Zones of the Spirit: A Book of ThoughtsStrindberg, August
Religion
Zones of the Spirit: A Book of Thoughts
Strindberg, August
Swedish literature
"In India a Buddhist priest is said to represent the 208 incarnations
of Vishnu by putting his hand in a linen bag, and moulding rapidly from
within the linen of the bag into the shapes of an elephant, tortoise,
etc. When St. Veronica's napkin retained the impress of Christ's face,
that is not more improbable than that my pillow in the morning should
show the impress of faces which are not like mine. I have read of
Indian vases which are so modelled that at first one only sees a chaos
resembling clouds, twisted entrails, or the convolutions of the brain.
After the eye has become accustomed to this the confusion begins to be
disentangled; all kinds of objects such as plants and animals emerge
in clear outline. Whether all observers see the same I know not. But
I believe that the moulder of the vase has worked unintentionally and
unconsciously."
=Projections.=--The pupil continued: "But there are also
projections which I cannot explain. It is possible that only poets and
artists possess the power so to project their inward images in every
life that they become half real. It is quite a usual occurrence that
the dying show themselves to their absent friends. Living persons can
also appear at a distance, but only to those who keep them in their
thoughts. I used to show my initiated friends the following phenomenon:
I observed a stranger who resembled an absent acquaintance. As soon
as my eye completed the image, whatever unlikeness remained was
erased. 'See, there goes X.,' I said. My friends saw the resemblance,
understood that it was not X., comprehended my meaning, and agreed
with me without further thought. If we shortly afterwards met X. we
were astonished, and attempted to find no explanation in face of the
inexplicable latter part of the phenomenon.
"But one day I went down a street and 'saw' my friend Dr. Y. who lived
fifty miles away. It was he, and yet it was not he. It was the same
little figure although somewhat wavering and uncertain. The grey-yellow
face was also the same although almost ghost-like, with deep furrows
which followed the oval lines of the face, and with the forced laugh of
suffering. When I came home I read in the paper that the man was dead."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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