s chariot, Ez 1: the glory of Yahweh who manifests himself on the threshold of the temple and then abandons it, Ez 10) and perhaps the vision of Moses when he saw God in the burning bush (Ex 3, 6).
	But then there are the plagues of Egypt, clearly objectivizable, and perhaps capable of being reduced to various apport phenomena brought about in grand style (Ex, chapters 8, 9 and 10). The tenth plague, the one of the darkness that enveloped the land of Egypt for three days (Ex 10, 21-23), while the dwellings of the Jews were internally illuminated, could be interpreted in terms similar to those of the Marian prodigies: locally observable celestial phenomena like the dancing sun and phenomena of paranormal luminosity – certainly of exceptional power - in the homes of the Hebrews. All this, of course, on the assumption that we are here at least to some extent concerned with real facts and not pure legends.
	The parting of the waters (perhaps of the Little Bitter Lake) to let pass the long column of Jews fleeing from Egypt (Ex 14, 21-23) can be interpreted as a truly prodigious psychokinetic phenomenon. Phenomena of this kind on a much smaller scale are the ones that enabled Elijah and Elisha, and then just Elisha, to cross the Jordan on dry ground (2 Kings 2, 7-8 and 13-15).
	The phenomena of the miraculous supply of quails and bread fallen from the sky (Ex 16) can be defined as apport phenomena in grand style, in this case beneficial. 
	The trumpet sounds, the thunder and the lightning and the smoke that rose from Mount Sinai emitting the devouring fire of the presence of the Lord (Ex 19, 16-24) seem likewise of paranormal creation. The same may be said of the divine fire that took posseance of the tent of meeting, which during the day was surrounded by a cloud (Ex 40, 34-38). But the Book of Exodus had already spoken of the presence of the Lord that preceded the long caravan of the Israelites in the desert in order to guide them in the form of a column of cloud during the day and a column of fire during the night (Ex 13, 21).
	I have concentrated attention on some phenomena reported by the Bible that certainly none of us have seen and about which we know very little. The parallel we can draw is between remote and possibly legendary facts and present-day phenomena ascertained on the basis of testimonies of which I do not know whether and to what extent they are all reliable.
	Obviously, there is no precise commensurability between one and the other. One can only delineate, and then only in an intuitive and extremely approximate manner, a possible ideal comparison: with the help of s congruous dose of fantasy and good will and relying on the comprehension of the benevolent reader. 
	Howard Chambers mentions facts of past centuries of which there has remained written memory in various chronicles. In 1290, for example, "a great round and silvery thing passed in flight" outside Byland Abbey (Yorkshire, England) in the course of a rite. Two hundred years later a silvery object in the form of a disc circled and wheeled above a church in Ireland during morning mass. Towards the end of the 16th century an Italian monastery reported to have seen luminous discs circle in the sky. Globes of light appeared at Florence in 1731 and in 1755 at Lisbon. Other luminous objects sighted on various occasion had a different and more elongated shape.
	In these sightings, here mentioned only in a very incomplete manner, there recurs the representation of globes of light and, in any case, objects that – no matter what their consistency (more solid at times, more phantomatic at others) – present themselves in circular form (cfr. David, pp. 7-18). 
	Such a circular form may readily suggest that of the astral bodies. Applying the previously adopted general interpretative formula, we assume that even these ante litteram UFOs can be defined as mere mental creations. So here is the problem: why did the mind of those men conceive them as circular in form? I think that a congruous reply could be the following: the circular or, better, spherical shape is characteristic of celestial bodies; and therefore it may be appropriate also for all bodies that come down to us from the sky.

12.	  UFO phenomena prove to be regulated 
         by an intrinsic intelligence 
         that confers consistency, dynamism and autonomy 
         on the phenomena, though of a level such 
         as to make it impossible for them 
         to differ greatly from each other 
         and condemns them to a monotonous, sterile 
         and inconclusive repetitiveness 

	What, then, can we conclude about the UFO phenomenon? How can we define it? All considered, it seems to me that the hypothesis that the UFOs are psychic formations sustained by our human thoughts is receiving continuous and ever greater confirmation. They would therefore seem to be thoughts sustained so strongly and vigorously as to acquire in a certain way consistency and compactness to the point of materializing. Their consistency becomes also autonomy of action, capacity of initiative.
	The action of the UFOs follows an intrinsic logic of their own. It proves to be governed by an intelligence. One should not therefore be surprised that some creativity comes to the fore even in phenomena of this type.
	All said and done, it is a creativity not so very different from the one that generates works of art at the unconscious level, works that emerge into consciousness as complete and perfect as Minerva sprang from the head of Jove. Are not the crop circles likewise works of art?
	The individual UFO phenomena seem to be governed by some form of intelligence. And it is not by any means necessary that such an intelligence should belong to beings conscious as we are and, so I would add, as could be the angels referred to in Christian theology and also outside it. The intelligence here referred to can be compared to the one that – always at the unconscious level – governs the life of any organism, be it elementary, animal or vegetal.
	It is an intelligence that operates in a manner such that the individual may realize himself as such and the species may continue to propagate itself. But the species as such does not seem to have within it the particular degree of consistency and intimate dynamism that could lead it to undergo a true evolution.
	If there is an evolution, it is realized more due to the effect of the evolution of the consciousness of men and the advent of new tastes and fashions than on account of an intrinsic and adequate evolutionary force possessed by the UFO phenomenon.
	What happens to the UFO phenomenon is similar to the living species that have passed the baton to superior species and no longer evolve on their own account, but tend to maintain themselves and repeat themselves ad infinitum, without implementing anything really creative and new that could make them attain further goals.
	Together with Vallée, let us observe a particular aspect of this repetitiveness. Amateur UFO researchers say that there is proof of the fact that we have been visited. According to them, these spatial creatures come here with their spacecraft and at a certain point have to repair them! They come here, and we see them while they break branches and gather stones. According to these persons, this constitutes proof that we have been visited by space explorers, because even when we go to the moon, we gather stones and bring them back with us, and they are doing the same thing. But why should they do it once, and then again and again, and so on? For twenty-five years! (Hynek and Vallée, p. 68).
	The original edition of the book from which I have cited this passage dates to 1975. The twenty-five years of exploration without any apparent outcome have now increased to almost half a century, and yet no outcome would seem to be in sight.	
	A comment made by Stringfield seems to echo this view. He wonders why a mission from another world should be so monotonously repetitive in its tactical operations, maintaining so uncommunicative an attitude in its surveillance. Why should this intelligence of "another world" (if it is of another world) insist so greatly on controlling man, studying the flora and the fauna of the earth, the atmosphere, the seas and the geological crust? (S., p. 147).
	The skies are obscured by the dense rain of UFO reports always telling the same stories: malicious incursions in homes and motor cars, rays of light affecting persons and electrical installations, silent and sprite-like creatures that always do "crazy" things and the usual "robot" with its rustling metallic shell (S., p. 148).
	Vincent Gaddis would reply that there is an infinity of reasons to explain the failure to establish contact. It could be that they do not want to communicate with us. It could be that they first want to complete a detailed study of the earth and our civilization and make sure that we would react positively to their contacts. It could be that after studying us they decide never to enter into contact with us (David, p. 32).  
	Pinotti summarizes another explanation, namely that the entities of the UFOs respect our civilization, deferring an official contact to a moment characterized by socio-anthropological conditions less dangerous and traumatic for homo sapiens (Pinotti, 1990, pp. 479-480). History knows no other case of such great discretion. In any case, there is no lack of ever new reasons to justify this continuous deferment, because the frustrated but irreducible faithful keep on inventing them.
	There remains the fact that many years of sightings have never seen a true and seriously attested contact with the occupants: who, to be quite frank, seem far too phantomatic and elusive to let us think that they could really exist.
	Ugo Déttore notes that, having established with the extraterrestrials only contact of a presumed telepathic nature, certain American contactists even obtained an appointment in a distant locality of the United States. But the appointment did not take place, because the communicants, on the way to the indicated place by car, took the wrong road and realized this only when they were already several hundred kilometres away.
	The author’s comment is perhaps somewhat unkind, but in its substance seems anything other than out of place: one does not have to be a psychoanalyst to understand that the mistake was as voluntary as it was unconscious: they wanted to have proof, but at the same time they knew unconsciously that they would not have found anybody at the place of the appointment (Déttore, 1973, p. 352).
	Hallucinations apart, the sole contacts in the course of which humans have managed to converse with the presumed extraterrestrials seem to be those by means of automatic writing (or telewriting or tiptology). And then there is at least the theoretical possibility of establishing contact by means of forms of instrumental transcommunication, with the help of electrical or electronic equipment (procedures that have analogies in psychophony and psychovision)
	But what type of communication does one obtain? I, too, have had contacts with presumed extraterrestrials (including a deceased extraterrestrial) on three occasions. And I can say that the answers I obtained were full of commonplaces proposed in a wholly ingenuous, uncritical and science-fiction-type form in the worst sense, so that I could not do anything other than contest my interlocutors. I easily succeeded in doing this, but have to say that they kept insisting with their obvious and unmasked absurdities and seemed to do so with full conviction. I told them, perhaps rather unkindly, that they were nothing other than collective psychic formations, but they kept on saying that they were real extraterrestrials. Only the onset of tiredness could put an end to discussions that threatened to become infinite.
	I have already spoken about my mediumistic dialogues with two mental creations like Cynthia (an individual creation) and Father Christmas (a collective creation of Christmas time). Now, both Cynthia and Father Christmas proved well capable of sustaining a conversation, even a lively one of a certain level. The same may be said of our interlocutors from space, even though in this case the dialogue was rather squalid. If Cynthia and Father Christmas seemed aware of their nature of creatures of the human mind, this can be explained also by the fact that nobody would mistake for real persons either the characters of a comedy or the likeable gentleman in a red tunic with his false white beard.
	In the case of the extraterrestrials, on the other hand, their presumed psychic formations with whom we conversed had essentially been brought into being by firm believers in their real existence. This can explain how, given the limited consciousness they had of themselves, those I consider to be mere psychic formations could affirm their concrete and real existence with accents of full conviction, in perfectly good faith.
	In short, leaving aside these strongly suspect mediumistic or pseudo-mediumistic chats, the famous extraterrestrials seem to postpone sine die or, if you prefer, to the Greek calends anything that might be described as a full and conclusive manifestation.
	Hynek and Vallée seem to conclude (p. 38) that UFOs do not seem to have any reason for coming here. Apparently, they do not constitute a menace. They do not seem to influence our society at the collective level. In short, UFOs seem to be a "crime without a motive".
	To be a little more complete, one should here add that in another book, the previously mentioned Messengers of Deception, of which Vallée is the sole author, he gives a rather negative judgment of UFO culture quite independently of who might be its promoter in space or here on earth. He sees it rather as a subculture and an undoubted peril for science and, more generally, for the rationality and critical capacity that man should consider his inalienable patrimony.
	But, concluding this parenthesis, let us come back to considering UFO phenomenologies as such. In the very limited and ambiguous manner in which they have been expressed until today, year after year throughout the fifty years that have elapsed since their first appearance, we can see them as a stubborn, incorrigible and exasperating inconclusiveness. 
If the UFOs are nothing other than the condensation – though admittedly strong, active and autonomous – of many human fantasies, it is clear that they are already doing everything they are capable of doing and that we simply cannot expect them to do anything more.

Chapter  V

HOW THE ORGANIZING PSYCHIC FORCE 
CAN ACT ON MATTER FROM THE OUTSIDE

1.   There are thought-forms capable of producing effects 
      also on the physical level and even healings: 
      they do so in an indirect manner 
      by first influencing the psyche of the other subject 
      to whom there belongs the physical body 
      on which the physical effect is to be produced

	Mens agitat molem, says Virgil: "The mind agitates matter", i. e, it impresses a movement and also a form upon it. Thought-forms that a subject may exteriorize, i. e. project outside his physical body, can operate in an intelligent manner (it does not matter whether at the conscious or the unconscious level) to produce physical effects on other bodies.
	These thought-forms are generated by the mind, as we said. They are obviously of a pure mental nature. It is therefore perfectly conceivable that they should have an effect, first of all, on what exists and acts inside these other bodies at what can be called a mental level.
	In other words, every physical body can have a mental dimension of its own. According to all appearances, in each of our human beings there is a psychism that organizes and regulates its functions. The same can be said of every animal or plant.
	Lastly, we are always free to assume that even a mineral, a mountain, an extent of water, a planet or a star may have an elementary psychic dimension of its own.
	This is affirmed by the animist philosophical conceptions and, long before them, by the religious sensitivity of primitive men. In some way it is also confirmed by subatomic physics when it makes us see that at these levels matter reduces to something that to an ever greater extent loses the classical characteristics of materiality conceived in the mechanistic sense of Galileo and Descartes (extension, compactness).
	That matter reduces to something that can no longer be conceived as "material" is further confirmed to us by parapsychology, which shows us not only that space and time are relative, but also that matter itself can be reduced to spirit, to mind, to thought.
	What, then, could be the manner in which the thought-forms emitted by any human subject act on outside bodies? First of all, the thought-form would act on the psychic dimension of the outside body, bringing about a transformation at the mental level that, in its turn, could transform that body at the physical level.
	Can there be mind-to-mind effects? There undoubtedly exist telepathic phenomena, but also remote hypnotic influences: a subject may be hypnotized at a distance and reply to mental questions and receive similarly mental orders without seeing the hypnotist, without having him in front of him, while in a place well away from him.
	Franz Mesmer may be considered the originator of hypnotism, which at that time was called "magnetization". It was a therapeutic practice. Mesmer spoke of a "fluid" that issued from the magnetizer and became transmitted to the magnetized by means of particular gestures. These were the so-called "magnetic passes" with which the operator barely brushed against the subject with his extended fingers or made them "pass" a short distance in front of his face.
	The practice of hypnotism later developed from mesmerism. However, the theorizers of hypnotism did not speak of the action of a fluid, but rather of a simple suggestion made by the hypnotist.
	But I am asking myself how a hypnotist may hypnotize a distant subject who can neither see nor hear him. In this case some kind of quid must undoubtedly be transmitted from the first subject to the second. This will be a subtle energy, a thought-form, a mental reality or however else one may want to call or define it.
	I think that some form of subtle fluid must emanate from the personality of each one of us and, more particularly, from the spiritual nucleus of the personality.
	It is the force that in telepathy phenomena may render itself present in the receiving subject to the point of assuming the consistency of a phantom that may be seen by several persons. These are the apparitions that we shall consider a little further on, when from the partial manifestations of thought-forms and mental creations we shall pass on to treating the manifestations of the subject in all its unity and globality.
	In his book Apparizioni e phantomi (Apparitions and phantoms), Andrew MacKenzie notes that even today there are many reports regarding the apparitions of living persons. And goes on to say that, if we want to take them into consideration, these reports suggest that "man has an etheric body".
	Scholars who have dedicated a great deal of discussion to the problem of how apparitions can be explained, have agreed on a hypothesis that, no matter how many times it may have been revised and corrected, still postulates an object of an etheric nature. It is a theory that MacKenzie accepts. According to this theory, such an object is not exactly physical, nor even purely mental, but something between these two (Mackenzie, p. 308). What issues from the acting subject to exert its effect on the passive one is a force that is once again intelligent, once again moulding and organizing. In the global (and yet imperfect) manifestation that coincides with the apparition, the organizing force of the subject wholly reproduces the subject’s corporeal form, while in a manifestation of a more partial nature it only presents itself as limited energy, and yet always of the thought-form type, forming thought, mental form that gives form to something else.
	Let us now review some effects that the organizing psychic force can produce when it becomes exteriorized from its own physical body.
	The energy of Nina Kulagina stopped the heart of a frog that had been extracted from the body within twenty minutes, whereas normally it would continue to beat for about four hours in this situation.
	This Russian sensitive also reanimated fish that seemed dead; they floated immobile and with their heads down, but resumed swimming after the application.
	Her hands transmit a sensation of great heat, indeed, some volunteers suffered even burns (though without blisters) after she had imposed her hands on them. A thin sheet of lead interposed between her hands and the patient blocks the hot sensation.
	Tests carried out by Carrol Nash in the United States on sixty patients chosen at random in the endeavour of influencing the growth of colonies of Escherida Coli in either a positive or a negative manner proved successful. The subjects were invited to desire that certain colonies should grow and others have their growth inhibited.
	Let me give some further examples. Similar experiments have been carried out by other researchers to accelerate the growth of some yeast particles (Haraldsson, Thorsteinsson, Grad) and inhibit the growth of microscopic fungi (Barry). In other experiments of this type, Tedder and Mouth worked with subjects who acted at a distance. Loehr, a chemist and Presbyterian pastor, carried out experiments in which he tried to influence the growth of plants by means of prayer. The results of these and many other similar experiments seem to be rather significant. (An appropriate bibliography compiled by Cassoli and Iannuzzo can be found on pp.   30-39 of their book).
	An emission of forming forms undoubtedly takes place in paranormal healing phenomena. I am referring to a whole series of phenomena that cover the sectors of pranotherapy, the spiritual therapies that take place in religious contexts, Christian or otherwise, and healings said to be miraculous.
	Many people have tried to attribute hypnosis to a mere fact of suggestion. But this interpretation can no longer hold when one considers remote hypnosis performed without advising the subject.
	Something similar may be said of paranormal healings. Ugo Déttore observes that these are very numerous, but are not all contained within the confines of what would normally be called suggestion. If one then passes to the closely related field of miraculous healings (Lourdes, Fatima, La Salette, etc.), we shall find even more imposing and for the most part scientifically controlled phenomena. The healings in question concern such illnesses as cancer and tuberculosis and can hardly be attributed to suggestion and self-suggestion healings that sometimes take place within the space of a few minutes, involving even children of two or three years, where one simply cannot speak of a phenomenon of self-suggestion (Dèttore, 1973, pp. 223).
	It is true that in the Marian sanctuaries we have healings but not the healer, at least not a healer as a simple man (ibid.) However, we must not forget the miraculous healings attributed to the saints while alive and after death. These, in particular, are subjected to the most severe scientific sieving.
	Similarly to hypnosis, attempts have been made to explain paranormal healings exclusively by means of suggestion. But there are cases that contradict the theory that the sick subject in some way heals himself by means of self-suggestion.
	This is excluded by remote healings in which the patient has not been pre-advised. A dying person cannot receive a suggestion and be healed within a few minutes; nor can fractures be mended in a few hours by means of suggestion. The same may be said of the psychic or mediumistic surgery practiced in the Philippines and Brazil.
	Many scholars contest this surgery, reducing it to a series of deceits or conjuring tricks. Many times they limit themselves to summary judgments of a generic order. At other times they think they can conclude in such a negative manner on the basis of a careful observation of what has happened in a particular case, in the course of a particular experiment.
	I am certainly not in a position to contradict what has been observed by someone on occasions when for obvious reasons I could not be present! I am prepared to ascertain the tare of everything, but in the end I cannot disprove it all. I cannot admit that all the witnesses who confirmed these facts were deceived en masse in the Philippines, in Brazil and elsewhere. These testimonies may be pruned and reduced in number as much as you wish, but in the end there still remains a nucleus of well ascertained phenomena.
	To give but two examples, let me recall that a famous Brazilian psychic surgeon, Arigò, was studied by John Fuller, author of a book about which I shall have more to say in a moment; and also a significant documentation collected by Christian De Corgnol in the volume I guaritori filippini (The Philippine healers).
	It seems that the healer immerses his hands and sometimes also a knife in the patient’s flesh and that blood gushes out, though the flow stops with a certain rapidity, while the wound closes in a short time, leaving a slight scar or even no scar at all. It also seems that the tumour or cyst or infected matter is extracted from this incised zone.
	There are some who analyzed the matter said to have been extracted from the body of a patient and found strange and suspect things. Someone even attests having seen the blood issue not from the incision, but from a little bladder that the self-styled healer kept ably hidden in his hand (Guido Rampoldi, in Campanelli and Alberti, p. 32).
	There are those who contest the film of an operation, said to be nothing other than a well executed trick. But one may reply that something of this kind would require the complicity of the surgeon or pretended surgeon, the camera operator and the patients, as well as their friends present on the occasion. Rather improbable, but not 100% impossible, as the irreducible critics would reply in their turn (G.R., in C. and A., pp. 342-343).
	Those who speak of tricks may cover many and even very many cases with an explanation of this kind, but you cannot reduce everything to tricks without assuming the complicity of the patients (and one can hardly imagine for what strange reason) or without concluding that all are hallucinated.
	One will wonder how the hands or a bistoury can incise the live flesh of a person in depth without anaesthetics and yet without causing a minimum of pain and often without leaving any scar on the skin. But, as a critic notes, it is precisely this that makes one logically suppose that we are concerned with faked interventions! (ibid.).
	Is this sufficient to annul all experiences of this kind as purely illusory? But if all this leaves even a minimum residue of a possible paranormal explanation, why should we not compare the perfect healing of these wounds with the equally perfect healing and complete lack of scars that occurs in the case of many stigmata?
	Do the stigmata not constitute a particular form of the remodelling of matter by the psyche? Now, if the psyche (or the spirit) shows itself capable of giving a different form to the matter of its own body (as it does in the case of the stigmata), why should it not be able to do the same thing with the body of others (as one presumes is done in the case of psychic surgery operations)? John Fuller thoroughly studied the case of Arigò, a mediumistic Brazilian surgeon. According to impressive testimonies and also a photographic documentation that can certainly not be wholly reduced to a fake, Arigò made his incisions in the patient’s body with a pair of scissors or an ordinary kitchen knife, without anaesthetics and without procuring even a minimum of pain, and blocking haemorrhages right from the beginning with the simple aid of a prayer. He operated in trance, incorporating – so it would seem – the entity of a German doctor who had died in 1918. In this way he is said to have healed innumerable persons whom official medicine had considered hopeless cases.
	One of Fuller’s remarks seems to me to be of particular interest for the theme of the present paragraph. It is a remark that receives obvious confirmation, above all, from the psychic operators who do not touch the patient’s body. But I think that it can also be applied to the others who insert their hands in the body (as in the Philippines) or use a knife (like Arigò). It refers, however, to psychic healers in general.
	Let us give the floor to Fuller: "Their technique contemplates surgical interventions on what the Kardecists [i. e, the Brazilian followers of Allan Kardec) call the spiritual or etheric body. These mediums avail themselves  of surgical instruments in the true sense of the term and the patient is made to lie on an operating table. Normal surgical practice is followed, though without incisions, because the movements are made a few centimetres away from the patient’s body: in short, an exact pantomime of an intervention carried out in a modern hospital.
	"The concept is that the mediums are operating on the spiritual body, which they consider real to all intents and purposes, and that the results of the operation assume concrete shape in the physical body. Qualified doctors were able to note the success of many interventions, but this concept of psychic surgery is so incomprehensible to the masses as to have remained practically unknown in the Western world" (Fuller, pp. 50-51).
	In the volume edited by Enzo Campanelli and Luca Alberti, various authors mention psychic surgery operations carried out without touching the patient’s body (like the ones that, for example, take place at the Tupiara Spiritist Center at Trio de Janeiro). What is more, they also speak of Italian pranotherapists who cure the patient without touching him and from a certain distance: from one to thirty centimetres (C. and A., pp. 136, 143, 154, 175).
	Cassoli and Iannuzzo note that one of the most variable aspects of pranotherapy is the "distance between the hands of the healer and the body of the patient: there are those who keep them at an average distance, others who keep them closer to the patient’s body and those who actually touch it". And it is probable that these variations depend on the personal convictions of the various healers (C. and I., p. 131).
	In all these cases the most plausible explanation seems to be that of the action of a quid that emanates from the healer (or the environment in the case of sanctuaries or sacred places). One may also think of a fruitful and efficacious collaboration between the energies that stem from the healer and those that, stimulated by the presence of the healer, emerge from the subject.
	Pierluigi Marsigli, who dedicated a book to the direct experiences he had of the Philippine psychic surgeons, attested in the course of a conference that, in close contact with one of them, Alex Orbito, he himself performed an operation and obtained more or less the same results.
	As regards the efficacious transmission of energies from one subject to another, I should here like to add a testimony of my own. In 1982 I stayed in the United States together with my wife Bettina and, more particularly, spent some time in San Francisco. On that occasion we were invited to take part in a meeting held in a private home in nearby Orinda and dedicated to metal bending. The seance was conducted by Jack Houck, who personally reported these experiments in an article published in PSI Research (cfr. Houck). Knives and spoons had been distributed to the participants, who were about twenty-five in number. None of them proved capable of bending them with their own forces in normal conditions. But all of them succeeded in doing so after a kind of collective preparatory rite that rendered possible the emergence of special paranormal energies.
	At a certain moment both Bettina and I had the feeling that the cutlery had suddenly become soft and bendable. Now, this happened at the very moment in which the conductor of the experiment passed and stopped for a few instants in front of me and then in front of my wife.
	Evidently, both in the case of the operation of psychic surgery and in the metal bending case, the expert operator must have transmitted to his new and improvised partners a kind of thin fluid of invisible energy that enabled the latter to do the same things. And everything tends to confirm that the energy in question must have been intelligent, at least at the subconscious level; in other words, it must have been a thought-form operating in a precise manner in pursuit of precise ends.
	Nothing moreover excludes that the communication of the psychic energy of the first subject to the second may have stimulated the emergence in the latter of energies of his own to cooperate. However, the emission of a thought energy by the first subject remains the necessary element to explain the phenomenon, and this irrespective of whether it operates on its own or avails itself also of the cooperation that it has induced to spring from the second subject.
	At this point one cannot but recall those who, like Cassoli and Iannuzzo, invalidate as scientifically unfounded the hypothesis that the action of pranotherapy can be attributed to a quid of a physical nature, an energy, a fluid that modifies the state of illness of an organism with therapeutic effects (C. and I., p. 143).
	The hypothesis of a fluid that exercises a moulding action is an idea familiar not only to primitive men, but also to many occultists and esoterists, as also to philosophers of an animist orientation. The idea was reproposed by Franz Mesmer at the very height of the Enlightenment. Later it was taken up by others under various names and with many different shadings.
	It thus reappeared in the "etheric body" and the "astral body" of the theosophists; in the "perispirit" of the spiritists; in the "od" of Karl Reichenbach (1788-1869); in the "directing idea" of Claude Bernard (1813-1878) that guides the physiological activities to organize matter; in the "aura" of Eugéne de Rochas (1837-1914); in the "entelechy" reinterpreted by Hans Driesch (1867-1941) as dynamism operating deep down in every form of life; in the "luminous sheaths" that Eileen Garrett (1893-1970) saw around people, whose character was revealed by the luminosity and colour of the sheath; in the "orgone" or "orgonic energy of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957); and in the "body of biological plasma" of the Kirlians (the reality of which seemed to be confirmed in 1967 by the famous apparatus they invented).
	With a view to explaining paranormal healings, today one hears much talk about both the prana of the esoteric tradition of the Hindus and the bioplasm of Soviet researchers. Cassoli and Ianuzzi contest that prana is a word of rather uncertain and mysterious significance. It is in fact the neutral character of this term that made the two authors decide to adopt it for the purposes of treating pranotherapy. For them, however, prana means anything other than a physically ascertainable form of energy.
	As regards bioplasm, a concept proposed by the Russians Grishenko and Inyushin, the latter defines it as consisting of ions, free electrons and free protons. Such a bioplasm is highly conductive and offers opportunities for accumulating and transferring energies within the organism and between different organism. It seems concentrated in the brain and the spinal chord. At times it may become extended to considerable distances from the organism, thus giving rise to the possibility of exerting an influence on the phenomena of telepathy and psychokinesis (cited by C. and I., p. 145).
	Cassoli and Ianuzzi wonder which phenomena could offer the scientific proof of the reality of a bioplasm conceived in this manner. They say that these proofs are wholly lacking and that not even the machine of the Kirlians, invoked in its support by Inyushin, can demonstrate anything in this connection. An article by the Italian biologists Cotugno and Silberstein, cited by these two authors, concludes that this type of technique does not highlight any unknown energies, but only a trite physical effect that is suggestive, but does not demonstrate anything as far as the bioplasm problem is concerned (C. and I., p. 146).
	One may undoubtedly observe that the conception of bioplasm seems rather… materialistic. As such, it undoubtedly conforms to the materialistic credo that was widely diffused and officially blessed in the Soviet Union.
	Now, the present study is nothing other than an attempt of affirming that many and widely differing signs suggest that all the phenomena of life are underlain by an energy, a psychic force, a soul or whatever else one may want to call it.
 	It is a spiritual principle, but one that nevertheless proves capable also of assuming a physical consistency. In the next chapter we shall se that this psychic force, over and above organizing matter, can also "materialize" itself on its own account. We shall therefore see that it is perfectly possible to conceive an organizing psychic energy that can also exteriorize itself to go and act on the matter of a different body.
	After having subjected the physical model of a possible explanation of pranotherapy to severe criticism, Cassoli and Iannuzzo pass on to criticizing the parapsychological model.
	In actual fact, their objections also concern other models: the psychological model and the placebo effect. Although models of this kind may be invoked to explain the greater part of these phenomena (Ehrenwald, in Wolman, p. 24), Cassoli and Iannuzi deem them to be insufficient. But it will be as well to leave these aside, because they are of far less interest for the purposes of our present discourse.
	According to the parapsychological model, the pranotherapist reduces himself to exerting a psychokinetic action. The next paragraph will tell us more about psychokinesis, but for the moment it will be sufficient to say that it is the mind (psyché) acting on matter in such a manner as to produce a movement (kínesis) in it.
	What would a pranotherapist do in this perspective? With his psychic energies concentrated on a certain objective by a specific act of his will, he produces a certain transformation in the organism of another living person.
	At this point the two authors object that if one accepts the psychokinetic model, given a case of atherosclerotic arteriopathy, it is as if one were to say to the healer: you have to act by means of psychokinesis on the walls of a certain number of blood vessels, then you have to exert an influence on these two or three metabolic processes and, lastly, you have to rebalance some syntheses that occur in certain districts of the organism. In other words, seen in a psychokinetic key, the healer would have to exert a targeted action (C. and I., p. 154). But this is exactly what cannot happen, say Cassoli and Iannuzzo, if for no other reason than the pranotherapist’s ignorance that would make it impossible for him to perform a targeted action of such complexity,
	It seems to me that one could reply to an objection of this kind in the following terms. Assuming that pranotherapy is made possible by the action of an organizing psychic force, this force would act in its own body even before it acts in the body of other individuals. Now, could one ever say that it acts there by means of a series of targeted actions at the conscious level? Surely not!
	Do I perhaps give orders to my lungs to breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide? Do I consciously follow the process of digestion and the functioning of all my individual organs? I could not do it if I were wholly ignorant of anatomy and physiology, but I would be equally unable to follow and coordinate all these processes in every organ and cell for twenty-four hours a day even if I taught these subjects at a university!
	This means that the organizing psychic force acts within me at the unconscious level. And it is always at this level that it acts as vis medicatrix naturae to heal me every time it causes a wound I have suffered to skin over or opposes negative factors to re-establish the proper physico-biological and also mental equilibrium that constitutes good health.
	As we can see, it is very easy to note that the action of the psychic force takes places at the unconscious level for as long as it remains within the limits of its own body. If this is so, it should not be altogether inconceivable that the psyche can continue to operate at the unconscious level every time it transfers itself into the bodies of other individuals for the purposes of a therapeutic action.
	Conscious is the work of homo faber, the work of the artisan who makes his tools before he sets out to construct; and performs each acts with a view to the subsequent ones, of which it represents the means, the obligatory point of passage. But nature does not work like a human artisan: its work is global, an en bloc action.
	If we wanted to express ourselves in the terminology employed by Henri Bergson, we would say that nature does not "fabricate" but "organizes". And it organizes instinctively, at the unconscious level, even man’s own living organism: the organism of the man who, at the conscious level, will then avail himself of his intelligence to "analyze" and "fabricate". One could thus conclude that nature "organizes" everything within us and that the pranotherapist does exactly the same thing when he sets out to operate on another individual. And he always does it at the instinctive-unconscious level. 
	Considering many miracles like the ones that take place at Lourdes or are brought about by the mediation of saints, Cassoli and Iannuzzo hold that the true factor in healings is an "energy" that derives from the "spirit" It is "a spirit that interacts with matter". This, as they add, is not a theory: it is only an attempt to understand what a paranormal healing really is (C. and I., pp. 159-167).
	Perfect, but if it is to interact with matter, the spirit will in some way have to "materialize" itself. It will have to turn itself into psyche in order to attain a vibratory level that can be defined as physical.
	Just like the prana of the Hindus, the ruah of the Hebrews, the pneuma used in the Greek translations of the Bible and, lastly, the spiritus of the Latin translations, we are always concerned with a "blowing", with a "wind".
	This "wind" is of divine origin. But it then becomes human in the creatures brought into being by God in his own image: and thus the pneuma becomes psyche. 
	Such a "wind", which is pure spiritual energy, eventually assumes a more tangible and physical form in all the entities of nature and even in the corporeal organism of us men.
	This "wind" thus becomes, as it were, articulated and materialized in the multiplicity of living persons. And it is there that it expresses to the very full its transforming capacity and, even more so, its creativity.

