Allan Kardec-THE Spirit's Book_ The Principles of Spiritist Doctrine (1989)

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ALLAN KARDEC
he may display in his lucid state. According to the circumstances of the moment and the aim
proposed, he may draw this knowledge from the stores of his own experience, from his
clairvoyant perception of things actually occurring, or from the counsels which he receives
from other spirits; but, in proportion as his own spirit is more or less advanced, he will make
his statements more or less correctly.
In the phenomena of somnambulism, whether natural or mesmeric, Providence furnishes us
with undeniable proof of the existence and independence of the soul, by causing us to witness
the sublime spectacle of its emancipation from the fetters of the body, and thus enabling us to
read our future destiny as in an open book. When a somnambulist describes what is taking
place at a distance, it is equally evident that he sees what he describes, and that he does not
see it with his bodily eyes. He sees himself at that distant point, and he feels himself to be
transported thither. Something of himself, therefore, is really present at that distant point; and
that something, not being his body, can only be his soul or his spirit.
While man, in search of the causes of his moral being, loses himself in abstract and
unintelligible metaphysical subtleties, God places daily before his eyes, and within reach of
his hand, the simplest and most certain means for the study of experimental psychology.
Trance is the state in which the soul's independence of the body is made most clearly visible,
and, so to say, palpable, to the senses of the observer.
In dreaming and somnambulism, the soul wanders among terrestrial worlds; in trance, it
penetrates into a sphere of existence of another order, into that of the etherealised spirits with
whom it enters into communication, without, however, being able to overstep certain limits
which it could not pass without entirely breaking the links that attach it to the body.
Surrounded by novel splendours. enraptured by harmonies unknown to earth, penetrated by
bliss that defies description, the soul enjoys a foretaste of celestial beatitude, and may be said
to have placed one foot on the threshold of eternity.
In the state of trance, the annihilation of corporeal ties is almost complete. The body no
longer possesses anything more than organic life; and we feel that the soul is only held thereto
by a single thread, which any further effort on its part would break for ever.