THE EQUINOX
and what we have understood through deciphering the qabalistic
characters, and the allegories of which he makes use in his
work:
The human soul is material; the divine sevs is offered to
it to immortalize it and to make it live spiritually and indi-
vidually, but its natural substance is fluidic and collective.
There are, then, in man, two lives: the individual or
reasonable life, and the common or instinctive life. It is by
this latter that one can live in the bodies of others, since the
universal soul, of which each nervous organism has a separate
consciousness, is the same for all.
We live in a common and universal life in the embryonic
state, in ecstasy, and-in sleep. In sleep, in fact, reason does
not act, and logic, when it mingles in our dreams, only does
so by chance, in accordance with the accidents of purely
physical reminiscences.
In dreams, we have the consciousness of the universal
life; we mingle ourselves with water, fire, air, and earth; we
fly like birds; we climb like squirrels ; we crawl like serpents ;
we are intoxicated with astral light; we plunge into the
common reservoir, as happens in a more complete manner
in death; but then (and it is thus that Paracelsus explains
the mysteries of the other life) the wicked, that is to say,
those who have allowed themselves to be dominated by the
instincts of the brute to the prejudice of human reason, are
drowned in the ocean of the common life with all the anguish
of eternal death; the others swim upon it, and enjoy for ever
the riches of that fluid gold which they have succeeded in
dominating.
This identity of all physical life permits the stronger
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