2.	But thought-forms can produce physical effects 
         also by acting in a direct manner on matter: 
         this is what happens in psychokinetic phenomena
	
	An intelligent energy, a thought-form, is also the one that, upon becoming exteriorized from a subject, moves a body without the subject acting physically on it with the mediation of the body, either with or without the assistance of instruments. Here we are in the ambit of the psychokinetic phenomena, where it is the psyche that in a direct manner impresses a movement (kinesis in Greek) on an external body.
	The classical psychokinesis experiments are the ones carried out from 1934 onwards by Joseph Banks Rhine and his wife Louisa, at first making use of dice. They tried to exert an action on two dice that would induce them to come up with a particular number. This subtle action consisted of wanting and desiring that the die would present that particular face on top after falling and coming to a halt. The result of a very large number of experiments were then considered as a whole by means of statistical methods.
	It is clear that influencing the result is an intelligent action: the action of an intelligence that sets itself ends at the conscious level.
	The weakness of these proofs consisted of the fact that the dice were thrown by hand or with a dice box (the better procedure, but certainly not an absolutely guaranteed one). Expectation privileged the number six, without taking account of the fact that the face with the largest number of holes is the lightest and therefore the one that most readily comes up on top.   
	A further element of confirmation came from the subsequent discovery that the performance of the subject declined in the course of the seance. Rex Stanford observes that the effects seemed wholly independent of the interpretations contrary to psy, like the one of the imperfection of the dice, this inasmuch as this imperfection could not become attenuated at the end of the seance (in Wolman, p. 365). But other problems remained open and were tackled in the course of the methodical researches of such other scholars as Dale, Fisk, Gibson, Girden, McMahan, Mitchell, Murphy, Parsons, Thouless, West, Woodruff.
	In the ’fifties and ’sixties the 'placement method' affirmed itself: motion was impressed on dice or marbles and the subject only had to try to influence them in such a manner that the object would move in one direction rather than another. Stanford describes the advantage of the innovation as follows: since the objects are subject to random influences in their movements and the target point is alternated in such a manner as to eliminate possible preferences, the results can be assessed on the basis of probability calculations (Stanford in Woleman, p. 136). Two researchers came to the fore in this period: Cox and the Swede Forwald.
	More recently, the perfectioning of electronic technology made it possible to implement random event generators (REG). The greatest merit for this fecund development has to be attributed to Helmut Schmid. The REGs "render possible variable rhythms of automatic target generation, variable probabilities of chance success; new, instantaneous and exciting ways of informing subjects of their successes by feedback; automatic registration of the experimental results (still S. in W., p. 368).
	Recent years have brought to the fore a renewed interest of parapsychologists for subjects who are presumed to be endowed to an exceptional extent, like principally Uri Geller and Nina Kulagina, even though these "PK superstars" seem to be rather loath to be studied in a systematic manner in laboratories.
	As a  general rule, the experiments of the Rhines were carried with non-selected volunteer subjects. Their purpose was to see whether it was possible to obtain a greater success percentage than was to be expected on the basis of mere probability calculations. In actual fact, they managed to get about ten percent more. This result was certainly not clamorous, but was nevertheless significant.
	Far more suggestive seem to be the results obtained with qualified subjects. These consisted above all of the results of telekinesis experiments where the subject did not limit himself to influencing the movement of a die or a marble, but set out to cause remote material objects to execute far more clamorous movements.	
	Apart from personally levitating and changing weight, the Scotsman Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-86) played an accordion while touching only one of its ends with two fingers, the other end being enclosed in a cage.
	The Neapolitan Eusapia Paladino (1858-1918) not only caused bells to ring, but also attracted and repelled furniture with a sign of her hand.
	Towards the beginning of the twentieth century, the Polish Stanislawa Tomczyk caused a small object to levitate with a synchronous movement of her two hands kept on its sides at a distance of a few centimetres, while Kathleen Goligher (studied by Crawford from 1914 to 1920) even caused tables to levitate.
	Among the telekinetic achievements of Stanislawa Tomkczyk (studied, above all, by Ochorowicz, 1908-09, but then also by other authoritative researchers) one should recall the movements of remote objects, at-will deviation of a magnetic needle, exerting a precise influence on a roulette ball, stopping and restarting a pendulum clock kept beneath a glass bell…
	These telekinetic phenomena in the strong sense were made the object of scientific studies more than anything in the eighteenth century and the first few decades of the nineteenth. That is to say, before the turning point of the international congress held at Utrecht (1953) marked the passage from qualitative psychic research to quantitative research; in other words, from metapsychics to parapsychology.
	Following in the footsteps of Joseph Banks Rhine, it is common practice today to apply to the study of paranormal phenomena the calculations that turn it into an exact science in the Galilean-Newtonian sense. But a science where researchers tend to lose the sense of quality that first induced the researchers who employed the more severe methods (Crookes, Richet, Geley, Lombroso, Aksakov, Schrenck-Notzing, and innumerable others) to distinguish the more relevant manifestations in order to pay them all the attention they merit. As a general rule, however, these phenomena are now no longer studied in the scientific centres. And even the term "telekinesis" is falling into oblivion, absorbed as it is by the term "psychokinesis".
	As I mentioned a little earlier, today one can note the first signs of what one might call a trend inversion. I already mentioned the names of Uri Geller and Nina Kulagina.
	There has been a great deal of discussion about Uri Geller’s faculties. Be it even with some reserve, Piero Cassoli lists as many as twenty-eight phenomena that have been attributed to him. No matter how much one may prune them, at least some of them will remain. Let us therefore list a more limited number of effects that are more readily attributable to psychokinesis: bending of a paper knife solely by mental influence, influencing the needle of a compass and that of a laboratory balance placed under a glass bell; possibility of causing the pointer of a clock to move forward or backward; restarting watches by means of mental influence; breaking a crystal enclosed in a box; acceleration of plant growth; and nothing less than bringing a cableway to a halt.
As regards Nina Kulagina, Pratt observed certain performances, among them that of moving objects without touching them, keeping her hands at a distance of between ten and twenty centimetres. She sits at a table and the objects are placed under a cube of Plexiglas. They can be either organic or inorganic, magnetic or nonmagnetic. Their weight may vary from a fraction of a gramme to fifty grammes. The object moves slowly towards her, coming to a halt at the edge of the table.
	These and other experiments left Pratt very convinced of their genuinely paranormal character. And the conclusion of the pages that he dedicates to this Russian psychic woman is very significant: there are precedents in parapsychological literature of what Kulagina is capable of doing, but one has to go back sixty years to find them. More important, as Pratt goes on, is the question: will there be successors in such a long time interval? Fortunately, the answer seems to be affirmative and the review article (Keil et al., 1976) describes the first research stages with various other subjects who have successfully demonstrated directly observable PK effects. At least in this field, Soviet parapsychology research may have played an essential part in restarting investigations in the West in an area of parapsychology that has been neglected for a long time (Wolman, p. 989).
	A conspicuous variety of telekinetic phenomena finds expression in hauntings and poltergeists.
	Hauntings seem to be connected with a particular place where some tragic event took place or where one may suppose that the walls have become impregnated by the strong emotions of persons who lived there.
	Even at a distance of many years from that past event or situation, the event or the situation may as it were repeat itself. And such a repetition may express itself, for example, in the walking of a certain human form of a very precise appearance, dressed in a certain manner bound up with the memories of that epoch It can also express itself in the sound of footsteps or of opening doors and strong (or light) knocks on them. It can express itself in shouts and weeping or sobbing, in the noises and even images of a furious struggle, the roar of bombers as they dive to release their loads. At time music and song can be heard.
	The telekinetic and, more generally, psychokinetic phenomena seem to be guided by an intentionality. A will seems to direct them, irrespective of whether the will in question is conscious or consists of an unconscious instinctuality that is nevertheless capable of pursuing an end of its own or, lastly, the phenomena can be attributed to an "entity" that avails itself of the subject as if he were a medium in an obviously spiritist context.
	On the other hand, hauntings may also seem anything other than intentional. Nearly all hauntings seem to be aimless, observes MacKenzie (and not "inexplicable", as in the Italian translation of his book, p. 163).
	In this connection MacKenzie cites an observation from the Lectures on Psychical Research by Charlie Dunbar, who notes that the details of the best cases of "haunting", when considered as a whole, do not by any means suggest the presence of some persistent desire or intention. They rather suggest mechanical and aimless repetition of the dreams and fantasies of a person who meditates certain incidents and scenes of his past life (MacKenzie, p. 76).
	Hauntings may correspond to something that has come to impress itself on a particular environment. The phenomena derive from the environment in a manner not so very different from how music may be reproduced from a disc on which it has been recorded. Contrary to what may be said about psychokinesis, telekinesis and poltergeists, no autonomous will seems to be at the origin of a haunting. While haunting is bound up with a place, a poltergeist always seems more readily attributable to a particular person who, independently of his will, may trigger phenomena at the unconscious level, as we shall now see.

3.	The forms of psychokinesis realized in poltergeists 
         are at the unconscious level 

	In a poltergeist there is realized what may be called a form of psychokinesis at the unconscious level. This phenomenology is generally attributed to the presence in the disturbed house of a boy or a girl who is at home there. The subject in question is passing though the so-called difficult age, an age when the subconscious is restless, The maturation of a powerful sexuality clashes with the well known social and ethical vetoes and the subject’s instances of freedom are repressed by a set of rules felt to be limitative and frustrating. Hence an intolerance and a conflictuality that can express themselves in the provocation of strange paranormal phenomena without the subject knowing anything about it.
	Déttore notes (1973, p. 407) that the phenomena are of a varied nature: noises in the walls and in furniture, objects that move without contact, drawers that empty on their own accord, cups, jugs and glasses that crash to the floor, rain of stones, bells that keep ringing, fires that light spontaneously. To all intents and purposes the same phenomena that occur in the case of hauntings, but without the appearances of the phantoms characteristic of the latter.
	It seems that even here a psychic energy is emerging from the subject. And the energy in question is once again an intelligent energy, even though it operates below the threshold of consciousness. What is expressed here is a thought-form that determines particular phenomena.
	As Dèttore observes, these thought-forms are almost always of an intelligent character. i. e, they behave as if they were in some way guided by a mind (ibid.). The objects rarely strike people, and do so only when an evident offensive or punitive intention appears in the mysterious personality. 
	William Roll, a former collaborator of Rhine, dedicated a complete and rigorously scientific study to poltergeists based on a careful and vast analysis that excluded any "normal" explanation for each phenomenon. Though in general he attributes legitimacy to the spiritist hypothesis, Roll is of the opinion that spirits should be inconvenienced as little as possible in a study of poltergeists. As far as he is concerned, these phenomena are of human origin.
	A thorough study should therefore teach us a great deal about the nature and the possibilities of man and render him capable of controlling his psychic energies and develop them for good purposes. Particular interest attaches to a parallel that Roll develops between the psychokinetic energies and the energies that can be developed by meditation. (cfr. Roll, pp. 209-220).

4.	Other forms of psychokinesis are those 
         that seemingly are employed 
         not only in "black magic" 
         but also in its "white" counterpart 
         of a beneficial character
	
	On the other hand, the intention of doing harm takes shape at the conscious level in black magic; and it is there that this intention is systematically sustained by means of precise techniques.
	Magic is widespread in all latitudes and among all the primitive peoples. As far as the latter are concerned, one should recall another interesting book by Ernesto Bozzano: Popoli primitivi e manifestazioni supernormali (Primitive peoples and supernormal manifestations).
	Many scholars liquidate magic as a "superstition" and a heap of absurdities. Others consider it solely from a psychological, anthropological and cultural point of view. In actual fact, however, the phenomena of magic (when they are authentic, of course) seem capable of being likened to those with which parapsychology concerns itself. Bozzano’s book shows this to be extensively the case.
	The book cites numerous cases reported by reliable witnesses. Albeit very summarily, let me recall a few of them.
	Certain almost prodigious healings are of particular interest. They are obtained with a combination of very different means, techniques and rites: decoctions, cataplasms of herbs, application of hot-water leaf infusions, sacrifice of an animal and use of its bile to anoint the sick person, recitation of enchantment formulas and prayers, rubbing and blowing, gesticulations, shouts, chants and dances.
	The results may be, for example: rapid disappearance of the inflammation from the arm of a girl bitten by an asp or from the  eye of a missionary struck by a cobra; women enabled to breast-feed even though they have had their menopause; a grave illness of the eyes healed by means of a one-hour treatment; a tibia fracture mended in an instant; a child suffering from convulsions immediately healed by a witch who lives elsewhere and, not knowing anything about the child, limits herself to consult her own "family spirits" to have a diagnosis and indication of the  therapy; a little Eskimo girl brought back to life within a few hours of her death; resurrection also of an adult Zulu who had died three days earlier, but in the imminence of the crisis had been made to swallow a medicine that kept him alive for the precise duration of time needed to transport him to the place of residence of the witchdoctor.
	Magic may give life and healing, but can also be used to do harm and, in the limit, to kill: and thus we have the ill-famed witchcraft or black magic. 
	A witchdoctor in German West Africa revenged himself on an officer who had failed to make him a gift by causing him atrocious stomach pains, making them cease only when the officer changed his mind (Bozzano, 1953a, pp. 164-170). Another witchdoctor caused pains and illness to a girl who had rejected him (pp. 170-171).
	There are cases of death that to all appearances are caused by means of magic practices. One hears about individuals who died within the space of a certain number of days after learning about the spell that had been cast on them. But other individuals died without knowing anything about the spell.
	Three witchdoctors in Mozambique revenged themselves for being refused a lift in a truck by causing the tyres to burst and stopping the engine. When they were eventually offered a place in the truck, the engine started running again and everything functioned properly (pp. 172-176).
	At the borders between Cashmere and Tibet a santon had explained the route to a caravan of Anglo-Saxons mounted on mules. Afterwards he asked a reward. He was given five rupees, which he deemed insufficient, but could obtain no more. He could not have been very content, because six miles later the caravan was struck by some ten or twelve stones that had mysteriously materialized and ended up between the legs of the mules. The travellers returned to the santon. Who told them that they were fortunate not to have suffered a far worse lapidation (pp. 177-178).
	After having been arrested at the orders of a certain Lieutenant Litta, an Ethiopian witchdoctor seems to have provoked a temporary hypnotic crisis in the lieutenant by telepathy: and thus gave him the command to point his pistol against himself. Without realizing it, the Italian did so and caused himself a leg injury.
	Here we have a clear example of hypnotic fascination. The cases of evident fascination all speak in favour of the theory that hypnotic phenomena cannot be attributed exclusively to suggestion, but imply at least partly the transmission of a "fluid" from the acting subject to the passive subject.
	Commander Attilio Gatti provides us with some suggestive examples of hypnotic fascination. A witchdoctor in the interior of French West Africa, some thousand miles from the coast at Dakar, employed a magic rite to discover a thief. He repeated his mysterious formulas for half an hour, after which there arrived a gasping and panting man who accused himself of the theft (p. 156).
	The next day Gatti watched a panther fascination rite. He was initiated in the so-called "Agassou panther fetish". The group assembled in the open country, in the midst of a maize field. A chicken was sacrificed to the "manes" of the panthers, and the witchdoctor intoned a series of continually repeated ritual formulas in a low voice. After an hour and a half of this chanting, there arrived a magnificent adult panther, and then another, then a third, and so on, until there were fifteen of them. They seemed tranquil and pacific and remained there until the witchdoctor stopped the recitation of his formulas, after which they disappeared just as they had come (pp. 156-157).
	Another example of animal fascination offered in the same book concerns pythons. During a nocturnal initiation ceremony described by Commander Gatti a young aspiring pythoness, who seemed naked and in a state of profound somnambulism, walked with her arms extended in front of her and at a slow pace towards a ravine, where there was a lair of these serpents. A few instants after she had reached the edge, an enormous python came to her, whereupon she turned and slowly walked in the opposite direction towards tabernacle hut. And the serpent followed her, docile like a well-trained pet dog (pp. 154-155).
	Everything here said contributes to confirming the theory that a human subject, no matter who he or she might be, can emit a thin fluid with a view to producing particular effects. The action of this fluid is intelligent, even though it could be an intelligence operating at the subliminal level. The fluid therefore operates like a thought-form: it is a thought-form.
	The thought-forms that a subject exteriorizes may be of various kinds. As such they express ideas, images, fantasies, intentions and also acts of will intended to produce effects in a direct manner without availing itself of any mediation of the physical body.
	These effects may consist of a hypnotic fascination exerted on another person or an animal; or can consist of a psychokinetic phenomenon; an efficacious therapy or an evil spell; the displacement of material bodies and also their apport (i. e, their dematerialization and subsequent re-materialization in a different and distant place).
	A psychic fluid or thought-form emanating from a human subject could in certain conditions exert an even wider power over the environment, the surrounding nature. It could cause prodigious facts like those related by the Gospels and the lives of the saints. It could cause rain to fall in a period of drought, or still a tempest or multiply food. Hagiography gives us examples of an incredible dominion exerted by many saints, though always in the sign of love, over animals and nature in general (cfr. Vezzani, pp. 183-212).
	Bozzano’s book cited earlier on not only presents cases of animal fascination, prodigious healings, apports, but also of witchdoctors who "cause rain to fall" after a long period of drought and others who in the midst of a fine day cause thunder and lightning without rain and without clouds (B., 1953a, pp. 198-200).
	Certainly, when compared with the modern scientifico-technological civilization so rationalistic and sceptical as far as the paranormal is concerned, the primitive-archaic world offers a far more favourable environment for all these prodigies. In other respects the same thing may be said of the world of the saints, where the prodigious is an everyday event. We can grasp the best examples of the exteriorization of the psychic principle and of all the effects that can derive therefrom when we turn our attention to these contexts.

