Occultism and Spiritualism

the chest transforms the chyle into blood, and the head extracts from the blood the nerve force that moves the entire human machine. Furthermore, each of the three great centers is represented in the other two. Thus, the abdomen sends its chyliferous vessels and its lymphatic vessels throughout the human being; the chest sends the blood, dynamized by respiration, into the other centers as well; and, finally, the head sets in motion, through its appendages, all the organs without exception.

What is curious and interesting for us is that all this organic work of the abdominal, thoracic, or cephalic factories is carried out absolutely outside the intervention of the consciousness and the will of the human being. It is the Animal-Man who works alone, and the Spirit-Man has functions and organs of his own, quite distinct from the preceding ones.

The Animal-Man is actuated by a special nervous system, the nervous system of vegetative or organic life, consisting almost exclusively of the great sympathetic nerve, its plexuses, and its appendages. It is this which makes our heart beat, which contracts and dilates all our arteries and all our veins; which makes the liver, the stomach, the intestines, and the lungs function, without even concerning itself with whether the Spirit-Man is awake or asleep, for all the organs function just as well during our sleep as when we are awake. It is also this system that repairs worn-out cells and replaces them, which consumes, by means of embryonic cells and white blood cells, microbes coming from the outside, which heals superficial wounds of the skin and which, finally, takes care of all the organic chemistry. The Spirit-Man has nothing to do with all this. Who, then, directs all this special nervous system?

For, as we have said, a system of organs is but a support for something: the organs undergo