Occultism and Spiritualism

[distri]butes Force and Matter everywhere; it does even more, for it is this which presides over the defense of the Organism by dispatching leucocytes to the point of attack and by closing the small wounds caused by imprudence or accident. Now, here indeed is that principle which Paracelsus called the "Hidden Worker," and its domain is quite separate from that of the Spirit, which has other things to do than preside over the niceties of chylification and excretion. Such are the teachings of the occultists concerning the relations of the astral body with the physical body; let us see what they say to explain its relations with the Spirit.

The astral body, being the housekeeper within the human being, presides over the elaboration of all organic forces. Among these, one interests us from the perspective of cerebral actions: it is the nerve force. The force that circulates in the nerves has been studied in terms of its velocity and has been clearly differentiated from electricity and other physical forces. Like all organic products, it is drawn from the blood, as is proven by cerebral disorders caused either by anemia or by hyperemia; and here again, the astral body presides over this elaboration. Nerve force acts toward the Spirit as electricity toward the telegrapher, the material brain representing the telegraph. Occultists refute the arguments of the materialists by asserting that the latter have confused the telegrapher and the nerve force—or the Spirit—with its sole means of communication: the organism. Remove the electricity from the telegrapher, and the latter will seem not to exist to his correspondent, for he will be unable to send the slightest dispatch. It is thus that in normal or induced sleep, in serious illnesses, and in fainting, there is a displacement of nerve force or a cessation of its habitual production; and, for want of its indispensable means of action, the Spirit is likewise unable to manifest its presence.