5.	It seems that the emission of thought-forms 
         and the corresponding mental energies 
         that produce physical and therapeutic effects 
         can also be photographed with Kirlian’s apparatus

	In the second chapter we saw that the emission of thought-forms can be photographed. Bearing this in mind, we can now pose ourselves the following question: whether it is possible to photograph the emission of these forms not only inasmuch as they are ideas or images, but also inasmuch as they are active transforming forces.
	An Italian scholar, Pierluigi Marsigli, sustains that this is possible as regards the energies emitted by a spiritual healer. He affirms: firstly, that the energy of a man may be transferred to another; secondly, that this energy causes certain effects with important variations in the other; thirdly, that it can all be recorded by the Kirlian apparatus (Gennaro, Guzzon and Marsigli, p. 91).
	Certainly, as Marsigli goes on, we cannot have proof of the psychic healing. But we could have the proof that transfers from one individual to another take place and can be photographed (ibid.).
	Marsigli, who is also a pranotherapist, tells us by way of example that he photographed his own hand and that of an ankylosing spondilitis patient before the treatment and also after. More precisely, immediately after and ten minutes later.
	The Kirlian photo of Marsigli’s hand taken before showed his normal condition. The one taken immediately after the treatment showed "haloes" indicating a certain state of tiredness and also the fact that the pranotherapist had absorbed some negative energy from the patient. In the shots taken about ten minutes later the disappearance of the haloes indicated a return to normality.
	Let us now take a look at the photos of the patient’s hand. The one before the cure showed the characteristic haloes confirming his state of suffering. The one immediately after the treatment seemed similar to the previous one with as yet only slight variations, thereby showing that the subject felt more relaxed, but that the supply of pranic energy had not yet produced its effect. The very evident reduction of the haloes and other characteristic signs in the third photograph, taken about ten minutes later, showed in a more objective manner that the pain had almost disappeared.
	Marsigli says that from one treatment to the next the patient’s pain decreased in a manner that became ever more stable and less subject to regression; and that this improvement was confirmed by the photographs. The effort that had to be made by the pranotherapist likewise diminished. The energy transfer became ever more regulated by need, and increasingly in an automatic manner.
	Marsigli goes on to note that in the photographs there appeared a yellow-orange colouration at the tips of the pranotherapist’s fingers every time he operated. And, further, that this colouring became all the more intense as the healer’s mental concentration increased. This colour appears only in the second of the three photos of his hand. Marsigli infers from all this that the yellow-orange colour indicates the pranic energy issuing from the pulp of the therapist’s fingers (cfr. p. 96).
	On the basis of the results obtained in the course of numerous experiments, Marsigli deems himself justified in concluding that the Kirlian photos always showed the transmission and the passage of the energy from one human being to the other, i. e, from the psychic healer to the patient. The Kirlian machine can photograph the psychic emission of energy (p. 95). 
	At this point I should like to give the floor to another Italian scholar and experimenter, Stefano Mayorca, to summarize his personal conclusions. The photographs of Semion and Valentina Kirlian do not represent the soul of a man or his vital principle. What they do show is the energy radiated by the human body, i. e, the etherico-vital field. In other words, they represent the electromagnetic radiation that issues from the body. In certain cases this radiation becomes visible even to the naked eye.
	Mayorca recalls that in a Kirlian photograph of a leaf from which the apical part has been cut off, the non-existing part nevertheless remains visible. Well known is the case of the so-called "phantomatic limbs" of which the patient continues to feel the presence (sometimes even in a painful manner) also after they have been amputated. The same author explains that the energy continues to radiate also for a period of time after the amputation.
	This makes me think that, no matter how one may want to call it, something must remain to complete the limb notwithstanding its amputation: a kind of energy that conserves its structure for a long time, if not permanently, and probably ends up sooner or later by becoming absorbed into the by then reduced ambit of what remains of the physical body. 
	When they eventually introduced colour films, the Kirlians succeeded in recording also the chromatic variations of the luminous haloes that emanate from the human subjects and, as it would seem, and thus managed to follow even the variations of the frame of mind. At that time many people believed that the two Russians had succeeded in photographing the soul.
	This is a possibility that Mayorca decidedly excludes. As far as he is concerned, the soul cannot be rendered visible in any way. Certain sensitives, nevertheless, can see the "aura", i. e, the vital field produced by man’s etheric body (Mayorca, pp. 11 and 28).
	Among man’s thin bodies, it is the one closest to the physical body that seems etheric. It regulates its vital functions. It can therefore be defined as the body of life. Occultists, theosophists and anthroposophists have a great deal to say about it and attribute it to every living being, be it an animal or a plant.
	They also say that there is something more in an animal: there is another thin body that they call "astral". While the extension of the etheric body more or less coincides with that of the physical body, the extension of the astral body is far greater. Of an ovoid form, the astral body surrounds the other two and forms a kind of large magnetic field around it. The astral body is specifically the body of sensitivity, i. e, of something that animals seem to possess in common, especially in the sense of its corresponding to a nervous system.
	But let us come back to Mayorca’s conclusions on which we were concentrating attention. He denies that the aura can of itself leave an impression on a photographic film. It can nevertheless be observed by those who possess special receptive capacities that can be developed by means of special training (M., p. 28). Mayorca also says that the aura has to be considered as the mirror of the soul, or as a significant reflection thereof. Its study enables us to understand whether a man is sick or in good health, whether he has a meditative or a choleric temperament. What we see due to the aura – even though it cannot by any means be seen by all, and even less so by scientific instrumentation – is an emanation of the soul and the spirit. But the spirit itself is invisible and opaque even to the paranormal powers of a psychic person (ibid.).	
	Though taking due account of every possible reserve, for my part I hope that both the capacity of perceiving even the thinnest realities in a more personal-subjective manner and our capacity of recording in a more objetivizable manner (and therefore capable of being communicated to all) will make the greatest possible progress. In this sense the Kirlian machine could be a significant milestone on a road that goes much further.

Chapter  VI

HOW THE ORGANIZING PSYCHIC FORCE CAN ARRIVE 
AT MATERIALIZING ON ITS OWN ACCOUNT

1.   When a congruous emission of mental energy 
      assumes a compact and solid consistency 
      it can give rise to true materializations 
      of which a first degree is represented 
      by the incomplete materializations

	In their repeatedly cited book, Duchâtel and Warcollier observe (at the beginning of the eighth chapter dedicated to "Incomplete Materializations") that the so-called doubling phenomena overstep the strictly subjective ambit to attain a certain level objectivity inasmuch as in some cases they assume the true character of a materialization or semi-materialization (D. and W., p. 118).
	In this connection they recall the experiments carried out by Beatie  (personally known to Aksakof) with the medium Rutland (1872). The human form of his double condensed above the medium and gradually assumed ever more precise features, as was demonstrated by a succession of about twelve photographs that were taken at every sseance (pp. 118-119).
	The "incomplete materializations" to which Chapter VIII is dedicated consist of various luminous, sonorous and tactile effects that occur during the mediumistic seances.
	The authors recall that Sir William Crookes carried out very thorough studies of these luminous effects and their gradual transformation into materializations (p. 122). The luminous apparitions attested by the famous British scientist consisted of luminous points that sprang from various parts and came to rest on the head of various participants in the meeting, little flames that rose from the table to the ceiling and then fell back onto the table with a clearly distinguished sound, a luminous cloud that floated above the table, and another cloud that came to condense under his eyes and assumed the form of a hand that began to transport little objects (p. 123).
	Other effects attested by Crookes were the apparitions of hands, clearly different from those of the medium, that were kept under continuous control. Limiting ourselves to these observations, we can here report that on more than one occasion he saw an object move, then he saw a cloud condense on it and finally saw a cloud assume the complete form of a hand; when it was so, the hand could be seen by all who were present. But it was not always a simple apparition: at times it seemed perfectly similar to a living and graceful hand, the fingers moved and the flesh seemed as human as that of any other hand. It became vaporous at the wrist or the arm and then became lost in a luminous fog. At times the hands seemed extremely cold and corpse-like to the touch, at others they seemed tepid and live, shaking Crookes’ own hand with the cordiality of an old friend. 
	Crookes says that he kept one of these hands tightly in his own, decided not to let it get away. No attempt or effort was made to get free, but the hand seemed gradually to dissolve into vapour, thus freeing itself of his hold (Crookes, pp. 94-95).
	I think that the double process of materialization and dematerialization could not be better described in all the details of its happening and becoming concrete. The materializations are often photographically recorded, and at times casts have been obtained of them.
	Both the precise and concordant testimonies of the experimenters and the most objective forms of recording (photography, plaster casts, etc.) seem to confirm that at a certain point in the course of certain mediumistic seances there comes to be present an organ that does not belong to any of the participants and is endowed with force of projection and attraction capable of assuming the appearance of a human organ, especially of hands that act in all senses within a small radius of the medium from which they seem to originate.
	Such is the conclusion of G. de Fontenay, an author cited by Duchâtel and Warcollier, who comment that this organ preferably forms in darkness behind a curtain, under clothes, but could also manifest itself in full light. It obeys the conscious or, rather, subconscious of the medium or the other participants (D. and W., p. 133).
	As the two authors add, all this happens as if the need of producing a phenomenon created the necessary organ, as if the moulding will that acts materially behind the body (mimicry, cicatrizations, cravings, stigmata, dream images, more or less perceivable hallucinations: moreover, there is no greater distance between the idea and the dream image and between the latter and hallucinations than there is between hallucinations and materializations) could act also outside the body and create a body or a part of a body (ibid.).
	A subsequent chapter (the nineteenth) of The miracles of will is dedicated to the problem of whether there can be complete materializations. It begins with a comment of particular interest: once Eusapia Paladino, a famous medium, was made to sit on a chair arranged on a square rocker arm; this device made it possible to note that every time the table moved and became raised without any apparent contact, the medium increased her weight by a corresponding amount, thus showing that she was the true point of support (D. and W., pp. 139-140).
	According to another important annotation, all the parts of the human body that are materialized during a seance - arms, hands, legs, head – seem to be constituted by an energy furnished exclusively by the medium, at the very most with some contribution of the other persons present, and never with apports of energy from outside p. 140).
	In this connection one may recall an observation by William Mackenzie: the first condition sine qua non is the production of the "substance": and the first phase of this is seemingly a disgregation of the physical matter that constitutes the subject’s soma; first of all, therefore, the supposed psychic dissociation of the medium would have as consequence the possibility of a partial dematerialization of the medium’s body. It is precisely this, as MacKenzie continues, that seems to constitute the punctum saliens of the question: without a prior dematerialization there is no "substance" and therefore no phantom. If anything, "ideoplasty" may come into play afterwards (W. Mackenzie, p. 267).
	It is a prior dematerialization that permits the emergence of a "substance" (as this Anglo-Italian scholar calls it) or of an energy or psychic force. The consecutive materialization of this energy clearly contradicts all the laws outside of which a concept of "matter" would have become absurd until today (W. M., p. 272).

2.	There are also complete materializations 
         like the ones obtained with the mediumism 
         of Kate Fox, Florence Cook, Elisabeth d’Espérance 
         and also Mrs. Hollis, Eva Carrière, Linda Gazzera 
         and in a certain way even Eusapia Paladino

	The overall experience of all these phenomena  enables us to obtain the materialization of cells, organs and complete bodies.
	In the two volumes of Psicologia e Spiritsmo (Psychology and Spiritism), Enrico Morselli analyses with extreme critical attention twenty-eight experiments centred on the mediumism of Eusapia Paladino at which he was present in Genoa between 1901 and 1907. Among the great variety of phenomena he noted, particular interest seems to attach to the partial or total (i. e. at times vague and imperfect and at others clearly defined) production of phantomatic figures, right through to the apparition of human forms having particular and personal characteristics that were visible and active in a spontaneous manner. Morselli distinguishes these into three categories:
	a)	"productions of partial phantoms that are difficult to recognize because they are half-hidden";
	b)	"personified but imaginary semi-phantoms not related to any of the persons present";
	c)	"personified semi-phantoms related to the persons present" (but "the personality of those that appeared could not be identified with certainty") (Morelli, vol. II, pp. 519-521),
	As far as Morelli is concerned, what generates these formations is the "psychodynamism" of "unknown psychic forces" emanating from the physical body and by no means autonomous with respect to it. No immortality, no spiritist intervention. And he therefore concludes the second part of his work with a paragraph entitled "I won’t have Eusapia’s spiritism, but retain her 'mediumism'" (M., pp. 480-483 and 551-556).
	It is nevertheless well known that such a reductive interpretation of mediumistic phenomena is far from being unanimously supported by the more qualified and rigorous researchers and scientists who concern themselves with the paranormal.
	Many of the materializations obtained by Eusapia Palladino left imprints in the mastic that were often very well defined. Morselli nevertheless notes that a constant characteristic of Eusapia’s materializations is their fragmentary nature.
	To limit myself to but a single example: commenting the materialization of a little girl, he says that he is not wholly convinced that an entire person had formed behind the curtain: those little hands, that fine profile, seem to him to be fragments of a materialization that did not become completed. Morselli adds that from the spatial position of the hands and the face he received the summary impression of a little being of a low stature, some 7-8 years of age, but this "entity" was in pieces, badly formed and approximately constructed. Nor were its parts proportional to each other (M., vol. I, p. 447).
	However, complete materializations of a body occurred also elsewhere. The most classical case remains the one of "Katie King". The phantom of a young woman that manifested itself through the mediumism of Florence Cook for a long series of seances between 1871 and 1874 used this name to present itself.
	This phantom was carefully studied by Sir William Crookes and numerous photographs were taken of it in artificial light. It always demonstrated a strong and overpowering personality. On some occasions it consented to its being fully illuminated by the light of a lamp and also being touched and auscultated. 
	Though the phantom resembled the medium, "Katie King" seemed distinct from her not only by virtue of the different spatial collocation, but also on account of other physical characteristics.
	Crookes noted some small marks that were on the face of Florence Cook, but lacked on Katie’s face. The hair of Miss Cook was of a chestnut colour so dark as to seem black, while those of Katie King were of a more golden chestnut. He conserved a lock of Katie’s hair that she had let him cut right at the skin of her densely covered head, so that he might convince himself that it really grew there.
	One evening Crookes took Katie’s pulse: he counted 75 beats, while Florence yielded her usual count of 90 a little later. Applying his ear to Katie’s chest, Crookes could hear her heart beat rhythmically and the beats seemed more regular than those of Miss Cook when she allowed him to auscultate her after the seance. Examined in the same manner, Katie’s lungs proved to be healthier than those of the medium, because at the time of these experiments Miss Cook was suffering from a bad cough (Crookes, pp. 113-114).
	Although there is no lack of ascertained cases of complete materializations, the one of "Katie King" bears the warranty of an illustrious scientist and does indeed seem be one of those that have been particularly well studied.
	Even before that, there had materialized two entities that differed from "Katie King" by virtue of the fact that they could be identified: one as the deceased wife of the American banker Charles Livermore, whose name was Estelle; the other a very famous historical personage, namely Benjamin Franklin.
	The materializations obtained thanks to the mediumism of Kate Fox took place in the course of as many as 388 seances held between 1851 and 1866. The progress of the materializations was gradual: it was only in the 43rd seance that Estelle could manifest herself to her husband in a visible manner.
	The dark environment was lit by a luminous globe of paranormal origin. It was presented as an invention of "Franklin" himself. As time passed, the apparitions became ever more perfect, to the point of sustaining the light of a dark lantern provided by Mr. Livermore.
	The phantom "Estelle" spoke only very rarely, but overcame this silence with messages that her materialized hand wrote on appropriately countersigned sheets that had likewise been brought by her husband. Everything was set out in minutes that were kept with great care and accuracy by the banker, who, though not a scientist, was a very practical man of great capacity and equilibrium and universally considered to be reliable in every sense. 
	All this confers considerable credit upon him, though more generally one cannot but regret the lack of other witnesses. Livermore desired only to be able to communicate with his wife and did not have any intention of bringing his experiences to the attention of the public. He had also found that the presence of others tended to disturb rather than promote the concentration that seemed so necessary to assure a good outcome of these seances. That was why, with only very rare exceptions, he never invited anybody to take part in them.
	Livermore’s diary enables us to illustrate certain modalities of the materializations in question.
	On 29 August 1861 Estelle’s form remained immobile in the middle of the room, while a mediumistic light circled around her, illuminating in a special manner first her face, and then the neck and the head, and this evidently in order to show each part very distinctly to those present. While they were contemplating her, the mass of her let-down hair invaded her face and she repeatedly brushed them away with her hand. She had her hair garlanded with roses and violets. Livermore had brought a fan that he had put down on the table in front of him. Estelle took it, held it in different positions, at times hiding a part of her face behind it. It should be noted that on that particular occasion the apparition remained visible for an hour and a half. Although it dissolved in the hands of anybody who tried to grasp it, Estelle’s dress gave the impression of being something material (Garofalo, pp. 44-45).
	On 20 October 1861 Estelle appeared before those present enveloped in her cloth with a pattern similar to a spider’s web. The arm and the hand were as perfect as they had been in life. The arm was bare from the shoulder onwards, but was covered by this highly transparent cloth, so that the arm seemed even more beautiful. Livermore asked her to touch him after he had come close to her: she put her arm across his forehead and let him kiss her. To him the arm seemed as substantial as that of a living person. He first felt it cold, but then it gradually became warmer and warmer. She kept her little fingers in the air and moved them. While the persons present watched her, she let her loose hair drop down onto her shoulders. The manifestation ended with a note that Estelle wrote on her husband’s shoulders, caressing his head and forehead. Then she kissed him and bade him goodnight (G., pp. 54-55). 
	Flowers appeared on 22 February 1822. After about half an hour of expectation, a light of the usual cylindrical shape, very bright and enveloped in the usual veils, came to take its place on the table. A rose branch, about six inches long and with two opened white roses, another bud and several leaves was suspended above her. The flowers, the leaves and the stem seemed to be perfect. The roses were put under Livermore’s nostrils, who found them as fragrant as freshly gathered natural roses. Nevertheless, their perfume was more suave and delicate. Those present were allowed to touch them, and Livermore profited from this to examine both the stem and the flowers in minute detail (G., pp. 78-79).
	One may note that productions not only of human figures, but also of plants were obtained with the mediumism of the Englishwoman Elisabeth d’Espérance. In this case the testimonies of those present are convalidated by a photographic documentation. The plants include a "golden lily" obtained in the course of a seance in 1990; as shown by one of the six photographs taken on that occasion, it was as tall as the medium. After the experiment it was conserved for a week before it dissolved. Vincenzo Tummolo, who translated the medium’s autobiography into Italian, where it bears the title Il paese dell’ombra (The land of shadow), included various photographs and added an appendix with the testimonies of other persons who took part in these experiments.
	Pasquale Garofano, who in his book entitled Le materializzazioni di Estelle Livermore (The materializations of Estelle Livermore) collected the testimonies relating thereto, also refers to a parallel that Ernesto Bozzano draws between the phenomena of the Livermore case and those obtained with the mediumism of William Stainton Moses (G., pp. 110-112).
	Coming back to the repeatedly cited Pensiero e volontà: forze plasticizzanti e organizzanti (Thought and will: moulding and organizing forces), one should note that in the fourth chapter Bozzano reviews several cases that can likewise be interpreted in a spiritist manner: as it presents itself, the phenomenon suggests the possibility that entities of deceased may manifest themselves in forms similar to the corporeal ones they had while alive, using to this end the energies provided by the medium.
	Other materializations, again, seem very obviously to be mental products of the medium, i. e. images that the medium carried in his/her subconscious, where they had in some way become impressed. Earlier in 1865-1870, Doctor N. B. Wolfe had already obtained from Mrs. Hollis the materialization of faces and busts, either flat or in bas-relief, and also in the form of naturally coloured paintings. The subjects were Napoleon, Josephine and other personages connected with them. This phenomenon has to be seen in relation to the fact that Wolfe had a particular interest in Bonaparte, his family and more or less the whole of his story.
	It should here be added that an entity claiming to be Marshall Ney appeared in the "control" functions, as the "spirit guide". These annotations about the possible spiritist character that certain phenomena may or may not reveal should really be put in parentheses: our discourse is not at present concerned with themes of this kind, which will be faced at a later stage.
	The Napoleonids were not the only important personages who manifested themselves with Wolfe, who was seemingly also in mediumistic relations with James Buchanan, a deceased president of the United States, of whom he had been both private secretary and friend.
	Unlike other personages and similar to the presumed entity of Ney, the entity of Buchanan materialized in a clearly three-dimensional manner and was considerably more concrete and complete (cfr. Bozzano, 1967, pp. 108-115).
	To give some other examples, the materializations obtained with the mediumism of Linda Gazzera and Eva Carrière seem to be particularly noteworthy. 
	As regards the former, who had a character that was clearly and – as I would add – intentionally non-spiritist, there appeared an attempted reproduction of a head of Saint John painted by Rubens that the medium had admired at the Louvre a few days earlier.
	The same may be said of a series of ideoplastic portraits obtained by Eva Carrière that were studied by Schrenck-Notzing: their source clearly consists of newspaper photographs that the medium had observed on preceding days and which had in some way impressed her. It should be noted that these reproductions, notwithstanding a resemblance and accuracy that, all considered, was rather noteworthy, accentuated certain elements, certain details that were the very ones that had particularly struck the imagination of the medium (cfr. Bozzano, 1967, pp. 115-117). 
	At this point it is interesting to note an observation that Théodore Flournoy made in connection with Eva Carrière and her materializations. His comment seems pertinent to materializations of a clearer and more obviously non-spiritist origin, because in the case of the others a prejudicial exclusion of the intervention of any entities would be imprudent and out of place.
	Flournoy writes that the latent memories of the medium, as also  the fantasy of her imagination, exteriorized and literally materialized, becoming visible and capable of being photographed, because they had the power of modelling the mysterious substance transuded by her organism in their own image.
	Flournoy notes that this is in any case the explanation that the medium herself gave in somnambulist conditions. Indeed, she affirmed that palpable material substance is nothing other than a secondary ingredient and that the truly important phenomenon consists of the invisible force that becomes liberated from her organism at the same time as the substance to model the latter just like a sculptor models plasteline. We are therefore concerned with a kind of demiurge that creates forms and things by the direct action on amorphous matter of ideas that come to his mind and dreams that whirl in his head (in Annales des sciences psychiques", 1914, p. 49; cited by Bozzano, 1967, p. 117).
	These words pronounced by the medium in a somnambulist state represent a testimony that in some way is perhaps rendered even more interesting by the fact that it does not come from the level of the conscious psyche, but from a deeper-lying zone of the psyche and the being of that subject, namely the selfsame zone in which these phenomena seem to originate.
	One should also note that both interpretations, i. e, those given by the medium in a somnambulist state and those given by Fournoy in a fully conscious and rational manner, agree not only with the extensive photographic documentation that we have of the materialization process grasped in all its various phases and modalities, but also and even before that with the testimonies of the experimenters.
	The first experimenters who spoke about the concentration of a fluid substance in various forms and of the elusive characteristics of this substance were various alchemists and occultists of whom Bozzano recalls a series of citations (B., 1967, pp. 93-97).
	The language of these alchemists, who may be considered to be the forerunners of parapsychology, seems to be, even in these attempts of describing and defining, rather mysterious and tortuous and symbolic. It is therefore only indirectly that we can grasp the idea that these descriptions (obviously, when they are first-hand and not already re-interpreted) must be underlain by a very precise experience. It is a testimony expressed with incomparably greater clarity in the far more precise testimonies that follow.

