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342 VIL TIME OF FREEDOM AND NEOLOGY.
experience parallel to that of many Indian ascetics.30
There is no doubt that long practice in holding the breath
does enable a man to hypnotize himself in a certain degree.
The physical account (suggested to me by a medical friend,
Dr. Donald Coles, now of Haifa, who has paid much atten
tion to such subjects) seems to be this: Restraint of
ordinary breathing deprives the lungs of the amount of
oxygen which they need to purify the blood. The blood
sent to the brain becomes darker, and is in an impure con
dition, being overcharged with carbonic dioxide, and this
produces a state of coma or trance sometimes ecstatic,
sometimes passive, in which a train of thought already
begun may be carried on, or a suggestion be received from
the outside and developed without the control of the rea
son. It was in such a condition as this that Swedenborg
received the revelations which have filled his later books
revelations only differing from those of other seers in their
fulness and in a certain degree of power and grandeur,
such as the man s large and active mind would lead one to
expect, but thoroughly tinged with his own passions and
prejudices, and suffering from the limitations of his
religious experience.
He also described his special call to a holy office in a
vision of the Lord Himself, which apparently took place
in London in April, 1745 (Wilkinson: p. 77). Some of
the Lord s words were :
"
I am God the Lord, the Creator
and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold
to men the spiritual sense of Holy Scripture. I will my
self dictate to thee what thou shalt write
"
(I.e., 75-6).
Certainly it would appear from his diary that he was in a
very strange and excitable condition during these years,
assailed by manifold inward temptations and with a brain
working beyond its natural activity. We have to think of
one who had made intense efforts to understand the prob
lems of the universe, and that apparently with an increas
ing moral purpose. With a mind of extraordinary pene-
30
See for a fuller account of this method of breathing or
not-breathing, Wilkinson, I.e., 77-83. Cp. White, 150-1.
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