439. What difference is there between trance and somnambulism?

"Trance is a more refined somnambulism. The soul, when in trance, is still more independent."

440. Does the soul of the ecstatic really enter into higher worlds?

"Yes; he sees them, and perceives the happiness of those who are in them; but there are worlds that are inaccessible to spirits who are not sufficiently purified."

441. When a person in trance expresses the desire to quit the earth, does he speak sincerely, and is he not retained by the instinct of self-preservation?

"That depends on the degree of the spirit's purification. If he sees that his future situation will be better than his present one, he makes an effort to break the links that bind him to the earth."

442. If the ecstatic were left to himself, might his soul definitively quit his body?

"Yes, he might die; and it is therefore necessary to call him back by everything that may attach him to the lower life, and especially by making him see that, if he breaks the chain which keeps him here, he will have taken the most effectual means of preventing his staying in the world in which he perceives that he would be happy."

443. The ecstatic sometimes professes to see things which are evidently the product of an imagination impressed with earthly beliefs and prejudices. What he sees, therefore, is not always real?

"What he sees is real for him; but, as his spirit is always under the influence of terrestrial ideas, he may see it in his own way, or, to speak more correctly, he may express it in a language accommodated to his prejudices, or to the ideas in which he has been brought up, or to your own, in order the better to make himself understood. It is in this way that he is most apt to err."

444. What degree of confidence should be accorded to the revelations of persons in a state of trance?

"The ecstatic may very frequently be mistaken, especially when he seeks to penetrate what must remain a mystery for man; for he then abandons himself to his own ideas, or becomes the sport of deceiving spirits, who take advantage of his enthusiasm to dazzle him with false appearances."

445. What inductions are to be drawn from the phenomena of somnambulism and of trance? May they not be considered as a sort of initiation into the future life?

"It would be more correct to say that, in those states, the somnambulist may obtain glimpses of his past and future lives. Let man study those phenomena; he will find in them the solution of more than one mystery which his unassisted reason seeks in vain to penetrate."

446. Could the phenomena of somnambulism and trance be made to accord with theoretic materialism?

"He who should study them honestly, and without preconceived ideas, could not be either a materialist or an atheist."