3.	How the process of materialization 
         is described in the testimonies 
         of Geley, Richet and Felicia Scatcherd 
         and also in the report of a participant 
         in the mediumistic seances of Elisabeth D’Espérance

	Ectoplasm: as is well known, this is the name that is generally given to the substance referred to at the end of the preceding paragraph. We shall now see in action the ectoplasm that became exteriorized in the course of two different mediumistic experiments by the same subject, Eva Carrière, in the civil register known as Marthe Bertrand.
	The first description is the one given by Gustave Geley, first at a lecture in Paris in 1918, and then in the book De l’inconscient au conscient (>From the unconscious to the conscious) published in 1919.
	When defining the materialization process in general terms, Geley notes that a substance that at first seems amorphous or polymorphous issues and becomes exteriorized from the medium’s body. It is a substance that eventually comes to constitute various representations that are generally representations of more or less complex organs (G., 1919, p. 53).
	This substance becomes exteriorized in gaseous, liquid or solid form. Gaseous or vaporous exteriorization is the most frequent and best known form. A kind of fog is formed near the medium and remains attached to him or her by a kind of bond. A condensation then takes place into forms that correspond to parts or limbs of the human body.
	In particular, Geley studied the materializations produced by Eva Carrière accurately and for a long time in his own laboratory. He saw them clearly, and touched and photographed them. When the medium was put in a state of hypnosis and made to sit in the "black cabinet", the phenomenon sometimes occurred within a short time, but sometimes took much longer, an hour and even more. Eva sighed and at times even wept, and these laments attained their paroxysm at the moment when the phenomenon really began to occur, eventually ceasing after this kind of birth had been completed.
	The first thing to be perceived was the presence of white, liquid and luminous spots spread over the medium’s dress. These spots preceded the full manifestation of the phenomenon even by as much as three quarters of an hour or an entire hour.
	And then the "substance" came forth from the whole of the medium’s body, but especially from the natural orifices and the ends, namely from the upper part of the head, the breast nipples, the tips of the fingers. Mainly from the mouth.
	The substance presented itself as a malleable paste, a "true protoplasmatic mass"; or as many minute threads, or as a series of cords of various sizes; or as a cloth; or as a fringed membrane; and so on.
	As regards the colour, it could be white, grey or even black. At times it could be of all three of these colours. It could render itself visible or invisible, varying in the course of the phenomenon.
	To the touch the substance appeared soft and a little elastic when it extended, but hard, knotty and fibrous when it came to form cords. At times it gave the sensation of passing through a spider’s web. Its threads seemed both elastic and rigid.
	The substance was mobile, rose and descended, crept along the various parts of the medium’s body with the movements of a reptile. Its evolutions were sometimes slow, at others rapid and brusque. It could suddenly appear and disappear, just like a flash. It issued from the body of the medium and could also be re-absorbed by it. In certain cases the re-entry took place by degrees.
	Every time the substance was touched by somebody, the medium felt a physical pain. When the exteriorized form detached from the subject, the possibility of contact between them received confirmation from a filament that recalled the umbilical cord.
	Every contact of the substance with another body had painful reflections on the medium.
	The substance was also sensitive to light rays and all instantaneous variations of the light. A magnesium flash caused Eva to startle, but on the whole she tolerated it and this made it possible to photograph the ongoing phenomenon.
	At times the substance organized itself with such rapidity that the observer hardly had the time to see it in its erstwhile state. At other times one could see both the amorphous substance and one or more human faces in its midst; or with one of its fringes at the end assuming the shape of a finger.
	Geley never had the good fortune to study complete materializations. But he did note that the formation of live, three-dimensional and well-modelled parts: hands or individual fingers, at times very different in their lineaments and physiognomies, which he could readily palpate; craniums, of which he perceived the bones under a thick crop of hair.
	I have summarized the description that Geley gives of Eva Carrière’s materializations; but at this point I should like to give a more vivid idea of them by actually citing from the notes of the French scientist.
	From Eva Carrière’s mouth there slowly descended to her knees a cord of white substance having approximately the width of a finger; this band assumed widely varying forms: at one moment it would extend in the form of a large membranous and perforated piece of cloth with voids and swellings; the next it would gather and contract, then swell again, and then flatten once more. 
	From various points of the mass there parted prolongations, a kind of pseudopod, and these pseudopods assumed the form of fingers for a few seconds, or an outline of hands, eventually to merge back into the mass.
	Lastly, the cord would withdraw into itself, lengthening onto Eva’s knees; then its end would lift, detach itself from the medium and advance towards Geley. Geley at this stage could note that this end thickened and assumed the form of a swelling, a terminal gemmation, and this terminal gemmation eventually opened out into a perfectly modelled hand. It was a hand that Geley could easily touch. It gave a normal sensation, he felt its bones, perceived its fingers and their nails.
	Then the hand contracted, diminished in size, disappeared at the end of the cord. The cord went through some further evolutions, then retracted and disappeared into the mouth of the medium (Geley, 1919, p. 59).
	The description that Geley provides of the materializations produced by Marthe Béraud agrees with the one given by Charles Richet. As the latter notes, an object of a whitish colour appeared on the ground, became bigger, mounted onto the armchair on which Marthe was sitting and then moved towards her chest. It had the appearance of a membranous veil. He took Marthe’s hands into his own, while she remained immobile and spoke at intervals. Richet provided subsequently prepared drawings of this ectoplasm in motion that are perhaps worth more than photographs. Little by little, the ectoplasm assumed the vague form of a hand in which one could distinguish the outlines of the fingers. What is interesting is that Geley, without knowing the details of Richet’s experiments, provided exactly the same description of his own (Richet, p. 232).
	The description of the behaviour of the ectoplasm provided by Felicia Scatcherd of the experiences she had with Marthe Béraud is undoubtedly interesting and complementary.
	Felicia took breakfast together with Marthe (Eva C.); and when they had finished, Marthe expressed the wish to agree a seance with Felicia. Felicia did not want this for fear of tiring her, but Marthe insisted. This caused Mrs. Bisson, a friend of Eva’s engaged in studying her phenomena, to intervene, saying that it was best not to oppose the desires of the medium.
	The seance was thus commenced and the medium immediately fell into a profound trance, with her head slumped backwards into a position in which she could not have seen anything in front of her even if she had been awake.
	Those present were talking, but then an abundant mass of substance suddenly appeared on the floor about eighteen inches from the medium’s chair. It was of an extraordinary white colour and slightly luminous.
	Felicia asked herself: "How could all this have happened? Who knows whether the substance is bound to the medium?" The control of the medium (i. e, the so-called spirit guide) immediately replied to Felicia’s mental question and observed: "There are no constraints; you can pass between the substance and the medium". Felicia did so and had no problems. She then placed a clean white handkerchief beside the substance in order to asses its whiteness and noted that the handkerchief seemed grey by comparison.
	Felicia then sat down in a position that enabled her to touch the substance without being seen. When her hand was about to do so, the medium’s body became contorted in a convulsive spasm and the control shouted: "Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me! My life would ebb!"
	In the throes of regret, Felicia humbly asked to be forgiven for her unconsidered gesture. A little later, she nevertheless spontaneously touched the substance and found that it had a resistance to the touch comparable to that of the beaten white of an egg, while its temperature seemed slightly below room temperature.
	Felicia said to Mrs. Bisson: "How interesting it would be to weigh it! But I realize that this is impossible, seeing that it cannot be done without harming the medium". Mrs. Bisson smiled and, turning to her daughter, told her to go to the kitchen to take the scales.
	In the meantime the magic substance had lengthened and assumed the shape of a reptile, which made Felicia assume that it had understood what it was proposed to do. When the balance arrived, Felicia felt the strongest emotion of her life, because she saw the substance in the form of a reptile get up on its tail and come to take its place on the dish of the balance, which had been placed on a plinth at a height of ten inches from the floor. It remained on the scales until Felicia had checked its weight, which she found to be very light in relation to its volume. Sliding backwards, the mysterious substance then abandoned the balance and descended to the floor, where it immediately resumed its previous amorphous appearance. While Felicia was watching it, the substance disappeared from her sight. It did not thin out, it did not dissolve: it disappeared (Light, 1921, pp. 809-810; cited by Bozzano, 1967, pp. 104-106).
	Manifestations of such virtuosity confirm to us that in ideoplasty thought can exercise an absolutely direct, immediate and full power over matter.
	I have spent some time citing the descriptions of these phenomena that come to us from three different sources, because they enable us, as it were, to see ideoplasty in action from outside. In the seventh chapter we shall see how ideoplasty can be lived from within: in other words, lived in the interiority of the subject.
	It may also be interesting to complete this paragraph with another testimony that we can find in the previously mentioned autobiography of the British medium Elizabeth D’Espérance, which describes the formation of the phantom "Yolanda", an entity that was studied by Alexander Aksakov and of which Elizabeth was particularly fond.
	What follows are the essential moments of the materialization. At first one notes a kind of white, vaporous and gelatinous spot in front of the mediumistic cabinet. This spot gradually expands, visibly extending as if it were a piece of animated muslin. It then develops one fold after another until it reaches a height of between two and a half and three feet at a depth of a few inches, possibly six or more. Then the centre commences to rise slowly as if it were being raised by a human head, while the vaporous substance on the floor increasingly comes to resemble a piece of muslin dropping in folds around the part that is mysteriously coming into being. It gradually attains a height of two feet or more, and gives the impression of a boy who stands beneath it and agitates his arms in all directions as if he wanted to manipulate something. The substance continues to rise, eventually attaining a height of about five feet; one then sees it in the form of someone intent on arranging the folds of the cloth around himself.
	Then the arms are lifted well above the head, opening outwards through a nebulous mass of mediumistic cloth, and Yolanda stands in front of us without veils, gracious and beautiful, about five feet tall, with something resembling a turban on her head, from which her long black hair drops down on her shoulders and as far as the hips. Her dress, of oriental style, adheres closely to each member and outline of her body, while the superfluous white cloth envelops her for the sake of decency in the manner of a veil or drops to the ground in expectation of the moment when she may need it again. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes to arrive at this point.
	Her disappearance or dematerialization takes place in the following manner. Coming forward to show herself and allow those present to verify her identity, she slowly and deliberately unfolds the light cloth that veils her, places it on her head and then lets it drop around herself like the large veil of a bride: then she immediately crumples. Thinning to the extent to which she seems to contract, while her body dematerialises beneath the nebulous cloth to a point where it bears little or no resemblance to Yolanda. She then lowers even further, eventually losing all resem-blance with a human being and rapidly contracting to twelve or fifteen inches. The form then suddenly collapses and no longer seems anything other than a mass of cloth. Indeed, the mass now consists of nothing other than Yolanda’s dress, which then slowly but visibly dissolves into nothing.
	The dematerialization of Yolanda’s body lasts from two to five minutes, while the disappearance of the cloth requires from half a minute to two minutes (D’Espérance, p. 137).
	As can be seen, even from one medium to another the materialization phenomenon offers very significant analogies that suggest constant features.

Chapter  VII

HOW THE EXTERNAL ACTION OF THE PSYCHIC FORCE AND ITS MATERIALIZATION CAN BE LIVED IN SUBJECTIVE INTERIORITY

1.      The action of the organizing psychic force 
can be intimately lived in astral projection 
and bilocation experiences
	
	In the previous chapters we reviewed a wide range of phenomena that demonstrate the moulding action of a psychic force. The action of this organizing psychic force has hitherto been observed from outside. So that there has now come the moment of seeing whether and how it can be lived within oneself.
	First of all, we may note that the apparitions are closely connected with the "astral projection", also known as "out-of-body experiences".
	The subject may project himself outside his physical body either consciously or wholly unconsciously.
	And he can do this by making his double assume either greater or lesser consistency. When this consistency is at its maximum, we have materializations in the true sense of the term.
	In conscious astral projections, the subject feels himself to be outside his physical body, so much so that he can observe his body from a distance. He identifies himself with his psychic principle. In short, he feels himself a soul, he experiences himself as a free spirit.
	In a very large number of cases this exteriorized mind, this alter ego or "double", comes to assume the same form as the physical body. And it not only assumes the form of the body, but also that of the clothes he is accustomed to wearing. Though it may seen strange, this is borne out by an entire series of widely different testimonies and confirmations.
	The subject feels capable of moving instantaneously to anywhere he wants, even very distant places. And, at least to a certain extent, he feels capable of giving himself a different form and to bring to life around himself other forms with a simple act of thought. Lastly, he experiences within himself a certain capacity of acting on the matter of other bodies.
	After these more generic definitions, it will be appropriate to consider the details of how such projections are lived and the various and complex modalities of the phenomenon. I shall refer to a series of specific facts, each one of which, in its own particular way, can be proposed as exemplary. In practice, however, none of the cases I shall mention should be considered as isolated. Other similar cases can be found in literature for each one of them. They are therefore true examples.

2.	How the psychic "double" sees itself in astral projections 
        and experiences its coming out of the body
	
	When do astral projections occur? One may say that they occur in many different circumstances. In the course of physiological sleep or in artificial sleep induced by anaesthetics. Or in a somnambulism induced by hypnosis. Or in a faint, a state of coma or in a crisis of convalescence, nervous exhaustion or moral depression. More rarely, such projections occur in physiologically and psychologically normal conditions. The circumstances of absolute rest would seem to be propitious in these latter cases, especially in the moments that precede and follow sleep (Bozzano, 1934, p. 27).
	Nevertheless, one may also double while moving: while one walks or is riding, or in an aeroplane, at times even when speaking (Greenhouse, p. 21).
	On the occasion of a famous inquiry held in 1966 by Celia Green, director of the Institute of Psychophysical Research in Oxford, various subjects declared that they doubled even while they were falling from a certain height (Green, p. 29), while they were effectively engaged in difficult office work (p. 31), while they walked or ran (p. 47) or were travelling on a bus (pp.   32 and 67, during a relaxation exercise (pp. 67-70), during sleep (pp. 41, 46, 49, 50) or while expecting to fall asleep (p. 60) or even remaining perfectly awake (pp. 60-61), or watching a theatre show (p. 57), or seeing a film (p. 61), or driving a car and continuing to drive it in an unexceptional manner (p. 77), or playing a musical or piano passage and continuing to play it as if nothing had happened (p. 77), or while conversing (p. 75) or delivering a successful sermon (p. 75), or undergoing a driving test (in this case, unfortunately, with very bad results, p. 76). During many of these experiences the body continues to move with ease, while in others it becomes rigid and remains as if paralyzed (pp. 71-72).
	It will now be helpful to examine the question whether the subject may have unconscious projections. On the basis of personal projection experiences that he could induce at will, Sylvan Muldoon affirms that in the course of a projection the phantom may be conscious, partially conscious or unconscious (Muldoon and Carrington, p. 180).
	Particular interest attaches to another annotation by the same author regarding the difference between the force of the "cryptoconscious will" and that of the "conscious will". He draws our attention to a fact that can be classified as anything other than paranormal. Let us consider a mental patient. As long as he remains under the control of his conscious will, his physical force remains normal. But when his conscious mind becomes unbalanced, the "subconscious will" comes into contact with the conscious will, and the force of which it disposes becomes instantaneously multiplied in an almost unimaginable manner. Muldoon knew a young man who in normal conditions was anything but strong, but when he fell victim to one of his fits of furious madness acquired the strength of a Hercules (M. and C., p. 277).
	Further on we shall see how Muldoon unknowingly conferred an extraordinary force upon his double by virtue of the simple fact of passing for a few moments from a state of consciousness to one of unconsciousness, thus enabling his "cryptoconscious will" to emerge and act with extreme efficacy.
	Coming back to the discourse of the commonly lived phenomenology, let me say that the subject suddenly comes to find himself outside his physical body, generally above it and at a distance that may amount to a few metres, but may also be incomparably greater.
	An example of this latter possibility is offered by the testimony of one of the subjects of Celia Green’s inquiry: he said that at times he rose to a height that had to be a quarter or half a mile above his bed (Green, p. 60).
	Given closer distances, the subject, identifying himself with his exteriorized double, may concentrate attention on his physical body and observe it almost as if it were the body of another. One subject attested that he rose from the ground on which he had been lying, surprised to feel neither pain nor contusions, and to have moved away. He saw people running and looked around to discover the reason therefor. He then saw that his body was still lying on the road. The people were running towards it. Some passed by his side, while he was standing still (Green, p. 36).
	At other times the double participates in what the physical body feels and suffers, though clearly distinguishing himself from it: a subject thus realized that he was two persons; one of these was very real and suspended half a metre above the other. The I that was above felt well and relaxed, but fully conscious of the sufferings of the other "I" (Green, p. 121).
	When the double turns its attention onto itself, it may see itself in human form or, at least initially, in an approximately spherical form from which there may subsequently develop a human figure that reproduces the figure of the physical body.
	Another testimony adduced by Celia Green is provided by a person who found himself above the roof of a theatre where he had been watching an opera: the subject felt a sense of surprise and marvel to find himself up there with his body and his clothes (Green, p. 57).
	A somewhat different case is reported by Herbert Greenhouse: a travelling salesman who passed the night at Omaha, in Nebraska, felt like a villous ball while he was leaving his physical body: later, when the ball assumed the form of a man, his second body was eighty centimetres taller (Greenhouse, p. 77).
	One is led to wonder whether the extracorporeal experience can be reduced to an oneiric experience. Among the arguments that one can oppose to a reduction of this kind there is the one deriving from the fact that the testimonies of those who have lived the projection in the first person agree with those of the persons who saw them project themselves.
	Here is an example: the man who projected himself into the home of his girl friend and astrally rang the bell was first seen by her as a luminous ball that later condensed itself into a duplicate of his physical body (Greenhouse, p. 76).
	What we have just examined and considered gives us an idea of the appearance that the double assumes: a form that is roughly spherical or like a small cloud, but may also be human complete with clothing (at least wrapped in the more amorphous and vague sheet of the phantoms).
	The subject may realize that he has already assumed his usual human figure; alternatively, he may feel that he is assuming a spherical or nebulous form that will subsequently develop into the human form.
	It is curious to note that even though the aspect of the double generally corresponds to that of the physical body, it may also become altered to adapt to the desires of the subject. The latter could thus see his double rejuvenated and more handsome, especially when observing its reflection in a mirror. A middle-aged woman thus saw herself thoroughly rejuvenated to less than twenty years of age; while quite a few men find themselves with several centimetres of extra height" (cfr. Greenhouse, p. 77).
	I have mentioned doubles that appeared complete with clothing. The clothes "worn" by the doubles are the customary ones or those worn by the particular physical bodies at that moment, or also the clothes that correspond to their desires. During the hours of sleep the double may choose – possibly with an unconscious impulse of his mind – a more decorous dress than the pyjama or night shirt worn at the time.
	An observation made by Sylvan Muldoon is also important in this connection: the clothing of the phantom is the fruit of a creation and not the "double" of the physical clothing (M. and C., p. 289).
	We can now refer to another of his testimonies. As a general rule, he noted that when his physical body was dressed in a certain manner, his astral double wore the same dress. This is what happens as a general rule, but there may be exceptions. At times, in fact, it happens that the astral body is dressed in a manner different from the physical body. It may happen, for example, that the subject wears a kind of white veil similar to a gauze. This is not by any means rare, rather, it is perhaps precisely for this reason that the phantoms have always been associated with habits of a white colour (Greenhouse, p. 290).
	No projector has to worry about appearing naked, for the production of an astral dress is instantaneous: as soon as he thinks of a particular dress, he will find that it has materialized to cover him, formed by his own thought. Indeed, one may say that in the astral world thought is a creative force, so that in the eyes of others one becomes what one thinks one is. Rather, one may say that the whole of the astral world is governed by the force of thought (Muldoon and Carrington, p. 290-291).
	As regards the problem of nakedness and what appears to be its immediate solution, one should here recall the extracorporeal experience of Doctor Wiltse. Among others, he remembered that at a certain moment after the emersion of the double from the physical body he had realized that the double had assumed the form of the naked body. Now, two ladies were present in the room, members of the family, who already wept for Wiltse, whom they believed dead. Though his double remained invisible to those present, he felt embarrassed to find himself naked in the presence of two women and his double therefore moved towards the door to make good his escape. But long before he reached it, he suddenly saw himself dressed (Myers, 1892).
	Particular interest also attaches to two other testimonies provided by Muldoon. On one occasion he realized that clothing was forming from the emanation that surrounded him while he was still only a few centimetres away from his physical body. When he awoke on another occasion, he was proceeding at an intermediate speed, surrounded by an aura sufficiently dense to almost prevent him from seeing his own body. He remained thus until he came to a halt and then found himself dressed in the classical manner of phantoms (M. and C., p. 291).
	But what are astral bodies made of? What is their "matter"? Muldoon’s personal experiences provide the following answer for us: it would seem that the clothing is produced from the opaline aura that surrounds the astral body. In other words, when one watches the formation of the clothing (which is very rapid, almost instantaneous), they seem to be produced by the aura that condenses in the immediate vicinity of the body (M. and C., p. 291).

3.	How the double sees the astral realities 
         how it creates new ones 
         and how it acts on them to transform them

	There are those who refer to the substance from which the astral realities are formed as pre-matter. I shall here refer especially to the testimony given by the American Phillis Atwater of certain of her experiences, which seem to me to be particularly significant. It is a testimony representative of many similar experiences.
	It is of no importance to provide details of the rather troubled life of this lady, who among her various activities was also a teacher of meditation. She had very serious health problems and on as many as three occasions came close to death. And on all three occasions her double remained fluttering above her inter physical body before it delved not only into experiences of parallel mental worlds, but also actively participated in the creation of new realities.
	At this point it will be helpful to faithfully reproduce the description that Phillis gives us of what she lived on the occasion of her second pre-death experience, when she saw that something like stains were beginning to form around her. Stains just as on the other occasion, but this time with more flashing bubbles of a tenuous colour, completely flexible, transparent and luminous. This time they were graceful and Phillis found them very pleasing. Eventually she recognized these stains as her own thoughts, which had transformed themselves into some substance, but were devoid of a direction, a measure, or a form.
	Given this state of things, she decided to subject her thoughts to some experiments. She asked herself what would have happened if she had succeeded in concentrating so profoundly as to gather her thoughts at a single point and then launch that point in a forward direction as if it were a laser beam, directing it onto a precise object in front of her. Would she have proved capable of solidifying the substance with a simple thought, if she had wanted to do this? Would she have been able to create with her thought? Would this creation continue to exist after her own end or would it dissolve? 
	And then – as Phillis continues – while she was greatly moved by this experiment and concentrated on fixing details in her mind, she realized that something was being displaced in the environment around her.
	The dining room, which was below her, was becoming slowly but constantly united with another type of space that originated from above the ceiling. These two spaces, or spatial dimensions, were becoming amalgamated with each other, while she did not move, did not change position. She remained still, but the world around her was changing, moving and becoming something else. The dining room disappeared as this new space was becoming more visible and real. She had never seen anything like it before. She felt herself becoming enveloped by it.
	The new space was completely luminous and at the same time completely dark, but without a form, aspect, sound, colour, mass or movement. It was illuminated, but there was no light source. It was dark, though she could not understand why. And yet this strange environment, as it were, contained all the forms, all the images, all the colours, every mass and every movement. Everything that had ever existed, was existing and would exist in future was there, and yet there was nothing at all! It was all and it was nothing, even though in it there was a sentiment, a sign of life, a sensation of energy flashing at intervals, a potential light that sparkled. For lack of a better term or idea, Phillis thought of calling it "the void". It was a rather comfortable environment. And it was in this nothing laden with things that she continued with her experiments.
	At this point Phillis Atwater commenced her mental creation experiments. She decided to create and give form to a house. In her mind she established the details and the exact measurements, carefully examining each part, observing every proportion, and then focusing everything she saw in order to keep it firm while she projected it into a defined place in front of herself. She maintained her idea in focus and an image formed in front of her. With astonishment she found that the house was there. It was a house!
	She stepped forward and knocked at a window. It seemed glass. Then she opened and closed all the doors and windows, walked with a heavy step on the green pavement of the porch, gripped the great brass knob of the entrance door, inspected the foundations, the roof and the fireplace and gave a sharp blow to each of the three white posts of the porch. This white and quadrangular house with its steeply pitched roof was more solid and massive than any other house she had ever seen. It seemed really true!
	At this point Phillis’ mental creativity set itself further objectives. And also new challenges. The house was inanimate. But now she wanted to try her hand with something animate, live. She decided to try to create a powerful oak. She repeated the procedure she had used before, designing every detail of the tree in her mind and then projecting the images in front of her, to a particular point to the right of the house, using her mind like a laser beam. There soon appeared the tree complete with bark, all its grains, holes made by insects and its beautiful and brilliant leaves.
	It had happened, it was possible, it could be done, said Phillis to herself. A human being like herself could create from nothing. Could put together the tiniest parts of pre-matter,, think of energy and command it to form specific animate or inanimate objects. Thoughts are truly things. Are powerful. All the old stories are true. Thoughts are themselves made of pre-matter, because they have substance and mass and can therefore be moulded into the form one wants. Phillis was beside herself with joy (Atwater, pp. 45-47).
	She thus came to create entire landscapes and cities complete not only with houses, but also schools, roads and automobiles.
	To be quite truthful, among the subjects who have had experiences of astral projections or near-death there seem to be very few who in a certain way arouse themselves out of a state of astonishment to observe and study the new environment with due attention and test their own possibilities in that specific state.
	It is incomparably easier to have a reaction of this kind when the new condition lasts in time. This is what can happen, more easily than in a near-death experience, in the similar experience that one can have after death, after the passage to the other dimension.
	Testimony about a near-death experience can be provided by a person who has "returned", i.e. an individual still living on this earth. But who other than a deceased can attest an experience after death? To all appearances, a deceased can return to communicate with us, but only in a mediumistic experiment.
	As far as our topic of the creativity of the spirit is concerned, it is interesting to compare the testimony of Phillis Atwater not so much with those of the returned, but with those of the deceased who have remained in their new astral environment, have become acclimatized there and have thus had a great variety of experiences also of the type attested by her.
	In 1986 I published a book entitled Le esperienze di confine e la vita dopo la morte (Frontier experiences and life after death, reproposed on our internet site among The Texts of the Convivium under the title The experiences which suggest survival), which contains a comparative analysis of the testimonies not only of astral projectors and the returned, but also of deceased who describe their condition. As regards life after death, this book of mine refers explicitly to a particular book by Ernesto Bozzano from which it develops its thematics. This book of the great Genovese metapsychist is entitled La crisi della morte nelle descrizioni dei defunti comunicanti (The crisis of death in the descriptions of communicant deceased).
	According to the attestations that we seemingly receive from the entities, in life after death one passes through various stages. In the first "spheres", the ones nearest to our earthly condition, there dwell the souls still bound to their old mental habits.
	It is precisely these habits that each night induce the living to have anthropomorphic and earth-like dreams.
	This character is preserved also by near-death experiences, where there appear souls in human form who walk on green meadows and in the midst of gardens and woods, and where the passage to the other dimension is symbolically expressed as the crossing of a gate, or of a bridge across a river, or of a part of the sea aboard a ship.   
	Here we are always concerned with mental constructions. And one can say that the disincarnate souls arriving in these first spheres not only find an earth-like environment, but also learn and experience that they can contribute to its construction and transformation by virtue of creative acts of thought.
	Many souls attest that they can all create the thought-forms that will personally satisfy them. The important thing is that the soul engaged in this work should have a precise idea of what it wants to realize; it then concentrates its thought in a strong, adequate manner, eventually dedicating itself to touching up all the details.
	For example, if a house, a garden or something similar is to be constructed, it must first be imagined as a whole and then, little by little, in all its details. An entity explained this by making use of the following comparison: it is the technique with which an impressionist artist first lightly sketches the general lines with a pencil and then fills in the details with increasing clarity until he has the complete picture in front of him (Liverziani, 1986, p. 167).
	The creation of landscapes calls for the intervention of particularly expert and specialized souls. The landscape is safeguarded as a common and permanent asset, while individuals may only create and destroy objects and realities of more limited extension without doing harm to the community of the spirits of one and the same sphere.
	This double concept is summarized by Bozzano in the following terms: the configuration of the "astral" landscape is constituted by a series of very distinct thought objectivizations, one of which is permanent and immutable inasmuch as it is the objectivization of the thought and the will of very high-standing spiritual entities entrusted with the government of the lower spheres, while the others would seem transitory and extremely mutable inasmuch as they are the objectivizations of the thought and the will of individual disincarnate entities, creators of their own immediate environments (Bozzano, 1952, p. 217).
	I shall come back to the matter of life after death towards the end of the present chapter. For the moment it is sufficient to have considered an example of what can be the creativity of the mind in astral projections and in near-death experiences. We are here concerned with a creativity of the mind grasped in its being at work not only in the submerged unconscious (instinct and organization of life), but also at the level of consciousness, where what is called the will in the proper sense has its space.

4.      How the double sees the physical realities
	
	Having considered how the double sees itself, let us now pass on to noting how it sees the other realities. It sees them as all of us generally see them by means of our physical eyes. It may see them more luminous, or with far more lively colours, in limit cases with 360° vision.
	At times the double may see the more ethereal realities, more similar to shadows and in contrast with the figures of the astral world (souls, doubles, elements of an astral landscape created by thought) that, notwithstanding their mental nature, seem far more real and concrete than material bodies. These are the cases in which the double comes to find itself in conditions of greater assimilation with the world of the spirit.
	The normal view of things is also facilitated by the fact that a mysterious luminescence renders them visible even in the dark: a subject among those of the inquiry carried out by Celia Green attests that in the middle of the night he suddenly realized that he could see the outline of the things that were in the room as if a lamp had been switched on (Green, p. 89).
	At least in certain conditions, the double can also read, like another of Celia Green’s subjects, an old woman who found herself as if suspended in mid-air, left her room, climbed the stairs and entered the semi-dark room of her grandchild. There was an open book on the bedside cabinet and the subject had no difficulty in reading the two pages (something she would have found impossible in her physical body without glasses) (Green, p. 37).
	The double also proves to be of good hearing. A third subject, surprised to see her own physical body in the bed, wondered whether her hearing was normal, even though physically she was devoid of ears. She therefore approached a sleeping patient and listened to his breath. She could hear it with extreme clarity (Green, p. 84).
	Not only are sounds clearly perceived, but even music as such can be grasped in its significance and value. A woman observed that a phantom of herself had remained on the stool of the piano to play it; her "real" I was in the area by her left shoulder and criticized and directed the operations and knew that, musically, the result undoubtedly represented progress. All seemed very easy and natural. The woman was conscious that this was at long last the performance she had always dreamed about without ever achieving it. The instructions seemed to come from her "ethereal being" to her "physical being" seated at the piano (G., p. 77).
	The rational faculties also function well: a subject said that thoughts follow their normal course, just as at all other moments; a series of logical thoughts came to mind, accompanied by the habitual images (G., p. 93).
	To a correct "normal" vision one may add forms of clairvoyance, like the one that enabled Madame Eugenie Garcia to see inside her physical body and through the walls of her home. She saw herself luminous, transparent, and felt as light as a feather. She suddenly saw her body resting immobile on the big chair. She perfectly distinguished the interior of her body, saw the heart pulse and the blood circulate, the entire venous network, the muscles, in short, she saw everything as if it had been made of glass. At a certain moment she looked around and, rather than seeing opaque and impenetrable surfaces like those of the walls and the furniture, she saw all things as transparent as glass. What is more, she also saw the apartments of her neighbours and the persons in them, just as if it were all happening in a crystal building.

5.    How the double moves 
       and passes through walls 
       and carries with it objects 
       that it dematerialises 
       and then rematerializes elsewhere 
       and, lastly, acts on matter 
       with psychokinetic phenomena 
       and on the bodies of other people with healings

	There are also experiences of "itinerant clairvoyance", like those had by Sophie Swoboda in Germany. One day this young lady was afflicted by a bad headache and lay down on the divan in her bedroom, falling into a profound sleep. When she woke up again, she saw her mother about to leave the room. Feeling well, light and with her headache gone, Sophia followed her mother into the living room, where her mother sat down to resume her embroidery work, while her father was reading aloud from a book. Surprised that her parents paid no attention to her, Sophie returned to her room and there saw her body asleep on the divan. She saw that it was pallid and similar to a corpse. At that very moment she was "thrown back" into that body.
	Later Sophie could repeat every word of the text that her father had been reading and report the conversation of her parents in all its details. Between Sophie’s room and the living room there were two other rooms and all the doors were closed (Greenhouse, p. 49).
	There are even cases of clairvoyance that manifests itself at a great distance from the physical body. And example of this type is provided by the Reverend Ostby. Having learnt to project himself at will, he decided to communicate with a person whom he had never seen and whom he believed to live in Chicago, very far from his own home. When he left his body, the clergyman suddenly realized that this man was now living in California, though he did not know where. Almost instantly, Dr. Ostby found himself in front of a bungalow in a strange Californian city. He entered and found the man inside, bent on assuming drugs.
	Later Dr. Ostby obtained photographs of the man and his bungalow and attempted a complex verification. Everything corresponded perfectly to what he had observed in his astral trip, including the fact that the man was a drug addict (Greenhouse, p. 56).
	Here is another astral trip, this time attested by another of the subjects of Celia Green’s inquiry. He decided to project his conscious I to a certain distance from the body and "ordered" himself to cover some 200 miles to go to a theatre of his native city, where he knew that they had scheduled a play that greatly interested him. His desire was immediately complied with: he arrived at the foyer of the theatre and set out towards the corridor that, as he knew, led to the stalls.
	He moved for a few centimetres above the heads of the public, in a vertical position (though obviously remaining invisible), and succeeded in distinctly seeing and hearing the play that was being performed on the stage (Green, p. 146-147).
	In what way and at what speed does a projector move? On the basis of his own experience, Muldoon gives us various examples. It may be, so he writes, that the subject feels the desire of going to the home of a friend some fifteen kilometres away. It may be sufficient for him to think of the friend and he will be there in less than no time. Muldoon calls this speed "supernatural" and says that it can be attained only in a state of unconsciousness. Then, once he has reached the friend’s house, he can walk there or, if he wants, move at some intermediate speed. As Muldoon adds, this also applies as regards the spirits who reside on the astral plane (Muldoon and Carrington, p. 258).
	As we already saw, in its movements a double can often pass through walls and physical bodies. A subject presses a switch, but his fingers pass through it (Green, p. 81).
	But this does not always happen. When does it happen, and when not? Basing himself on his personal experiences, a well known French projector, Yram, suggests the following criterion of distinction. When the double projects itself and remains by the side of its body, it also remains to some extent material, because it is made up of material substances drawn from the physical body. In this condition the double will be unable to move away for more than a few metres. And it is only natural that it will continue the acts and gestures of its physical form. It will have to open a door if it wants to pass.
	Yram confesses that on many occasions he tried to pass walls in this condition, with the sole result of procuring himself a headache just as if he had beaten his head against it. Only later did he learn the art of exteriorizing himself into a double less dense with matter and only from that moment onwards did he succeed in crossing walls (Yram, pp. 67-68).
	A double’s capacity of passing through walls seems inversely proportional to that of bringing about psychokinetic phenomena.
	In the course of a projection a certain Mrs. Joy once had to open a door with her astral hand; and on another occasion she had to open a window (Greenhouse, p. 64).
	Another woman observed that every time her astral body seemed to change weight in such a manner as to interfere with her capacity of crossing obstacles. When the second body was "denser", even the smallest objects proved to be a physical impediment (ibid.).
	The state of greater material density of the double enables a subject to cause a wide variety of psychokinetic phenomena and we have many concordant testimonies as regards them. They tell us that many people have seen astral projectors and even spoke to them. And they also report that there are projectors who knocked on doors and walls, rang bells, raised and transported even heavy objects, blew out candles and changed the physical environment in many other ways. Even when not seen, the subject undoubtedly made its presence known in these ways (Greenhouse, p. 63).
	Other witnesses tell us that they were touched, caressed, brushed against, kissed, or also pushed, beaten and pinched by doubles. Thus husbands away from home returned with their second body to embrace their wives. Similarly, wives separated from their husbands crossed lands and seas to find and kiss them (Grenhouse, p. 68). Here, once again, it is the concordance of the testimonies that confirms the objectivity of the phenomenon.
	Here is an example of this concordance. Once a certain Mr. Rose decided to project himself into the home of a lady friend of his daughter while he was in bed. He thus lived in the first person the experience of walking to the house, climbing the steps in front of the entrance, and the ringing the bell. In the meantime the woman, who was likewise in bed, saw him come in enveloped in a luminous fog, while his daughter, who slept in another room, woke up and heard his steps. At the same instant the chambermaid, having heard the bell, went to open the door (Greenhouse, pp. 64-65).
	Robert Monroe, who had conscious projections for more than fourteen years, narrates that once he went to the house of a female friend and, in order to give proof of his presence, gave her a formidable pinch that she felt very strongly and which left also physical traces (cfr. Monroe, pp. 58-61).
	A particularly impressive psychophysical phenomenon is the displacement of heavy objects. A classical case is an experience reported by Muldoon. He had his bedroom on the ground floor of his home, while his mother slept on the upper floor with a younger son in the same bed. Very well, one night Sylvan was taken by a rather painful stomach ache. He tried to call his mother, but nobody heard him. He desperately tried to arrive as far as the door, hoping that she might hear him better if he called her from there, but fainted twice.
	Eventually he recovered consciousness outside his physical body and found himself climbing the stairs guided by his crypto-consciousness, that is to say, without any effort or intentionality on his part.
	Having climbed the stairs, he crossed the wall of his mother’s bedroom and saw her and his small brother lying on the bed, both profoundly asleep.    The image was very clear, but at that point Sylvan had something like an interval of unconsciousness. The author adds in a note that facts of this kind… are not infrequent.
	When Sylvan became conscious again, he found himself at the foot of the bed. He would never be able to say what had been his movements during the interval of unconsciousness, but when he came out of it, he saw that both of them were very upset. His mother was on her feet by the side of the bed, the little boy was halfway out. They spoke in excited tones that something had raised the mattress while they were sleeping and made them roll out of bed!
	This scene was once again very clear. Sylvan was as conscious of it as if he had been there in flesh and bone. Immediately afterwards he was carried out of the room and towards his physical body, into which he dropped with a spiral movement, consciously feeling the repercussion at the moment of entry.
	He called his mother right away, who came racing down the stairs in such a state of excitement as not to pay the least attention to the fact that he was lying on the floor, out of his bed, and began to tell him that the spirits had lifted her mattress and made her roll down from her bed. She said that the mattress had not been raised just once, but several times, and confessed that for a moment she had been really terrorized (Muldoon and Carrington, pp. 279-280).
	Vincent Turvey, too, reports that once in the course of his projections he raised a bed with two persons in it. We should nevertheless bear in mind that physically he was so weak that many times he did not even succeed in lifting a little child. There are many other examples of projectors who seemed capable of producing a greater quantity of energy in the astral body than in the physical one (Greenhouse, p. 66).
	And now the case of a double that carries an object from one room to another. In September 1955 Lucian Landau was lying ill in bed at his home in Kent, England. His young friend Eileen, destined to become his wife, was staying in the guest bedroom on the other side of the entrance hall. From there she came each night in astral projection to check Lucian’s pulse and respiration.
	She told him about this, and Lucian thereupon asked her that by way of proof the double should take a diary he had left on a table in Eileen’s room and bring it to him.
	That night the doors of both rooms were left open. Lucian awoke towards dawn and saw Eileen’s double standing by the window in a nightshirt. The face was pallid. But her figure, anything but ethereal, seemed opaque and vital. Eileen began to slip away but Lucian followed her to her room, where she disappeared.
	He then saw her physical body asleep in the bed. When he returned to his room, he noted on the floor a little rubber dog that had previously stood on the dressing table in Eileen’s room.
	The morning after he asked her why she had not brought the diary and she replied that she had not managed to lift it and had therefore decided that the dog seemed easier to carry. She recalled that she had left the bed in her double, gone to the table, where she vainly tried to pick up the diary, and that she had then taken the little dog in its place, since – as she added – it did not seem heavy at all (cfr. the article by Landau).
	Greenhouse comments that this was undoubtedly good proof that the projection had really taken place. Eileen was conscious of having left the body, Lucian saw her double and the toy dog was carried from one room to another. There remains the question why Eileen was unable to lift the diary, seeing that doubles generally seem to have greater force than their physical counterparts. The dog weighed 107 grammes and the diary only 37, and yet the dog was perceived as relatively light. The young woman declared that as a child she had been forbidden to touch the letters and the diaries of others. Psychologically, the diary was very heavy for her (Greenhouse, p. 66).
	A double can perform healings even at great distances. A young photographer resident in New Jersey healed his brother, who was in Atlantic City at the time, by coming to him in astral projection. Standing by the foot of the bed, he extended his astral arms. The pain having passed, his brother managed to sleep (G., p. 145).
	Harry Edwards, an English pranotherapist, fell into a trance and in this state performed both the direct therapy of a person who was present and a remote therapy on an absent person. It was said that patients even many miles away perceived, "felt" and "saw" his presence by their bed (J. Ehrenwald, in Wolman, p. 620). This is what is known as "absent healing" and is also the speciality of Edward Fricker, another Englishman (Campanelli and Alberti, pp. 4, 6-9, 11, 13).
	Gordon Turner succeeds also in establishing telepathic contact with the patient’s illness, working at a distance while the patient is asleep. He has obtained excellent results, especially with children, who affirmed that they were healed at night by a smiling man by the side of their bed (C. and A., p. 21).
	In Italy bilocation of the healer (ascertained by appropriate testimonies) involving distances of even several thousand kilometres is associated with the names of Pasqualina Pezzolla and Olga Baglione, both of Civitanova Marche (C. and A., pp.   165-169 and 174).
	Particularly well known are the bilocations and the associated apparitions in distant places of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, following which a sick person was healed.
	Here is an exemplary case. Father Alberto D’Apolito, who for half a century was very close to Padre Pio, relates that in 1957  he witnessed the miraculous healing of Father Placido Bux. Father Bux had been hospitalized at San Severo on account of a grave form of hepatic cirrhosis and, notwithstanding the medical cures, his condition became desperate. One night Father Placido saw Padre Pio by his bed. Padre Pio spoke to him, comforted him and assured him that he would recover. He then went to the window of the room, placed his hand on the glass and disappeared.
	In the morning Father Placido felt better. Remembering what had happened during the night, he looked towards the window and saw the imprint of a hand on the glass. He went there to check and recognized the hand of Padre Pio. He thus convinced himself that the nocturnal visit had not been a dream but a reality. He told the sisters and the nurses what had happened, and the news soon spread throughout the hospital and the town. This gave rise to a coming and going of curious people who wanted to see the imprint of Padre Pio’s hand on the glass. The doctors, incredulous and intolerant of this coming and going, ordered the imprint to be removed. Attempts were made to clean the window with a wet cloth and detergents, but the imprint kept re-appearing.
	Rendered incredulous about what he had seen with his own eyes, Father Alberto went immediately to San Giovanni Rotondo to ask an explanation of Padre Pio. He met him in the corridor of the convent and, even before he told him the reason for his visit, Padre Pio asked him: "How is Father Placido?" Father Alberto replied: "He is getting better". And then added: "Is it true that last night you went to the hospital and left the imprint of your hand on the glass?". Padre Pio fixed him and replied: "Can you doubt it? Yes, I went there, but don’t tell anybody". Father Alberto returned to San Severo and reported what Padre Pio had said. Even the doctors made no further comments. Father Placido made a complete recovery (Allegri, pp. 115-117).

6.    The phenomena of astral projection 
       become verifiable also by other subjects 
       when they give rise to apparitions
	
	This is not the first time I have referred to the need that ecsomatic experiences should be confirmed by the testimonies of other subjects in order to provide a more objective demonstration – first and foremost – of their quality of genuine projections and not just onyric and hallucinatory experiences. An extracorporeal experience undoubtedly confirms itself as such (and not as an illusion or a dream) to the extent to which ever more qualified testimonies are gradually obtained. The experience I am about to describe offers confirmation by another subject. A boy who took part in Celia Green’s inquiry reported that once he decided while he was in bed that he would try to detach himself. He attained this state of detachment and fluctuation and ran for two miles across the fields in the direction of the home of his fiancée. He remained in her room for a few minutes and tried to render his presence tangible, and then returned home and into his body. When he went to school the next morning, one of the first things that his fiancée told him was that she had felt his presence in her room. She had woken up, sure that he was in the room, but naturally he was not there (Green, p. 150).
	The following case is even more noteworthy, since it offers an example of projections ascertained by three different subjects: William Stead tells us of a lady who was personally known to him and possessed the capacity not only of projecting herself to a remote distance, but also of materializing. On many occasions she appeared to her friends, attaining a conspicuous degree of materialization, which caused them a great deal of trouble and embarrassment, if not altogether terror, before they eventually got accustomed to it (Muldoon and Carrington, p. 55).
	Of particular interest are what the three authors of the monumental work Phantoms of the Living, Gurney, Myers and Podmore, call "reciprocal hallucinations". I should like to dwell on these experiences for a moment or two, summarizing a series of cases.
	What is the meaning of "hallucinations" in this sense? Here the definition that William James gives in his Principles of Psychology may prove helpful. James observes that one often speaks of hallucinations as mental images that a subject projects outside himself by mistake. But when a hallucination is complete, it is far more than a mental image. A hallucination is a form of strictly sensitive consciousness, a fine and true sensation as if it were a real object (James, 1890, vol. II, p. 115).
	One may also have hallucinations that are realistic in this sense in dreams, as in the first case included in Phantoms of the Living. In England, in 1872, Mr. G. J. Romanes dreamt that he was sitting at a table in the drawing room, with an old lady sitting on the opposite side of the table. The two fixed each other very intensely, when an aunt of his suddenly came into the room and told him in a surprised and admonishing tone: "But John! Don’t you know who she is?" And added before he could reply: "It’s your grandmother!". At this point the old lady got up and disappeared. End of the dream.
	Later it was ascertained that at the time in question John’s grandmother, a person with whom he shared his very characteristic lineaments, happened to be in a distant locality on the Isle of Wight, in her own bed and in the throes of a delirium. A cousin who looked after her reported that John’s grandmother had thrown her arms around her neck with a gesture similar to the one she made in the dream a moment before she disappeared. But then, realizing that the person by her side was her grandchild, she said: "Oh, it’s you, Polly? I thought it was somebody else". But she did not say who it was. Here, obviously, we have a shortcoming that attenuates the demonstrative force of the overall attestation (Gurney, etc., Case 2003, French edition, pp. 329-330).
	Mr. J.T. Milward Pierce of Nebraska received a terrible kick while he tried to stop a runaway horse. Nevertheless, he did not faint even for a moment. A moment later he saw a pallid and anxious young woman by his side. The vision lasted for a few instants. The girl, whom he knew well, lived in a different place. He went to visit her next day and, as soon as he arrived, heard her say: "Yesterday I expected you all the afternoon. I thought I saw you: you were white in the face and full of blood". It should be noted that the contusions he had suffered had not left any visible traces. The two apparitions that occurred in the early afternoon proved to be contemporaneous (Case 304; French edition, 1884, pp. 331-333).
	Mr. Cromwell F. Varley feared that his sister-in-law might be in mortal danger due to grave cardiac problems. He visited her at her country home and spent a night there with his wife. He had a nightmare and at a certain moment saw his sister-in-law, exchange a few words with her and then heard her exclaim: "Oh, Cromwell, I’m dying!". He shouted and thus woke up his wife. They both got up and noted that the door of the room was still locked. When morning came at long last, they went to see the patient after having agreed that they would not tell her anything about the incident. But it was she who broke the silence and told them that she had passed a frightful night, that she had gone to their room and had spoken with him and at the end had said: "Oh, Cromwell, I’m dying1". Both she and Cromwell had checked the time: 3.30 a. m. (Case 305; French edition, p. 333).
	Mr. Parker underwent a hypnotic cure and, every time he received a treatment, would remain seated for a long time in an armchair in the garden, as if he wanted to rest. One day, towards 2 p. m., his wife came to a window, looked in the direction of the garden and noted that her husband, sitting in his usual armchair, was in the company of a man who stood in front of him and was dressed in a rather strange way. A little later the husband came into the house and Mrs. Parker asked him who had come to see him. But he said that he  had always been by himself.
	Two days later the hypnotist returned and she noted that he wore the same suit as the man she had seen in the garden. She identified him as that person. Before leaving again, the hypnotist stopped to talk to her and, among the other things he told her, he confided: "It is very strange, but already on two occasions I had the same impression after treating your husband: namely, finding myself in an altogether different place, I feel to be by his side either in the drawing room or in the garden!". Mrs. Parker asked the therapist when he had had this impression for the last time. And he replied: "The other day I had finished eating and was reading a paper by the fireplace. It was about two p. m.: I remember the time. I suddenly felt I was no longer there, but by the side of your husband in the garden of this place" (Case 307, French edition, 1996, pp.   336-338).
	The boy Edward W…, firstborn son of the Anglican vicar of A…, was lying gravely ill in his bed, at times even in a delirium. At the presbytery in B…, two girls, Constance (aged fourteen, sister of Edward) and Margaret, daughter of the local priest, were running along a hedge in the garden. Suddenly they heard themselves called twice "Connie! Margaret!". They went back to the house to ask who had called them, but nobody had done so.
	That same evening Constance returned to A… and the following day Margaret’s mother likewise came to A… to visit Edward. The boy’s mother told her that the day before he had had a fit of delirium during which he had called the two girls, whom he said he could see running along a hedge. He kept on calling them, but they seemed not to hear him and, rather than replying, were running towards the house. The time coincided: it happened about mid-day (Case 308; French edition, 1885, pp. 338-340).
	Canon X was called to the deathbed of a female friend of his, who lived in a villa some sixty miles away. When she saw him enter the room, she said to him: "You here! But I’ve just come home from B… (the canon’s parish). How you have embellished your church!". Having said this, she described many of these embellishments exactly and with a wealth of detail. They had been made only the week before and nobody of another parish could know anything about them.
	A month after the lady’s death, an old maidservant said that she had been greatly disturbed by the vision of a lady on her knees in a corner of the church, who had then moved towards the sacristy and at a certain moment had disappeared. The doors of the church were locked at the time: how had she managed to get in, and where had she ended up? The canon showed her a series of photographs and she indicated one of them, which showed the lady in question, whom she had never met in person. The only difference was that the lady of her vision seemed leaner in the face and more run down (Case CXXX of the French edition; English indication lacking; French edition, 1885, pp. 340-342).
	The three authors of Phantoms of the Living dedicate an entire chapter, the fifteenth, to analyzing what they call "collective hallucinations" in the realistic sense explained also by William James.
	Assuming that one person may have perceived something real, for the three authors there still remains the problem of excluding that it may have been suggested to the other or the others by the first. If this were to be so, we would no longer be concerned with a collective telepathic hallucination, but only an individual telepathic hallucination. Now, Gurney, Myers and Podmore agree that undoubtedly there are cases in which the passive subjects seem – at least seem – to have suffered the action of the acting subject in a manner independently of each other.
	René Sudry does not by any means agree that we are here concerned with mere hallucinations. Here the perceiving or passive subjects are perfectly healthy and normal individuals, not types likely to have hallucinations. The hallucinatory theory also comes up against two insurmountable objections: 1) in the greater part of cases there is a plurality of testimonies; 2) the phenomena leave permanent traces.
	In other words, while telepathic transmission presupposes a psychic relationship between agent and percipient, in far too many of the cases proposed by the three authors the phenomenon is also perceived by other persons who have no relationship whatsoever with the agent. Even by children and animals who feel frightened by it. And then, closely connected with it, there occur displacements of objects, open doors, cold currents, etc. Everything sustains the hypothesis that there was a real energy transfer, a phenomenon of telergy, a kind of remote ideoplasty, or teleplasty. In short, that there has occurred a very objective and objectivizable phenomenon, a kind of voyage, a bilocation.
	Particular interest attaches to the bilocation experiences that can be attested in a concordant manner by both the bilocating subject and the person who perceives the astral visitant. Here is the experience of an astral visit made years ago and attested by both the subjects. Who bilocates in this case is the famous Calabrian seer Natuzza Evolo.
	Anna Maria Turi summarizes the facts in her book Natuzza Evolo, la mistica di Paravati (Natuzza Evolo, the mystic of Paravati). One of the first witnesses of the bilocations of Natuzza was the Archpriest of Mileto Cathedral, Monsignor Francesco Pititto, in 1984. He saw and heard her recite the Holy Rosary with him. Beside her he glimpsed a figure of hazy outlines. It seemed a rather old woman to him. Natuzza explained that she had gone to find the priest because his mother, who had died not long ago, had wanted her to do so and that for a few minutes she had recited the Rosary with her (Turi, 1995, p. 76).
	Let us now give the floor to Natuzza herself and see how she characterizes her bilocations. "The bilocation never occurs in accordance with my spontaneous will. Some deceased or angels come to me and accompany me to the places where my presence is needed. I see the new environment perfectly, so much so that I can describe it later, I can speak and be heard by the persons present, I can open and close doors, can produce actions…
	"The voyage does not seem to have duration, I find myself instantly in the place of arrival, independently of the distance. When I go into a home, I find myself directly in the room or, more often, in a room adjacent to the one where there is the person I have to see, I open the door and then close it again, carry out the action. I have never been aware of crossing material walls or divisions, I just find myself inside the environment. Sometimes I end up in a street or an outside environment…
	"Sometimes I was able to transport material objects between the place visited in bilocation and my home, where my physical body had remained. I don’t know how this happens, but it happened, for example, in the case of my head scarf forgotten at the home of the Giampàs at Catanzaro, which I brought back to Paravati, and in the case of three fruit cakes that a lady who had met me in the streets of Nicastro, where I had gone in bilocation, wanted to give me and which I, having taken them, found in my hands at Paravati while I was talking to some visitors" (Marinelli, vol. I,  pp. 197-198).
	Valerio Marinelli’s thorough study Natuzza di Paravati (Natuzza of Paravati), source of the above citation, dedicates a long chapter (VII of vol. I, pp. 195-233) to the various bilocation modalities of this famous mystic: visible bilocation with complete or incomplete apparition; invisible bilocation with perception of a flower perfume; with permanent physical actions (displacement of objects, knots in a rosary, a bed remade, a clock that starts functioning again, electric lights switched on and off, etc.); bilocation with transport of matter (as already illustrated).
	An episode related by Dr. Mario Cortese, a physician of Sila, Calabria, is particularly significant. His little boy was suffering from a violent attack of coughing that showed no sign of improving. The mother, rather worried, invoked the help of Natuzza, and the coughing immediately disappeared. The father was extremely surprised, because he knew perfectly well that attacks of this kind never stop in this manner, but only by gradually lengthening the interval between one cough and the next. The time was 9 p.  m.
	Natuzza, who was in the area at the time, staying with the Giampàs, was questioned about this on the next day and candidly replied: "Last night the angel told me that you were calling and saying: 'The boy, the boy'. I thought it was my boy (in fact, one of Natuzza’s sons had visited the Corteses the evening before), so I came right away".
	The Giampäs attested that Natuzza at that moment was talking to them, had mentally absented herself, as she usually does when she goes into bilocation, and that they had therefore checked the time: it was 9 p. m. (cfr. Marinelli, vol. I, p. 220).
	To confirm this complex type of phenomenon, I should now like to recall a famous anecdote concerning Padre Pio, whose bilocations are convalidated by hundreds of testimonies, quite apart from the personal ones of this holy Capuchin friar.
	As Father Fernando de Riese would have it, one night of November 1917, after the defeat of Caporetto, General Luigi Cadorna, supreme commander of the Italian army, at a moment when he was greatly distressed on account of having been replaced by General Armando Diaz and seeing his professional standing called into question by indecorous comments, saw a friar in front of him while in a township of the Veneto. The friar had been preceded by a pronounced odour of roses and violets. His hands were blood-stained and he had a gentle look. He exhorted him to stay calm and to put down his pistol, not to go ahead with his insane and desperate gesture.
	When the general, who had never seen Padre Pio, mentioned these details, he was told that he could not have seen anybody other than the stigmatized friar of San Giovanni Rotondo. He began to feel that he wanted to see him again. In 1920 he set out for Apulia. Nobody knew about this visit. He was therefore greatly surprised when, arriving at San Giovanni by coach, two Capuchins told him that Padre Pio was expecting him.
	The general immediately recognized Padre Pio: "You are the friar who came to me!" And Padre Pio practically confirmed this, saying: "General, that was an awful night we passed together!" (cited by Margnelli, p. 145). 

7.    There is analogy and continuity 
       between out-of-body experiences 
       and near-death experiences 
       (both attested by living subjects) 
       and also between these 
       and the experiences of death 
       and of life after death 
       (attested by the personalities of presumed deceased 
       who are supposed to come 
       to communicate in mediumistic seances)

	The apparition phenomenon is very vast and complex. A living person may appear by projecting himself over a distance and it is said that the deceased can also do this. What difference is there between the apparitions of a living person and a disincarnate soul (assuming that the latter can really do this)?
	Among others, there emerges the following difference. The apparition of a living person draws substance and concreteness from energies that he himself possesses. For his part, the deceased could already have disposed of the energies of his subtle body, so that he has lost the capacity of connecting his disincarnate soul to a no longer existing physical body. In that case the apparition of the deceased could no longer assume any physical consistency at all, unless he replaces his no longer available energies with energies provided by a medium.
	When it projects itself outside the physical body, a soul still living its earthly existence has experiences that are not dissimilar from those of a soul that becomes disincarnate. The subsequent experiences of life after death are on the same line.
	In other words, in the course of earthly life it is possible to have out-of-body experiences, and also near-death experiences that in a certain way enhance them and from which one likewise returns to normal life.
	And then there are the experiences of the crisis of death or passage to the other dimension. And, lastly, there are the experiences of life after death.
	The last two types of experience can no longer be attested by persons alive on the earth, but only by deceased who come back to manifest themselves in mediumistic seances.
	One may therefore say that these four types of experience seem all on the same line of development, as we shall now see.

8.	An example of this analogy and continuity 
      can be found by  comparing 
      the near-death experience of Dr. Wiltse 
      and the experience of passage to the other dimension 
      of the self-styled entity Felicia Scatcherd

	Let us consider the ecsomatic experiences and, more particularly, the ones that may be called "near-death" experiences. These conclude with a return into the body and a normal incarnate condition that, in the case of those destined to die within a short time, will obviously be of brief duration. Let us then consider experience of the crisis of death, an experience that concludes with the definitive passage to the other dimension. Very well, there is a rather close analogy between the two experiences.
	In both experiences the subject detaches from the physical body, so that he can observe it from outside and from a certain distance. In both there is also the emergence of an astral body, which in most cases seems formless at first, but eventually assumes the same form as the physical body.
	 Let us compare the near-death experience made by Doctor Wiltse with the experience of actually passing beyond that to all appearances is attested by Felicia Scatcherd.
	Ill and convinced that he was about to die, Dr. Wiltse had taken leave of the members of his family and then entered a state of apparent death that lasted for four hours. He afterwards remembered that, even though convinced that he was about to die, he nevertheless felt very much alive as he studied his body - as he was able to perceive it in that particular condition - with all the interest of a medical practitioner. At the same time he kept an eye on the interesting process of the separation of the soul from the physical body.
	At first he still felt one within the other, and noted that in this phase the cutaneous tissue still marked the exterior confines of the soul tissue. He nevertheless realized that the separation process was getting under way. He felt the gradual tearing of innumerable threads from the toes of the feet up to the ankles and then further up the legs and the hands and the abdomen and the chest, right up to the head. He said to himself: "Now there is no longer any life below the femur". And so on, until he eventually expressed the sensation: "Now I am concentrated in the head; before long I shall be completely free".
	At a certain point he saw himself emerge from the cranium like a membranous body, a kind of jellyfish that ended up by assuming the appearance of the naked body, but became dressed as soon as he expressed even the least concern for the persons who might see him in this Adamitical state.
	The new body seemed to be transparent and to have no effect on the matter of the objects and the persons present in the room, since it crossed them without their giving even the least sign of being aware of the contact.
	Then, still identified with his double, Doctor Wiltse crossed the room, left it and went away. But he eventually felt himself called back to life and, once again in his physical body, found himself lying on the bed and surrounded by his family, whose weeping gave way to the surprise and joy caused by this unexpected resurrection (cfr. Myers, 1892).
	Let us now pass on to comparing the testimony of Dr. Wiltse about his near-death experience with what seems to be the mediumistic testimony of the deceased Miss Felicia Scatcherd regarding her passage to the other dimension.
	Felicia felt very tired and somnolent and towards morning fell into a kind of light sleep. She then saw strange lights and curious luminous filaments and felt as if she were floating, while her brain seemed to become clearer. She said to herself: "I feel really fine, I was sure I would get well again". But she soon began to realize what this getting well would mean! She felt mentally so free that she wanted to write and see people and talk to them and tell them that she felt as if she were a twenty-year-old once again. Then she drowsed off again. The threads were holding her back, rendering her somnolent. She was not really asleep, it was as if she were pleasantly drowsing, and happy memories of former days kept crowding in on her.
	She thus approached the actual moment of the passage beyond. Felicia was being assisted by other entities and followed their advice to render the passage easier and pleasant. She did as they had suggested, remained very tranquil and then, little by little, there came about a change: the filaments disappeared. She found herself in a kind of cloud that gradually took shape. She realized that it was her own form consisting of an invisible body. She learnt from others that she could forge it and construct it with her mind (Scatcherd).

9.	 What a dying person attests 
       regarding his own visions 
       receives confirmation from what 
       can be glimpsed by a seer 
       present at the deathbed

	At this point it will be helpful to attempt another comparison, namely comparing the two testimonies of Dr. Wiltse and the deceased Felicia Scatcherd with that of Mrs. Joy Snell, a sensitive nurse. While Wiltse and Felicia lived the experience of, respectively, near-death and complete and irreversible death, Joy Snell was able to follow the death of innumerable patients from, as it were, outside.
	Bozzano comments that the fact that this psychic person was able to observe the phenomenon of the exteriorization of the "etheric body" for as many as twenty years from the bedside of the patients she assisted, a phenomenon that was always associated with visions of spirits who had come to assist their relatives or friends in their supreme hour, is highly suggestive (Bozzano, 1934, p. 106).
	Joy described her first experience of this kind, the death of her friend Maggie; as soon as Maggie’s heart stopped beating, Joy distinctly saw something similar to steam issuing from a pot in which water is boiling rise from her body, stop within a short distance of the corpse, and then condense into a form wholly identical with that of her friend. This form, at first of uncertain outline, gradually delineated itself more clearly, eventually becoming perfectly distinct. It was wrapped in kind of white veil with pearly reflections, with the forms standing out clearly beneath it. The face was that of her friend, but glorified, and without any trace of the spasms that had tortured her on her deathbed.
	Joy Snell concludes by saying that when later she became a nurse, a vocation she followed for twenty years, she was present at numerous death events and immediately after the actual decease could always observe the condensation of the etheric form above the corpse. This form was always the same as the one from which it emanated. As soon as it had condensed, it would disappear from her sight (Bozzano, 1934, pp. 107-108).

10.	  In out-of-body and near-death experiences 
        the subject still incarnate on this earth 
        lives in the first person 
        and with the greatest possible evidence 
        the creativity of the psyche 
        which nevertheless attains 
        its maximum expression in the other dimension: 
        a reality that is wholly and solely mental 
        and where ideoplasty reigns supreme
	
	What we have just noted is of valid help to us for sketching a comparison between the ecsomatic (and especially near-death) experiences and those of actual passing (likewise lived in the first person and confirmed by what is seen by the sensitive present). Such a comparison highlights what seems a constant feature: the double that emerges from the physical body tends to assume a form corresponding to that of the physical body. When it comes to be defined in detail, this human form presents itself dressed rather than naked.
	Muldoon observes that certain descriptions offered by seers give one the impression that the astral body is created by the mind of the subject. In actual fact, however, what the seer observes is always the same etheric body that makes itself ever more distinct in the eyes of the beholder as it emerges from the aura that envelops it (Muldoon and Carrington, p. 318, Note).
	Even if one accepts this, one still has to explain the origin of the dress: it is difficult to assume the emergence of a solid etheric dress for this etheric body. At least the dress must surely be the fruit of mental creation. Elsewhere, Muldoon insists as regards the mental creation of the clothes.
	He cites a projector "colleague", Carline Larsen, who indeed seems to have gone much further than he as an explorer of the beyond. The following remarks were taken by Muldoon from one of her books entitled My Travels in the Spirit World. At first, immediately after death, dress creation is an unconscious product. As soon as the spirit separates from the physical body, in fact, some habit covers it, even though this is only a kind of veil. But when the mind re-acquires control of itself, the act of dressing becomes a conscious act, and the style of the dress thus becomes substantially subject to individual taste (M. and C., p. 192).
	Caroline Larsen takes us to another dimension where certain modalities that in our incarnate condition still seem exceptional become absolutely normal. The mental creation that one can consider as closely related to the projections of the living outside the physical body would indeed seem of rather more limited application. It is the presence of matter that limits them. And matter always has its importance also in an ecsomatic phenomenon, since the double always remains bound to the physical body and conditioned by it.
	It would seem that the creativity of the subject in astral projection explicates itself above all in the reproduction of his own image and the clothing.
	But Greenhouse notes something more: it sometimes happens that when a double manifests itself to other persons, it presents itself not only dressed in a certain manner, but bearing also an object of a similarly astral consistency. This may be a small object, like a jewel or a brooch, but also an object of greater size: for example, a candlestick, a fishing rod or net, an electric iron and so on (Greenhouse, p. 83).
	The mental creativity of a human subject expresses itself in his dreams and, while awake, also in his thoughts and fantasies, as well as in hallucinations. Here we are in front of a mental creativity which is almost by no means curbed by physical obstacles, as it were. 
	But is this not a purely subjective phenomenon? I would say: subjective up to a certain point, if it is true that thoughts can be captured by other subjects with telepathy and acquire a consistency that even permits their being photographed.
	Mental creativity comes to the fore to a very considerable extent in the paranormal phenomena studied by parapsychology that we have already reviewed. A very particular degree of creativity is the one that can be recognized in paramystic phenomena on account of their particularly prodigious character that is to be attributed not so much to the action of the human psyche, but rather to the action – albeit always through the psyche – of the divine Spirit.
	Here, especially in the paranormal and above all the paramystic phenomena, one can truly say that mens agitat molem, the mind moves the material mass. And one may say that it moves it to the point of forging it, to the point of impressing upon it a form  corresponding to an idea.
	But one can say that a decisive step forward is possible only in the condition of the beyond. Indeed, the other dimension can be defined as a purely mental world. Only in the other dimension does the mind become emancipated from matter and can freely develop and establish the contacts and give itself the form it wants.
	Though in the other dimension it is true that the creative freedom of the mind triumphs, it is also true that – in any given situation and degree of development in which it may find itself – a soul remains always limited in its creativity. Limited in what sense and by what? I would say: limited by other mental realities. Always of a mental nature, never physical.
	Now, what mental realities can limit the action of a disincarnate soul? More than anything else, I would say, those that correspond to the fruit of the previous actions or, better, previous thoughts. Each thought is creative and produces fruits that can be of a positive or a negative sign.
	There is no strict need for postulating reincarnation to recognize that actions and, even more so, thoughts have the power of determining our future conditions of existence that in a certain way are its fruits. It is above all here that it seems to me to glimpse the profound truth of the doctrine of the karma, which finds its confirmation above all when we pass into the beyond, which proves to be a purely mental environment.
	Each thought carves a groove in which the subsequent thoughts move as if on rails. The image of rails may possibly give an oversimplified idea as if the traced route were one and only one. In actual fact the individual acts of thought open a thick web of possible paths: these paths condition the subsequent acts, offering easier routes. A principle of economy of the mental tension thus generates habits that, if they were to take root in a direction deemed to be negative, our ethical sensitivity would describe as vices. 
	All this already takes place in the mental life of our present earthly condition, But in the other dimension the phenomenon would become underscored. And, as I would add, it could be that this accentuation attains exasperated forms.
	The experience that we may have of the  material world in this earthly dimension always constitutes a corrective for possible odd beliefs and opinions we may hold, while in the other dimension any belief or opinion finds confirmation in the creativity of thought, which is capable of bringing about any kind of hallucination.
	On this earth ideas remain pure ideas (except in case we are suffering from some particular mental illness), whereas in the hereafter an idea takes a tangible consistency, so that we wander around among our thoughts as if in a world of things that to us seem very real and concrete and solid.
	When we pass to the other dimension, we transfer there an entire world of at least potential thoughts, an entire complex of more or less strongly rooted mental habits. Very well, the other dimension will immediately seem to us constructed in accordance with the pattern of these thoughts, in keeping with our expectations. At least at first, and possibly also for a rather long phase, Islamic Arabs will have a beyond in keeping with their usages and customs and beliefs, and the eskimos certainly have a very different one for themselves.	
	There thus come to take shape specific mental environments that, similarly to what happens in dreams, seem very similar to those on earth, but in transfigured form. Always in close analogy with dreams, the ultraterrene mental environments also become created in conformity with the mental habits of the subjects and are maintained until these come to lack.
	Given the well known law of affinity, which dominates in the other dimension, the souls who have in common similar mental habits and similar convictions will find themselves in contact, in the kind of communion that will enable them to have similar experiences in the same "sphere". And this simple fact of perceiving the same things will induce them to confirm each other in common interpretations.
	This creation of a common mental reality comes about due to the action of the thoughts deposited in the subconscious. At first this is something that operates independently of our will. We thus come to find ourselves in certain conditions in a manner that we feel to be automatic.
	So far we thus find that we are concerned with an unconscious mental creativity. But it is precisely now that there happens what seems to be the most interesting thing from the point of view of our present study. Creativity becomes ever more conscious and voluntary. The subject creates what he wants and freely transforms and forges even his own astral aspect and the most interior modalities of his being.
	There are individual and collective creations. In the astral condition, which is still dominated by form, an individual entity can create, by himself and for himself and with the pure force of his will, objects of personal use. But the creation of the environments seems rather a collective task or is entrusted by the collectivity to subjects who are more expert and, so to speak, more specialized in that particular function.
	Mediumistic literature abounds with descriptions of the other dimension. As I have suggested, in the early stages it is characterized by decidedly anthropomorphic and earth-like features, though this should not unduly impress or disappoint us for the reasons I have already mentioned and, above all, on account of the similarity that all this shows with the experience of dreams.
	The creativity brought into being by our dreams seems to spring more than anything else from our unconscious, so that our active and responsible participation remains undoubtedly very limited. In the other dimension the freedom of our initiative plays an incomparably greater and growing part. In the other dimension the subjects feel free and it is under the banner of freedom that they construct their new life when they shape and realize themselves.
	In the astral sphere there remain human activities (including artistic and research activities) and creation of realities similar to the earthly ones is still pursued: houses and larger inhabited centres, gardens and meadows and woods, mountains and sea.
	A slightly more detailed description of all this is contained in numerous testimonies attributable to disincarnate souls. For a critical review of what emerges from the various mediumistic communications I can refer readers to my book Le esperienze di confine e la vita dopo la morte (Near-death experiences and life after death, reproposed on our internet site under the title The experiences which suggest survival). 
	This book analyzes out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences (attested by living persons) and compares them with mediumistic testimonies (attributable to deceased) regarding their passage to the beyond and subsequent existence there. A systematic comparison shows that the aforementioned experiences (out-of-body, near-death, crisis of death, life after death) all seem to be on the same line of development and fully in keeping with each other.
	By way of brief conclusion, one may well say that during the first steps of ultraterrene development the entire astral world is found to be a creation of the mind.
	Such a creation is always conditioned by the matter of a world that, though abandoned when passing to the beyond, nevertheless remains as a reminiscence and mental habit. As far as further evolution is concerned, one must presume that mental creation becomes ever freer to the extent to which the entities succeed in freeing themselves of this terrestrial conditioning.
	However, every expression of creativity is charged with value. This remains a fixed point. Just as it remains inconceivable that an authentic value should be destroyed. An authentic spirituality saves all the values. And undoubtedly the final triumph of the total and perfect Good to which our hopes are protended includes the salvation of all the creations of even the most remote past.
	Appreciating and saving forever all the values that mental creation has brought into being means affirming mental creation, as such, as absolute value, as imitation and continuation of God’s own creation.

Chapter  VIII

HOW THE PSYCHIC FORCE CAN KNOW THINGS DIRECTLY 
BY IDENTIFICATION AND PARTICIPATION

1.   The psychic force can act directly 
       not only on psychic realities 
       but also on physical ones 
       and can know these in a similarly direct 
       and immediate (though inevitably imperfect) manner 
       by means of telepathy and clairvoyance
	
	We have already seen how the psychic force acts. It does not operate like homo faber, who utilizes his own hands as working instruments and supplements and strengthens them with tools he purposely constructs therefor. It acts very differently, in a direct, global and immediately ideoplastic manner.
	And it is in a similarly direct manner that the psychic force knows: in other words, in a manner that is not mediated either by the nervous system or by sense organs or instruments that are constructed to improve the sensitivity and performance of these organs.
	Paranormal knowledge is no longer a type of objectivizing knowledge. The selfsame distinction that in the action field is made between the paranormal acting and technological acting of homo faber has also to be made here between the objectivizing knowledge of analysis (and, in the limit, of science) and the intuitive knowledge that, at least as our present discourse is concerned, is had especially in paranormal experiences.
	One may thus say that paranormal knowledge is intuitive and direct. It is not mediated, as is tendentially the case of the other form of knowledge that in our civilization has become "normal" and is the most widely practiced and best appreciated form.
	I have already said that in normal knowledge the psychic principle avails itself of the nerves and sense organs as instruments. These natural instruments are here integrated by the instruments of scientific research and, even more so, by the instruments of normal use that – like, for example, eye glasses and electric light – simply enhance the capacity of the sense organs in connection with the ordinary experiences that we have in everyday life.
	Paranormal knowledge seems intuitive and direct in all its modalities: in telepathy as in clairvoyance, be it in the present (telestesia) or in the past (psychometry) or in the future (precognition).
	Here we are always concerned with a knowledge due to direct contact and – albeit in various degrees – identification. A knowledge with characters that always correspond to what Bergson defines as "intuition", opposing it to "analysis" which circles round its object and considers it from points of view that remain outside it. In his Introduction to metaphysics, on the other hand, Bergson defines intuition as a "sympathy": a sympathy that takes us deep into an object and makes us coincide with what is unique in it and cannot therefore be expressed. Paranormal knowledge is thus an intuitive, participative, empathic and lived knowledge par excellence (B., 1949, ch. I, § 1, p. 30).

2.    How the psychic force can know reality 
       directly by means of clairvoyance in the present

	If we want to consider the articulations and characteristics of paranormal knowledge in a more specific manner, we can begin with telestesia and dwell on the definition that Gastone De Boni gives of it: the phenomena of clairvoyance in the present consists of the sensitive making contact with an environmental situation that everybody is unaware of (De B., p. 265).
	The telestesic phenomena demonstrate a pure clairvoyance faculty: we note them in such a manner as to exclude that the information deriving therefrom is attained by making contact with somebody, his psyche, his unconscious. Because, indeed, in this latter case we would be concerned with phenomena that are telepathic rather than telestesic. 

3.   How the psychic force can know 
      other people’s thoughts, lived experiences 
      and frames of mind by means of telepathy

	Telepathy is clearly different from telestesia (i.e., clairvoyance in the present). Both enable us to perceive a reality that escapes our physical senses. However, while telestesia enables us to arrive there without passing through the thought of any human subject, what we grasp with telepathy is a precise psychic reality. Telepathy is knowledge (undoubtedly very imperfect, anything other than adequate) that a soul may obtain of another soul by immediate contact, by copenetration.
	It is essential that the two subjects who have to enter into such a relationship are already characterized by a spiritual affinity or an affinity of situation and possibly already know each other. It is even better if between them there exists friendship, love, an affective relationship, or if they are relatives of each other.
	A sensitive is helped to enter into contact with another subject by a so-called "psychometric object". Here we are concerned with something that refers to that particular subject inasmuch as, for example, he carries it with him. It could be a watch in constant and daily use. By simply taking the watch into his hand the sensitive establishes a relationship of contact and co-penetration with its owner that renders possible a certain amount of knowledge by paranormal, telepathic means.  
	Something very similar occurs in telestesis or clairvoyance in the present. To give another example, here the problem could be to identify the place where somebody drowned or where his body was taken. The sensitive could avail himself of an object that belonged to the person in question or a topographic map, or a "divining rod", or a pendulum. Passing over the place or the point that represents it on the map, the pendulum would start oscillating, thus signalling its location (examples in Bozzano, 1942, pp. 76-95).
	One may note the great importance of the mediating object also in connection with psychometry or clairvoyance in the past, where it is precisely the fact of being able to touch the object, of being able to pick it up with the hands (it does not matter if it is wrapped in cloth or paper to exclude any possibility of prior recognition), it is precisely this fact the permits the sensitive, the psychometrist, to have a vision regarding the past of the object and the person to whom it belonged.

4.    A "psychometric object" can help 
       the extrasensorial perception experience 
       and its place can be taken 
       by many different actions

	The psychometric object may consist of many different things – or its place can be taken by many different actions – that serve to establish a relationship with the reality it is desired to know in a paranormal manner.
	Let us take the case of Maria Gardini, a Bolognese paragnostic, as it is reported by Massimo Inardi. During the consultation she used to read the hand and employed also other systems: the radiestesic pendulum when the person has brought photographs on the basis of which she can obtain an even more faithful picture of the person; psychometry whenever she is provided with some object on which she is to give responses. She has also made use of the crystal ball, but abandoned it on account of its magic and occultist halo that caused it not to be very greatly appreciated either by her clients or by herself.
	It is nevertheless obligatory even in periodic or repeated hand reading consultations, because – as Maria Gardini would have it – even though the general architecture of the hand remains essentially stable, it undergoes changes – in circulation, in the capillaries, in colour – that communicate to her ever new and previously unobserved sensations, sensations that come to the fore and become definitive only at a later stage.
	Maria Gardini is also a graphologist, but her power goes beyond the images inherent in the sign, the angulation, the form or the size of the letters and their inclination or disposition, since from the writing she receives sensations that are far more vivid and profound, as well as personal. While yet taking account of the graphical data, the value she attaches to the writing is at least similar to the one she attributes to the hand: in this case, once again, she finds support for her natural and genuine paragnostic gifts. Handwriting thus assumes the value of a guide to the discovery by paranormal means of the character, the environment and the personality of the person who sent it to her (Inardi, pp. 142-143).
	By way of example, Inardi quotes the minutes of an experiment by Maria Gardini that was controlled by third parties. Here the person to be looked for was wholly unknown to her and was presented to her for the very first time. She passed a pendulum very slowly and attentively over the body of that person. This radiestesic investigation was followed by the reading of the person’s hand.
	Now, out of a total of thirty-eight affirmations that she made about the person who was the object of the experiment, as many as seven concerned his future. It is therefore clear that in experiments of this kind it is held that paranormal knowledge of not only the present and the past, but also the future, is facilitated or even rendered possible by the presence of a psychometric object or of some operation that takes its place and therefore performs a function similar to that of the psychometric object (cfr. Inardi, pp. 145-152).

5.   There is also a clairvoyance in the past 
      and a clairvoyance in the future: 
      and both are facilitated 
      by the use of a psychometric object
	
	As we saw, there are psychic persons who, when they touch a particular object, can re-live something that relates to its present or its present relations with other realities. Now, there are other forms of sensitivity that enable a subject to re-live also the past of that object and its associated realities.
	A methodical study of clairvoyance in the past was commenced about midway through the nineteenth century by Joseph Buchanan and William Denton in the United States; later, 1919-20, clamorous results were obtained by the experiments carried out in Mexico by Gustav Pagenstecher, a German medical man, with the medium Maria Reyes de Zierold.
	To give an example of how this particular experimenter set about his work, we may recall that Dr. Pagenstecher gave the psychic woman an object that was not only unknown to her, but was also wrapped in paper in such a manner that she could not form any idea of it with her own normal means. She gripped the parcel with her hands, touching it with all ten fingers. At this point Mrs. Maria Reyes visualized a scene in which she emotively participated sometimes also in a very dramatic manner, at times feeling shudders, weeping, crying with terror.
	On one occasion, when she touched pieces of the shirt of a rich Mexican who had been wounded by bandits, she had two alternating visions: when she touched the blood-stained pieces, she re-lived the scene of the aggression in all its details; but when she touched unstained pieces, she saw a textile mill in full activity (Pagenstecher, p. 14).
	A seashell caused her the vision of the sea bottom and made her feel the strong pressure of the water against her body (P., p. 79).
	A marble fragment from the Roman Forum made her see scenes of the life of the forum in the early centuries A. D., when it was already falling into ruin and only a few persons in long habits could be seen there (P., pp. 48 and 57).
	A sacred knife from ancient Mexico bought the extremely tragic vision of a human sacrifice (p. 107).
	Touching a gramophone record, Maria Reyes could have two very different experiences: when she placed her hand at the centre, she saw a record factory; but when she placed it on the incised part, she heard noises as if various instruments were all playing different themes at one and the same time (p. 92).
	There may be variants from one sensitive to another, though constant features prevail; and, especially in clairvoyance in the past, particular importance is assumed by the psychometric object.
	There are also experiences of clairvoyance in the past in which an entire environment acts as psychometric object. Passing places where battles took place a long time ago, some psychic persons can still hear shouting, neighing of horses and the clash of arms and have visions of furious struggles. By way of example one may here cite the battle of Edge Hill in England (1624). The phenomenon was noted not only by inhabitants of that village, but also by the members of a commission appointed by King Charles I.
	Carl Gustav Jung reports that, while sleeping in the Tower of Bollingen, he was woken up one night by the sounds of an accordion, laughter and shouting of mysterious origin. Later he came to know that many centuries before the place hade been used as an enrolment centre for mercenaries.
	Somewhat different, though still associated with a psychometric object, is the case of the Petit Trianon in Versailles.  Two young English ladies were walking in the Trianon gardens in 1901 when they suddenly beheld scenes relating to Queen Marie Antoinette and her court. Many details were later confirmed by prints and paintings, and someone even found the score of a piece of music that they remembered having heard on that occasion.
	I have briefly mentioned phenomena of clairvoyance in the past: it will now be helpful to recall that there are also those of clairvoyance in the future. Here we are not concerned with vague presentiments, but visions that are often very precise and detailed.
	In 1840, for example, a certain Miss Clary, gravely ill, analyzed her illness after being hypnotized by Dr. Teste and exactly foresaw that it would worsen on May 25, to be followed by a further worsening on June 10 and then on July 2 and 3. She then added. "On the fourth… I no longer see anything at all". That was the day on which she died (Bozzano, 1947, vol. I, pp. 37 et seq.).
	In 1896, again, a lady in Chicago had presentiments of death when she was about to give birth to a child. In a dream on the night of March 5 she saw her late father take a large calendar and indicate March 12. She gave birth to the child on the twelfth and was fine, and everybody smiled on account of her apprehensions. But on the twenty-second, wholly unexpectedly, she died of an infirmity of her throat that had nothing to with her pregnancy (vol. I, pp. 45 et seq.).
	In 1933 a female seer in England dreamt that a certain lady would die within three weeks. What is more, when she related her dream, she specified the exact order in which the individual persons present at the funeral would stand around her tomb. She also indicated the celebrant: not the Baptist pastor of the church to which the lady belonged, but of a  church of a different denomination. To all appearances the lady in question enjoyed excellent health and yet she died within the foreseen period and everything took place exactly in the manner foretold by the seer. Even the place of the minister, on leave at the time, was taken by that particular colleague (vol. I, pp. 87 et seq.).
	Certain subjects orientate their precognitive faculties to successfully foreseeing the numbers extracted for the purposes of conscription or winners at roulette: at times in such a systematic manner as to create problems for the casino (cfr. vol. II, pp. 20-24).	
	As can be seen, precognition can occur spontaneously, but may also be provoked. Another example of a provoked precognition is the one that occurs in the empty-chair experiments that are particularly associated with the names, among others, of the French sensitive Pascal Forthuny and Sandra Bajetto in Italy.
	A meeting attended by certain number of people – a hundred and fifty, let us say - is to be held in a certain room after these people have sat down on the first chair that comes to their mind, completely at random. Coming into the as yet empty hall, the sensitive has to say and define in an unequivocal manner what type of person will sit on a particular chair, likewise chosen at random or by drawing lots. He has to characterize this person in a manner that can subsequently be checked to see whether it is exact.
	In certain experiments of this kind the sensitive is asked to concentrate on the chair as it is marked on the layout plan of the hall, without actually being there, but remaining at home, possibly even in some distant city. This is the case of the experiments that Gastone De Boni made with Gérard Croiset (cfr. De B., pp. 347-349).
	But there can be no doubt that the good outcome is greatly facilitated by the fact that the sensitive can not only come into the hall, but touch the chair and sit on it for a duration that will enable him to establish an immediate physical contact, a real, material and concrete interpenetration with the chair or, if you prefer, its future (De B., pp. 344-347).

6.    Telepathy and clairvoyance 
       are forms of knowledge due to identification
	
	Independently of the intervention or otherwise of a psychometric object or an action that takes its place and likewise serves to create a psychic relationship with the person or the situation that is to be inquired into, paranormal knowledge is always not only direct and immediate, but becomes implemented, at least tendentially, as knowledge due to identification.
	Even in clairvoyance of the past the sensitive does not so much "see" what happened, but rather "lives" it. To give you a very significant example, when Maria Reyes de Zierold was asked "Do you sometimes get impressed when you 'see' your visions?", she replied: "Yes, extraordinarily so, when the situation in which I find myself gives me some reason for it". She added that Dr. Pagenstecher should not forget that she never plays the part of a cold and indifferent spectator to whom it does not matter whether what he sees is or is not impressive. In actual fact, the events that the "object" reveals to her are lived by Maria Reyes in all their intensity and drama.
	In fact, she feels the frights characteristic of earthly life: she feels the flames of the torrent of fire erupted by a volcano when it comes close to her, hears the lacerating screams with which an Indian about to be sacrificed invokes help and rescue, goes down with the transatlantic liner and hears the waves breaking above her; in full consciousness she also feels the terror caused by the fall from a planet that has exploded in the glacial infinity of the universe. Her senses function perfectly: she hears, sees, tastes and smells, just as she feels the heat and the cold.
	In short, she lives the events exactly as if she were personally present. And hence her convulsions whenever the event she is living is too strong for her interior forces (Pagenstecher, p. 204).
	But it is above all in telepathy that live participation in events becomes true identification. It is easy to understand why: wherever the term of the cognitive act is neither a thing nor something that happens to things, but a person, one can readily understand that the subject, who is likewise a person and can have an interior life that at least in certain respect bears some affinity, can place himself "in the shoes" of this person, can identify himself with this person.
	An engineer named Ossowiecki, another psychic person, would be given  psychometric objects, which could be, for example, a sheet written by somebody and then folded and sealed. In this connection the famous sensitive attested that he was not at all concerned with the object itself, and that it was of no help to him to look at it. He enclosed it in his hands and kept fingering it in order to establish a relationship between himself and the person, whoever he or she might be. When the phenomenon takes place, it seems to him at a certain moment that he has become that person, and it then happens that whatever the person may have thought and written presents itself to his spirit as a memory, as if it was he himself who remembered it (De Boni, p. 235).
	Here we come face to face with a phenomenon of telepathy, where the term of the medium’s knowledge is also something that belongs to the past.
	A similar phenomenon of knowledge by identification is reported, together with many others, in the case of Pascal Forthuny. On a certain occasion (at the beginning of the nineteen-twenties) he was brought a fan and asked to specify the sensations that the object, which he then saw for the first time, aroused in him. He confessed that he had a clear sensation of suffocation. He was then told that the fan had belonged to a lady who had died of pulmonary congestion seven years before and had used it to help her breathe whenever she felt the suffocation coming on (De Boni, p. 241).
	Paris 1928. Picking up the photograph of an unknown person that showed him together with his children, Madame Detrey, a sensitive, said among others: "I feel cold, I am frozen… I feel bathed by the sea… nothing but shudders…" And the question: "Are you talking about the man?" elicited the answer: "He is dead… he died by drowning…" Which, unfortunately, was perfectly true.
	And now let us see how Madame Detrey re-lived the event in the first person: "I’m in the water, beaten by the waves… the sea is awful… I feel cold… my teeth are shaking… Water is covering me everywhere and I feel to be suffocating… (De B., p. 240).
	At a public meeting held in Verona in 1956, Croiset took into his hands an object that belonged to an unknown person and then characterized that person by identifying himself with him to such an extent as feel himself driven to speaking as if he were that person. Here are some of his actual words: "I am a rather robust gentleman and am in motor car, driving very fast. I am very sure of my work and want everything to be done in symmetric fashion, etc., etc." Or: "I am a very tall lady. I have bought a blue hat, but I don’t like it, because it doesn’t suit me. Sometimes I have pains on my head, on this side (indicating the right). I live near a square where there are houses with porticoes and columns, etc., etc." (De B., pp. 349-350).
	Another example is offered by Giovan Battista Pagano. At a public meeting held in Rome in 1975, this psychic man successively touched a series of objects belonging to different persons and then characterized them one after the other, albeit with a large and rather conspicuous margin of exactness. Among the expressions that are briefly and schematically annotated in the records of the successive experiments one can read phrases like the following: "I have to speak very fast; a person who speaks very fast […] He clears his throat: he has had some problem with his throat […] I have to think before I speak [Comment: "Quite right, a very prudent and reflective person"] I have to touch my lower lip with the thumb all the time [Right, when he thinks he always places his thumb on his lower lip and tries to fold it down] There is something that agitates me greatly […] I am in a room, a living room with modern velvet armchairs […] An eye is hurting me, on the left; it is bandaged or has been bandaged, etc." (Inardi, pp. 35-45).
	This feeling of the physical pains of the object person as if they were his own is one of Pagano’s peculiar features, one that he discovered in himself when he had gone to meet Monsignor Giambattista Alfano, a well known scholar of parapsychology, for the first time and began to feel atrocious pains in his joints, so that he asked permission to go home. But he had no sooner arrived at the door than he felt once again perfectly well. Monsignor Alfano explained to him that it was he who suffered this grave form of rheumatism. Pagano came back and again felt the pains, but, comforted by the fact that they were only borrowed for the brief duration of the interview, he willingly resumed and completed the interview (Inardi, p. 48).

7.    Telepathy and clairvoyance 
       are forms of participative knowledge
	
	The phenomena we have so far reviewed prove to be connected to form a coherent vision. They confirm that paranormal knowledge is intuitive, not analytical; existential, not conceptual-objectivating; direct, not mediated. They also confirm to us that paranormal knowledge tends to be a knowledge due to identification: a knowledge that grasps its object in all its intimacy and, in the limit, coincides with it.
	When I say this, however, I must immediately add that paranormal knowledge is always humanly imperfect, it is never perfectly adequate. The identification that takes place between the subject and the object-term of such knowledge is always a participative identification, it is never an absolute and total identification, it never gives rise to an identity equality of the type of the ones that in the logico-mathematical ambit are expressed by the equals sign (=) and the formula A=A.
	The relative identification that occurs in paranormal knowledge is similar the one that occurs in the forms of empathic knowledge, knowledge due to sympathy. We have this type of knowledge when we identify ourselves with our like in order to understand his frame of mind, take part in his intimate life, his sufferings, joys and aspirations.
	Such an identification occurs in a love relationship and, more generally, in personal relationships. Something similar could also be said in relation to the relationship with the Divinity in the religious and mystic ambit.
	In all these cases the participation of the object-term in the subject is of an extent that cannot be anything other than relative, namely in accordance with the extent to which the object gives itself and also – and, as it would seem, above all – in accordance with the extent to which the subject can receive: ad modum recipientis.

8.   Telepathy and clairvoyance 
      are forms of symbolic knowledge
	
	The relative inadequacy of paranormal knowledge is also brought out by the fact of its markedly symbolic character. It is perfectly clear that this knowledge passes the unconscious part of the psyche before it reaches consciousness. It is also well known that the unconscious is the creator of symbols par excellence. 
	Proof of this is provided every time we dream: identifying the primary elements of the dream, its latent content, we can note that they seem disguised in the manifest content of the dream and are there rendered in what can be very decidedly called a symbolic translation.
	Very well, a symbolic translation operates in all the forms of paranormal knowledge. It operates in telepathy, as René Sudre has stressed, but also in clairvoyance. (cfr. De Boni, p. 257. An important comment in this connection by De Boni can be found on pp. 257-259).
	Let us now pass on to considering clairvoyance in the present. In his book Dei fenomeni di telestesia (Of telestesic phenomena), Bozzano notes that, even though telestesic perception cannot be considered a "direct vision by means of the optic centres", it would be equally improper to consider it as "direct vision". Bozzano uses the latter expression as a synonym of "real vision", which occurs when the object is perceived as it really is.	
	Bozzano says – and rightly so, as it seems to me – that telestesic perception does not by any means grasp the object as it is in itself, but only through an image of it. But it is an image that nevertheless tells us something about the object. It expresses it in symbolic form. The visualizations of the clairvoyants have to be considered "truthful hallucinatory images" (Bozzano, 1942, p. 166). Bozzano goes on to underscore that clairvoyant vision is not "real vision", but rather "symbolic representation". It consists "of 'pictographic images' that the subconscious personality transmits to its conscious counterpart for the purpose of informing it in the only possible way" (B., p. 167).
	Having said this by way of general principle, we can very briefly exemplify some of the symbolisms to show how mental operations of this kind take place not only in telepathy, but in all the forms of clairvoyance. 
	As far as telepathy is concerned, we can recall an example given by De Boni: the agent transmits a spiral image of the smoke of a cigarette and the percipient receives the image of a serpent raising itself in spirals (cfr. De Boni, p. 258).
	But let us think of all the forms of telepathic clairvoyance that take place when the sensitive inquires into the present, the past and the future of a person whom he has in front of him or with whom he enters into a psychic relationship by means of a psychometric object he holds in his hands. Whoever has been present at experiments of this kind will remember that the images that come to the mind of the psychic person are always to some extent symbolic, so that – as the psychic subject keeps insisting – his affirmations derive for the most part from an interpretation of those symbols.
	As far as telestesia is concerned, here is a symbolic mechanism exemplified by Bozzano: in various experiments involving the reading of notes that had been crumpled or folded several times, the clairvoyants clearly saw the nores opened and unfolded (cfr. Bozzano, 1942, p. 166).
	As regards psychometry, attention may be concentrated, for example, on a phenomenon that Pagenstecher describes as follows in his book The mysteries of psychometry: the distance from which the medium-psychometrist seemingly observes the "vision" stands in an immutable and fixed ratio with the time that has elapsed since the epoch in which the visualized event took place and, more precisely, 1 to 10, which means that every metre of distance corresponds to 10 years of our chronology (Pagenstecher, p. 176).
	De Boni dedicates an important comment to this consideration of the German parapsychologist in the Italian edition of the latter’s book. He says that the rule clearly does not apply to medium-psychometrists, but  corresponds only to the personal idiosyncrasies of Mrs. Reyes; idiosyncrasies by means of which her subconscious transmitted the acquired extrasensorial cognitions to her conscious in symbolic form (P., p. 176, Note 1).
	To conclude this point, let us now pass on to precognition. Here, once again, we have a symbolism, as one can note from some examples taken from Luci nel futuro – I fenomeni premonitori (Lights in the future – The premonition phenomena) by Ernesto Bozzano.
	In a dream a lady saw her late father take a large calendar and indicate the date of March 22: day on which she was effectively to die (Bozzano, 1947, vol. I, p. 45).
	Another lady dreamt her late husband dressed in black cutting three flowers from a bush. She interpreted it in the sense that, having lost a daughter as well as her husband, the third flower had to be herself. But it was another daughter who, notwithstanding the fact that she seemed to be in excellent health, died a short time later following a cardiac paralysis (B., vol. I, p. 97).
	A third example is of the same kind. I ask to be forgiven if I once again dedicate it to predictions of death: it seems that it is here, above all, that there comes into being and indulges in its whims a particularly expressive symbolism. Well, the third case concerns a girl who in a dream saw a hearse standing in front of her home with a man of familiar lineaments on the driver’s seat who asked her: "Aren’t you ready yet, Miss?" "Oh no! Certainly not!" was her prompt reply. A few weeks later she entered a large store and was about to take the lift, when she saw that the lift attendant had the same features as the man she had seen in her dream. She remained thunderstruck and he urged her to step in with the words: "Aren’t you ready yet, Miss?". She decided not to take the lift. This proved to be a good decision, because the lift, after reaching the fourth floor, crashed to the bottom and the attendant was among the victims (vol. II, pp. 144-145).
	All this symbolism expressed in widely varying forms of paranormal knowledge suggests the idea that in it information has to pass through a means that is very far from constituting a simple filter, something that is purely static. In paranormal knowledge information seems to pass through a means that, quite the contrary, reacts in a more spontaneous and autonomous manner.
	This means that in the various forms of paranormal knowledge the organizing psychic force acts once again in accordance with its peculiar logic, in accordance with the peculiar mechanism with which we are already familiar. We saw that it underlies the life of plants, animals and men, that it regulates it, aids and assists it, heals it from illnesses, organic ones included. We followed it in its exteriorizations and the entire range of psychokinetic phenomena. At this point we can conclude that if paranormal action is ideoplastic, knowledge proves to be equally ideoplastic.
	As it forges matter, the psychic force proceeds in an ideoplastic manner: and this we have already clearly seen. But one can say that it operates ideoplastically also in knowing. It is ideoplasty that – always within the limits of the possible – on each occasion brings the psyche into syntony with the various vibratory tonalities in which the different types of information act. And this is how the psyche is rendered receptive. It is in this manner that it establishes contact with the objects of knowledge, adheres to them in the manner most in keeping with their nature to assure optimal comprehension, receives them by means of the symbols that the psyche itself creates. In short, one can say that ideoplasty is the great law that regulates not only the action of the psychic principle, but also the knowledge of it and each and every type of paranormal phenomenon.

Chapter  IX

THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS THAT CAN BE DRAWN FROM THIS ANALYSIS

1.    The mechanistic postulate on which 
       the edifice of modern science 
       of Galilean imprint seems to be founded 
       is in actual fact a conventional assumption: 
       put in other terms 
       it is no more than a watchword
	
	The grandiose development of the sciences that took place in recent centuries owes a great deal to the adoption of the mechanistic postulate.
	Mechanical postulate means assuming that all the phenomena of reality can ultimately be reduced to mechanical phenomena.
	I say "assuming" or, better,  "postulating". Mechanicism is often presented as the discovery of something real. But there are also many people who, after fully developing a phenomenology with great care and accuracy, hold that mechanicism is nothing other than a somewhat arbitrary assumption, though its adoption proved to be fecund and extremely useful in practice.
	In other words: even research is a form of practice, where the adoption of an interpretative scheme or pattern may prove to be productive. The pattern is therefore adopted pragmatically.
	It is like a watchword. When we want to cure somebody by means of suggestion, we tell him that he is healthy; we teach him to repeat to himself that he is fine. In actual fact, however, he is still very ill; and if he kept on saying it and saying it to himself, he would be affirming a truth  about his real state of health, but would not get better.
	Another example: an educator tells the child that he is already a little adult man and has to behave as such, without unduly indulging in his infantilism. It is far from true that the boy is an adult man: he still has a long way to go before he’ll get there. But it is wise that he should say this to himself. It is another pragmatic affirmation. It is another watchword that will help the boy to grow.
	Third example: a captain leads his company in an attack in conditions that are objectively difficult. He will not talk about very probable defeat, but rather speak of victory. Those who fight in a desperate situation give themselves courage by imagining themselves as victors. They can do this even by raising the famous two fingers opened into a "V". In this way they affirm that, at the worst, the difficulty is temporary, but can be overcome; and that victory will be theirs; if not right away, at least the final victory. They affirm as certain something that in actual fact may prove to be highly problematical.
	In the three cases I have just described there is enounced something that in objective and theoretical terms is anything other than certain. It is nevertheless affirmed as a certainty, because experience tells us that this affirmation is useful for practical purposes.
	I said that even scientific research is in its way a practice. It does not limit itself to describing the phenomena, but seeks to determine the cause-effect relationships that exist between them. Every time there come into being these same causes, the phenomenon will be repeated in the same manner, so that it can be defined in terms that are both qualitatively and quantitatively exact.
	Definitions, measurements, calculations and forecasts have to be formulated in the most exact terms, i. e. in mathematical terms. A science that proposes all this will have to presuppose that both the phenomena and the relationships between them can be described, measured, calculated and foreseen in that manner. But all this seems possible to the maximum degree only in a mechanistic conception.
	Adopting the mechanistic postulate, one adopts the only one that confers full sense upon a search for exact relationships between the phenomena. And similarly as regards the search for the exact formulation of these causative phenomena that have to determine equally determinate effect phenomena. An exact science does not make sense without the adoption of the mechanistic postulate, for one would thus return to the "more or less", that is to say, to the conditions and limits of pre-scientific research.
	The more recent critique of science has unleashed a crisis of the assumption that really exact sciences can be constructed. One must therefore conclude that phenomena can be exactly determined only at the macroscopic level, but not at the ultramicroscopic one. Werner Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle tells us that the energy employed at the subatomic level for observing a phenomenon (for example, the light that has to be projected) in order to note and define it in an exact manner ends up by altering the phenomenon itself.

2.     As Emile Boutroux observes 
        when passing from the logical 
        mathematical and mechanical sciences 
        to the physico-chemical, biological 
        and psychological ones 
        the effect seems ever less capable 
        of being reduced to the cause 
        and ever more contingent 
        and eventually wholly indeterminate 
        autonomous and free: 
        and one thus passes from a mechanistic vision 
        to one that can be defined in more finalistic terms
	
	The French philosopher Emile Boutroux (1845-1921) observes that rigid causality, i.e. the reducibility of a fact to its cause (or complex of causes), becomes ever more elastic and approximate to the extent to which the contingency factor assumes ever greater importance in the effect. And this to the extent to which the effect is found to be ever less dependent on the cause and, as it were, ever more autonomous and free.
	Boutroux drew up a classification of the sciences that started with the logical sciences and passed through the mathematical, mechanical, physical, chemical, biological and psychological sciences and eventually concluded with the sociological sciences. And at every passage from one link of this chain to the next he noted that the second could not be reduced to the first. This irreducibility had been felt also in the classification of the sciences drawn up by Auguste Comte.
	The sciences of real logic can never be wholly reduced to the abstract logic of the pure identity principle A=A. With respect to logic, moreover, mathematics introduces new elements, but remains far removed from experience. The mechanical sciences come much closer to it.
	Abstract mechanics admits reversibility, namely the returning backwards of the phenomena that comes to lack in concrete mechanics on account of friction. This prevents the pendulum from returning to its precise starting point, for example.
	Concrete mechanics is already physics. Bearing all this in mind, as Boutroux notes, consideration of the physical laws, as compared with the consideration of purely mechanical laws, marks progress in determinism in the sense that modes of being that mechanics had left indeterminate were now explained in accordance with laws. As it restricts, however, determinism becomes more complex and more obscure and less reducible to the analytical bond that solely constitutes necessity (Boutroux, ch. VI, p. 63).
	Using Boutroux’s own words to sum up the further developments of his synthesis, one may say that determinism becomes obscured as it restricts. Mechanics has already been obliged to replace mathematical intuition by a relationship of simple phenomenal causality that cannot be reduced to this intuition. Physics has complicated this relationship by introducing a notion of quality, the notion of the quality of the energy. Chemistry adds the idea of particular bodies that are relatively stable in nature. Progress moves from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous and, consequently, from the intelligent to the obscure (B., ch. VII, pp. 74-75).
	Passing on to considering the biological laws, Boutroux wonders whether they can be traced back to the physico-chemical laws. This is not possible on account of the fact that a purpose is present in life, and even in the most elementary forms of life.
	As far as the psychological laws are concerned: in their highest form, which is that of human psychology, it postulates the soul: "The being endowed with a soul is not only a given end like the being endowed with life: it is capable of setting itself an end and finding the means appropriate for pursuing it" (B., ch. XII, p. 136).

3.    In our own days John Eccles criticizes 
       the determinism of many neurophysiologists 
       noting the autonomy of conscious phenomena 
       from the corresponding neuronic mechanisms   
       and affirming the independence 
       of the mind from the brain
       though it nevertheless interacts with it
	
	Our own discourse is well in line with Boutroux’s conclusions. He speaks of a soul and its free will. 
	For its own part, paranormal phenomenology fully confirms – as we clearly saw – the reality of the soul, namely of a psychic force that acts in an autonomous manner and also independently of the physical body.
	The outcome of our research goes well beyond not only the point of arrival of Boutroux’s philosophy, but also the positions in which, according to us, there still linger the thematics of many neurophysiologists and even of John Eccles.
	Studying the neuronic mechanisms of the brain that underlie our conscious experiences, the famous British scientist and Nobel Prize winner concludes that these biological phenomena are a necessary and yet not sufficient condition of the conscious phenomena of the human mind.
	He subjects the "materialistic theories of the mind" to strong criticism. Among the authors who profess it, he recalls Pribram, Rensch, Barlow, Doty, Wilson, Blakemore, Mountcastle and Edelman. As far as he is concerned, all their interpretations can ultimately be reduced to determinism.
	According to Eccles, there is a "radical materialism" that denies the existence of mental events of any kind.
	There is "panpsychism" for which the mental state is an integral part of matter and therefore cannot exert any action on it.
	And there is "epiphenomenalism" for which the mental states exist in relation to some material events, but their causality is altogether irrelevant.
	Lastly, there is the theory of "psychoneural identity". Here the mental states exist as a merely internal aspect of some obviously material structures of the brain.
	Eccles opposes the theories of "dualist interaction" to these four groups of theories. Mind and brain are independent of each other and interact.
	He notes that the laws of physics or the laws of the derived sciences, chemistry and biology, make no reference to consciousness or the mind. The "natural laws" do not in any way affirm that there is an emergence of this strange non-material entity: consciousness or mind (Eccles, 1983, p. 18).
	A second criticism formulated by Eccles is that all the materialist theories of the mind are in conflict with biological evolution. Since they sustain the causal inefficacy of consciousness as such, these theories completely fail to consider the biological evolution of consciousness, which is nevertheless constitutes an undeniable fact (ibid.).
	In other words, if consciousness is impotent from the causal point of view, it cannot be considered by the theory of evolution. According to biological evolution, in fact, the mental states and consciousness could have evolved and developed only if they were efficacious from the causal point of view and capable of producing changes in the neuronal events of the brain with consequent changes of behaviour. Now, this can happen only if the neuronal mechanism of the brain is open to influences exerted by the mental events of the world of conscious experiences, which is the basic postulate of the dualist-interactionist theory (ibid.).
	But, as Eccles goes on to sustain, the most eloquent critique of all the materialist theories of the mind is directed against their key postulate that the events that occur in the neuronal mechanism of the brain provide a necessary and sufficient explanation of the totality of the performances and the conscious experiences of a human being (ibid.).
	Here Eccles borrows from Karl Popper and John Randolph Lucas two formulations of what to all intents and purposes is one and the same reply that, indeed, seems wholly resolutive.
	Popper writes that physical determinism is a theory that, if it were true, could not be sustained, since it has to explain all our reactions, including the ones that we deem to be beliefs based on arguments, as due to purely physical conditions. Purely physical conditions, including our own physical environment, make us say or accept whatever we may say or accept (Eccles, 1983, pp. 18-19).
	Lucas sustains that determinism cannot be true, because if it were so, we should not consider the arguments of the determinists as true arguments, but only as conditioned reflexes (ibid., p. 213).
	What value can be possessed by any affirmation of mine that I myself recognize as being determined wholly and exclusively by my physical conditions?
	Such a "reductio ad absurdum" of the materialist explanations of the mind-brain relationship induces Eccles to turn all the more to the dualist-interactionist explanations.
	He specifically affirms also free will. Not all actions are voluntary. The human being acts for the most part in an instinctive, automatic, stereotyped manner, even though there are moments when he assumes control of his actions and causes free choice to intervene. The underlying mechanism remains for the most part unexplained, but free will is a fact of immediate and unquestionable experience (E., 1978, pp. 147-160; 1983, pp. 213-215).
	But now, faced with a vision like the one we are offered by frontier parapsychology, the perspective of Eccles appears limited by the fact that he seems to be incapable of conceiving mental experiences where the data acquired from an external environment are not mediated by the sense organs, by the nerves and the brain. These are experiences in which the mind finds itself united with a body, in an environment where this body encounters other similar bodies and dialogues with them by means of corporeal movements (gestures, sounds of the voice, words, writing, and so on).
	Are there communications that can take place outside the physical body and the physical senses? Eccles (1978, p. 157) makes a passing mention of "tenuous and irregular telepathic communication" in a reductive tone that decidedly discourages all further dialogue regarding this aspect. Extracorporeal phenomena are unknown to him or, in any case, he avoids bringing them into focus, seemingly not wanting to give them due consideration. He does not even want to hear talk about "astral bodies" (1983, p. 220), to give another example of what could form part of the domain of paranormality or the occult.
	And therefore he does not succeed in conceiving that the soul could subsist in an independent manner and therefore to survive, while yet continuing to acquire knowledge from the external world.
	In what way could it acquire this knowledge? I would say: by means of psychic organs that take the place of the physical ones suspended from their functions (in out-of-body and near-death experiences) or irremediably lost on the occasion of the lethal event. But it is possible that he is unwilling to accord them even the least consideration due to a quasi-visceral refusal.
	Eccles thinks that his personal interior life stems from the brain and depends closely on it, and therefore – as far as he is concerned - everything comes to an end when his brain ceases to exist (E., 1976, p. 256).
	This does not mean that he excludes survival. He limits himself to saying that he neither knows nor could know anything about it. We are in the domain of the unknowable, where only faith can tell us something. In this sense he professes to be a believing Christian, perfectly ready to receive further experiences of life as an unexplainable, but nevertheless very welcome gift.
	But his is a faith that cannot in any way be triggered by science, for which science is quite unable to provide even the least preamble. Whoever excepts the discourse I have so far developed cannot but dissent in a most definitive manner from an approach of this kind.
	However, what Eccles affirms in a strictly scientific ambit as the conclusion of his research in connection with the nervous system is of importance even for us: the mind does not reduce to the brain, remaining distinct, independent and interacting.
	This is a precious conclusions even within the limits of a consideration restricted to the phenomena in which the mind appears incarnate in the body. They are limits to be overcome in a wider horizon that extends to comprise even the extracorporeal experiences, where undoubtedly we come to learn something more, a great deal more.

4.    Henri Bergson criticizes 
       both radical mechanicism and radical finalism   
       and notes that in its progress 
       to ever more evolved forms 
       life seems to be guided by a kind of intuition 
       and creates not piece by piece (as would a craftsman) 
       but rather by acts of "organization" 
       each global and moulding something as a whole

	Following this intermezzo about Eccles and the neurophysiology of our day, we can come back to Boutroux’s epoch. Contesting mechanicism as an explanation of the phenomena of life, the discourse of the French thinker forms part of the wider interweave of the various philosophies that, astride the nineteenth and the twentieth century, all express an instance of reaction to positivism. And not only to positivistic scientism, but every form of rationalism from Descartes to Hegel.
	Evasion from the conceptual shackles of science, metaphysics, ethics, for an absolute affirmation of life. Intellectualism encages life, which may be grasped only by those who manage to abandon themselves and them immerge themselves in life to re-live it. 
	From Galileo onwards, science has been deterministic: in the last analysis it tends to reduce every phenomenon to mechanicism. 	But the continuous spontaneousness, creativity and novelty of the phenomena studied by biology, and even more so by psychology and the human sciences, do not comply with the mechanistic patterns. The phenomena of life invoke a vitalist explanation that, beyond the concepts of analysis, can be provided only by intuition.
	Delineating, or even only sketching, the history of the thought of that period, be it even only in very brief passages, would oblige us to open unduly large parentheses. For the purposes of our discourse it is sufficient to adopt the thought of Bergson as point of reference.
	In the first chapter of his book Creative evolution, Henri Bergson (1859-1941) criticized first what he calls the radical mechanism and then radical finalism. Let us for the moment consider the first of these two.
	As Bergson recalls, Laplace had already defined radical mechanicism with extreme precision in the terms I am about to set out. An intelligence that at a given moment knows all the forces that animate nature and the respective situation of the beings of which it is made up would embrace the movements of both the largest bodies of the universe and those of even the lightest atom in one and the same formula: nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, just like the past, would be in front of its eyes (cited by Bergson, 1966, ch. I, p. 38).
	Bergson comments that the essence of the mechanical explanations is in fact to consider the future and the past to be calculable as functions of the present and thus to claim that everything is given. On this assumption, present and future could be seen with a single look by a superhuman intelligence that is capable of carrying out the calculation (ibid.).
	Bergson goes on to note that scientists and scholars who either explicitly or implicitly affirm mechanicism have either consciously or unconsciously adopted a hypothesis of this kind. Here there comes into play a mechanicist instinct of the spirit that proves to be stronger than reasoning and even of direct observation (B., 1966, ch. I, p. 17).
	A critique of radical mechanicism bases itself on experience, which decidedly contradicts this hypothesis.
	On the other hand, as extreme opposite of radical mechanicism we also have radical finalism, according to which everything has been providentially arranged in view of an end, a programme that has always been defined right from the beginning. In this perspective, once again, "everything is given" and "the future can be read in the present". Bergson’s entire book I am here citing can be considered a critique of radical finalism, as well as of radical mechanicism. Bergson proposes a third road, an intermediate solution that in its substance is well in line with the point of arrival of our present treatment.
	As far as the biological sciences are concerned, the causality of the phenomena it studies is very limited. There the antecedent appears to be the occasion rather than the cause.
	It is impossible to reduce the biological phenomena to physico-chemical phenomena. Let us consider the eye of the vertebrates as it became gradually formed in the course of evolution: one has here to suppose that the physics and the chemistry of the organism are such that the influence of the light will have caused them gradually to have constructed a series of visual apparatuses, all extremely complex, and yet all capable of seeing and seeing ever better. At this point Bergson wonders what else even the most resolute partisan of finality could say to characterize the physics and chemistry here involved (ch. I, p.   75).
	Man constructs himself an instrument by means of a series of attempts and improvements guided by intelligence. But life resolves his problems and creates its instruments and creates ever more elaborate and adequate instruments by virtue of a very different inspiration: here the guide is instinct.
	Bergson produces a very complex example. There is a small beetle, the sitaris, that deposits its eggs at the entrance to the underground galleries dug by a species of bee called antophora. Following a long wait, the sitaris larva perceives that a male antophora is about to come out from there. It attaches itself to the back of this insect and thus follows it on its nuptial flight, which will enable it to pass over to the female. The sitaris larva then waits for the female to lay her eggs, jumps onto one of these and uses it as a point of support to avoid drowning in the honey. It takes it a few days to devour the egg. It then installs itself in the shell and there undergoes a first metamorphosis. By now it is organized to be able to float in the honey and begins to nourish itself with this new food. It thus becomes first a nymph and then the complete insect.
	As Bergson comments, all this happens as if the sitaris knew that its larva is well instructed about everything it has to do along the various stages of its Odyssey (ch. II, p. 147).
	Let us now pass on to another example, still involving insects. The equine bot-fly deposes its eggs on the legs or the shoulders of the horse acting as its host, almost as if it knew that the horse would lick itself and thus carry the nascent larva into its stomach, where it will develop and eventually leave through the digestive tube.
	The third example is that of the paralyzing hymenopters. These depose their eggs in the body of other insects – spiders, beetles or crickets – of which it has perforated particular nerve centres in order to paralyze them without actually killing them. Thus the victim will provide fresh food for the larva for all the time it needs it. Let us hope that these unfortunate beings are wholly unconscious of what would otherwise constitute a most frightful torture.
	Here we once again find ourselves face to face with a form of instinct that seems guided by "divining sympathy", as Bergson calls it: a form of "lived" rather than "represented" intuition (ch. II, pp. 176-177).
	Intuition is an immediate and global act and is neither fragmented nor parcelled like the hustle of the intelligence, which proceeds by a series of reasonings, inductions,, deductions, syllogisms, mathematical operations, etc.
	What intelligence is on the cognitive level has its counterpart on the operative level in fabrication. This resolves itself in a succession of particular and limited acts that have first to create the instruments and then avail themselves of them.
	The action that on the practical level corresponds to the action of intuition on the theoretical level operates in a very different manner: Bergson calls it organization. Fabrication is peculiar of man, whereas organization is peculiar of life at its various levels. Fabrication is conscious, organization is unconscious and instinctive.
	Both fabrication and organization operate on raw matter. This matter opposes resistance. Man thinks of everything to overcome this resistance and invents ever more sophisticated instruments and techniques and procedures. Something very similar is done by life in its upward drive.
	In its own manner, life once again tries and designs and with great toil seeks a road and, if it should find this road to be barred, sets out to seek another. But, as we said, it does so in its own manner, which is peculiar and different. It does so not by means of a succession of acts, but a global action. Unlike the work of fabrication, the act of organization has something explosive about it (Bergson, ch. I, p.   93).
	At this point I should personally like to draw a brief parallel with ideoplasty in general and, more particularly, with materialization. The act of organization that Bergson speaks about is not doing first one thing and then another: it is doing everything in one fell swoop.    As we saw, the parapsychologists speak of ideoplasty, i. e. an idea that materializes itself by means of a moulding action. And the idea is an intuition that explodes as a single whole in an act of synthesis.
	Now, among the phenomena that parapsychology studies, or ought to study, there are the materializations. We know that there is a rather variegated range of materialization forms: from decidedly incomplete and partial ones to ever more complete forms. In the course of a mediumistic experiment there may be the creation of a hand or, in the limit, a complete human body, warm and very live.
	Now, such a creation does not take place by degrees, but all together. It is the idea of a human body that generates the body and brings it totally into being in a single act, not one part at first and then another, as in the case of a joiner who makes himself a wooden puppet in the manner of Mastro Geppetto, maker of Pinocchio. 
	Leaving aside the question of whether an entity that materializes is really a disincarnate soul or is simply a part of the psyche of the medium, one of its secondary personalities, we might say: Young Katie King who materializes through the mediumism of Florence Cook in the seances directed by William Crooked is an idea that assumes concrete and material form to the point of letting herself be touched and auscultated, to the point of breathing and emitting carbon dioxide.
	And we might further say: Katie King is an idea that assumes material and solid consistency, just like the puppet Pinocchio, with the difference that Pinocchio was constructed piece by piece, while the whole of Katie King took shape in a single act.
	At this point we can note that both the creation of the material body of Katie King and that of Pinocchio are brought about by overcoming a certain resistance of matter.
	I had already made it clear that what I have just said about materializations is only a discourse that I take the liberty of adding to what Bergson tells us. But it is an appendix that is well in line with the Bergsonian theses, extending and developing them.
	Bergson speaks of matter that resists organization. In matter, in fact, there comes to the fore a kind of inertia that assumes the aspect of a counterforce. It gives the idea of "a weight that is falling", "a tension that becomes interrupted", "a thing that becomes undone" (B., ch. III, p. 246).
	More precisely, Bergson says elsewhere that a rather exact representation of matter is that of "a creative gesture that becomes undone". Adding that what we shall then see in vital activity, what subsists of the direct movement in the inverted movement, a reality that takes shape through the one that becomes undone (ch. III, p. 248).
	He also proposes the image of a steam jet that rises, but then condenses into lots of little drops – each of which is a world - that descend again. Nevertheless, the creative drive of the original jet continues in the direction opposite to that of materiality. Be it clear that we are here concerned with an image that is not to be taken too literally, because the steam jet is a physical phenomenon, while creating is a spiritual, intelligent and free act (ibid.).
	The counterforce of materiality opposes the life force, though without wholly neutralizing it: since life presses with all its creativity, with all its inventiveness, and always obtains something more, little by little, in spite of everything. Through a long travail – that implies the overcoming of obstacles, stoppages, regressions, accidents of every kind – life improves its positions, degree by degree. And at every degree there is reached "a modus vivendi that is precisely this organization" between life and materiality (ch. III, p. 250).
	The resistance that matter succeeds in opposing to put a brake on the "life drive" shows that the power of this drive is limited or, let us say, imprisoned by the counterforce of materiality.
	Personally I should like to observe that the present limited nature and relative impotence of the life drive does not of itself exclude in any way that it may not eventually achieve a total triumph and fully implement the creation right through to its perfective completion. In general principle, nothing excludes that a life drive conceived in this manner may in the end become similar to the manifestation of an Absolute, a God.
	Such a God, omnipotent as such, could be limited and, in the limit, crucified in his earthly, cosmic and historical  manifestation. The present contingent situation would see the kénosis (i. e. the "emptying", the despoliation) of this God in his condition of manifest and incarnate in the world. In the limit, the sin of the creatures can even kill the presence of the incarnate God, who is nevertheless destined to rise again and to triumph in the end.
	The final triumph of the incarnate God consists of his omnipotence: which, referred to the sphere of finiteness and temporality, for the moment seems only virtual and potential omnipotence (if one can say this), but not yet effective omnipotence.
	The life drive is limited by the resistance of matter, as we said before. Let us transfer this Bergsonian concept into a theist, creationist perspective, with which, so it seems to me, it is not necessarily in contrast.
	Here at the beginning there is only the spirit, and matter derives from the spirit. How, then, can one explain such a dropping back of matter onto itself in a theist-creationist perspective? 
	Referring particularly to the living species, Bergson affirms that in each one of them there comes to the fore a tendency of deviating from the evolutionary direction. If each species where operating exclusively in this direction, it would tend to evolve continuously towards superior forms of life. But the fact is that more often this evolutionary movement, this tending to become better deviates and comes to a halt. Thus, as Bergson notes, what should not have been anything other than a point of passage becomes the end. From this point of view, as he then adds, one may say that non-success seems to be the rule, success the exception and always imperfect (B., ch. II, p. 130).
	The life drive that runs through all the species from low down to always further up is a single great effort. But it is a tension that more often deviates to the point of continuing in the opposite direction.
	How does one explain such a reversal? The upward drive is at times paralysed by the forces that oppose it. But at other times what it realizes in the act of assuming a given form distracts it from tending further. Here the life drive becomes absorbed by the form it is bent on assuming and in a certain way remains hypnotized as if on a mirror.
	We humans can experience this involutionary motion also in ourselves. We observe that our freedom creates habits that risk to suffocate it, when it does not constantly tend to become renewed and improved.	
	Here we have a process of the selfsame spirit, says Bergson: even the most live thought becomes frozen in the formula that expresses it. The word turns against the idea. The letter kills the spirit. And at times even our most ardent enthusiasm thus becomes naturally frozen into cold calculation of interest or vanity when it is exteriorized in action: and it is thus easy that one will adopt the form of the other, that we could confuse them, doubt our sincerity, deny goodness and love, if we did not know that death for some time conserves the appearance of the living (ch. II, p. 128).
 	There spontaneously comes to my mind the comparison between two visions that are only apparently distant from each other. Namely: between how Bergson here reconstructs the genesis from the life drive of the involutionary motion that brakes and combats it; and, secondly, the manner in which the Jewish-Christian tradition characterizes the original sin. It is always the spirit that materializes when it concentrates on itself and on its "particular" beyond the strictly necessary.
	In this perspective, the evangelical passage: "For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake [i. e. for a superior need, for a divine imperative], he will save it" (Lk 9, 24) seems profoundly true and just.
	That the evangelical instance is not only opposed to sin, but also in keeping with the evolutionary direction conceived in Bergsonian terms finds implicit confirmation (and perhaps not  merely implicit) in a passage that to me seems to merit verbatim quotation: "Life in general is mobility; the particular manifestations of life accept this mobility only unwillingly and exert a constant retarding action on it.
	Evolution in general tends as far as possible to become implemented in a straight line; each special evolution is a circular process. Like dust whirls raised by the wind that passes, living beings rotate around themselves, suspended by the great gust of life. They are therefore relatively stable and mimic immobility to the point where we see things in them rather than expressions of progress forgetting that even the permanence of their form is nothing other than the design of a movement. Nevertheless, there are times when the invisible gust that sweeps them along materializes in a fleeting apparition before our eyes.
	"We receive this sudden illumination before certain forms of a maternal love so surprising, so moving as to express itself also in the greater part of animals and can be noted even in a plant’s solicitude for its seed. This love, which embraces those who have glimpsed the great mystery of life, is perhaps such as to reveal the secret of the mystery. It shows us each generation protended towards the one that will follow it. It lets us glimpse that the living being is above all a place of passage, and that the essential thing of life consists of the movement that transmits it" (ch. II, pp. 128-129).

5.    The knowledge and action of the psychic force 
       find their supreme paradigm 
       in the knowing and acting of God
	
	The ambitions of Bergson are neither specifically metaphysical nor theological. Nevertheless, his discourse may prove to be not contradictory and therefore compatible with a certain theology or metaphysics. It may even prove coherent with them. In the limit, it may provide them with supporting elements.
	In fact, Bergson offers elements of extreme interest for a discourse that others may develop, obviously in their own name, to the point of yielding metaphysico-theological outcomes of which we have already given some idea. 
	Starting from Bergson and developing his themes beyond the limits in which he wanted to circumscribe them, we could formulate the hypotheses that follow.
	The life drive could be identified with God’s action through space and time that advances the creation of the universe to its "omega point", to its perfective completion.
	In opposition to this evolutionary force there could assume consistency counterforces that tend to realize each being or species as an end in itself. Now, as we have seen, Bergson gives us a very clear idea of how such a process takes place, at least in its more essential aspects.
	As we said, we are free to apply our own interpretation of a metaphysico-theological level to Bergson’s phenomenology. We can ask ourselves whence there originates this bending back of a being into itself. We can also establish a comparison between this withdrawal of the creature into itself and the sin that can be defined as the creature’s finalizing itself to itself rather than to God, and can also be defined as a tendency to live of oneself and for oneself almost as if God did not exist.
	If this is the essence of sin, death is its "wage" (Rom 5, 23; cfr. Jas 1, 15), seeing that sin isolates the individual from God who is the Source of his being and condemns him to aridity and, in the limit, death. It is also possible to live as if already dead; Bergson re-echoes this idea when in the passage quoted earlier he suggests that death for some time conserves the appearance of the living.
	We may therefore ask ourselves whether an attitude of sin does not underlie the crystallization of the spirit into matter, as also the crystallizations of the various forms of life.
	All this could have its origins in an attitude of sin adopted by purely spiritual beings, who would thus have caused its crystallization: namely, its fall into a materiality that is inert, refractory and in a certain way devoid of soul. Such a tendency would constitute the counterforce that reacts to evolution and puts a brake on it as regards the entire range of living beings, who, in spite of everything and notwithstanding this counterforce, yet undergo a difficult and toilsome evolution.
	One may also assume that the sin of these purely spiritual beings. or angels, constitutes the first origin of every involutionary tendency and attitude at any level.
	God, who originally created and founded every reality, would thus find himself limited, constrained and, in the limit, killed, certainly not in himself, in his absolute dimension, but in his manifestation.
	Here we have what theology calls the kénosis of God (let me say it once more: his emptying or spoliation). Even Bergson suggests this, albeit indirectly, when he speaks of life that overcomes certain obstacles put in its way by raw matter: "Life seems to have succeeded in this by virtue of humility, making itself very tiny and very insinuating, proceeding along transverse roads with the physical and chemical forces, accepting to cover a part of the way together with them" (ch. II, pp. 99-100).
	I am wondering whether wanting to see the words I have just cited as a formulation in naturalistic-evolutionary language of what in theological language could be the concept of the incarnation would constitute an excessive forcing of the Bergsonian text.
	At this level of the temporal, the contingent, the finite, the present kénosis situation in which God finds himself limits his presence, his force and his creativity. Such a God does not guarantee us anything other than final victory, because in the present "his kingdom is not of this world" (cfr. Jn 18, 36).
	He saves us "in hope", but not yet in present time and condition. Such a God also stands in need of us, needs our human collaboration to carry the creative process forward. In his present state of spoliation, the incarnate God is weak and vulnerable. His creating, even though it is only with a great deal of toil that it succeeds in opening a road in the midst of all the possible oppositions, is nevertheless an "organizing", never a "fabrication" similar to that of a human artisan. It is a global and explosive act.
	In the pages of this essay I have analyzed the widely differing modalities with which the organizing psychic force acts on matter. In certain respects this action does not seem dissimilar from the action of the spirit. In a certain way it may therefore be likened to the divine Spirit in the creative process.
	The present discourse, which commences from the elementary phenomena of life – indeed, the most elementary – and then follows the entire range of phenomena in an upward direction, may therefore well culminate with a conclusion regarding the God who seems to be the first spring of all life.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

Without any pretention of giving a list which may be considered complete and even essential, among the consulted works I deemed it useful to mention the ones listed below. Whenever mention is made of an Italian translation of texts originally written in English, French and German, the citations have been taken from that translation. The detailed reference is therefore to the pages of that translation, and the citation, proposed without quotation marks, is a retranslation that, though accurate, does not necessarily coincide with the English original. 

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Cellina, F., "La 'crisi della morte' di Ernesto Bozzano e le attuali esperienze di pre-morte (NDE)", Luce e ombra, XCIII, 1993, pp. 171-176. 
Pollack, J. H., Croiset, the clairvoyant, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y. 
Crookall, R., The Study and Practice of Astral Projection, Citadel Press, Secaucus, N.J., 1960. 
Crookes, W., Researches in the phenomena of spiritualism, J. Burns, London 18-; It. tr. Ricerche sui fenomeni dello "Spiritualismo" e altri scritti, edited by E. Servadio, Libreria Lombarda, Milan 1932. 
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