A case of living interment which came under the author's notice in India was that of a young Hindu of low caste, about thirty years of age, who took an Indian drug called Cannabis Indica or Indian Cannabis (made from the plant Cannabis Sativa), with suicidal intent. He was to all appearances dead when found by relatives. An English physician was called and after making the usual examination and tests in such cases, pronounced the young man dead. His funeral services were held three days later; the coffin containing the supposed corpse being placed in a receiving cave. At the expiration of the ten days, the time set for burial, the coffin was opened by the attendant in order that the relatives might have a last look at their dead. A horrible sight met their gaze - a sight that filled their hearts with horror and unutterable grief. The young man had turned half over upon his left side, while in his right hand, clenched in death's agony, was found fragments of hair which had been torn from his head. The cloth around his neck also showed evidence of his attempt to tear it away during the struggle he had made against death. In these cases of profound trance or lethargy neither coagulation nor decomposition set in; even though its duration be from three to six months.

And strange as it may seem to the uninformed, the soul continues its existence within the body and life is sustained without air; but once the patient is revived and resumes his normal condition he must have air to breathe or he will die.

This death trance or comatose state can be induced by voluntary effort or Auto-Suggestion. While in this condition and apparently unconscious and unaffected by any of the stimulants which ordinarily induce reaction, the patient really does appear corpse-like, and it is well for the medical man, when called in a case of death trance, suspected to be either of a hypnotic or hysterical or drug origin, to understand something of this strange psychical condition, that he may know the best course to adopt.*

* Instructions for producing reaction will be found in Dr. de Laurence's celebrated work entitled "Medical Hypnosis," Physicians' Edition.

In the deep condition of death trance the independence of the soul is more decided, as its functions are more developed, than during the sleeping state, and it has preceptions that it has not during sleep. For in trance the soul is entirely free from any connection with matter or the material organs. This state is deeper than catalepsy or lethargy and the soul is no longer receptive to external impressions. The death trance condition may occur during deep sleep, for then the spirit is able to absent itself from the body which has been given up to that repose and rest that is indispensable to the physical body. Whenever this trance state occurs it is because the spirit or soul of the sleeper, intent upon doing something or other that requires the aid of the body, makes use of it in a manner analogous to that which spirits make use of a table, or other material objects, in producing the phenomena of physical manifestations, or of a human hand, in giving written communications. In the dreams of which a man is con-scious, his organs, including those of memory, are beginning to awaken; and, as they only receive and transmit to the spirit imperfectly the impressions made on them by exterior objects or action, the spirit, who is then in the state of repose, only perceives these impressions through confused and often disconnected sensations, which, in many cases, are still further confused by being mingled with vague remembrances of his present life and anterior existences.

It is easy, therefore, to understand why somnambulists do not remember their visions, and why the greater number of the dreams you remember have no rational meaning. I say the greater number, for it sometimes happens that dreams are the consequence of a precise remembrance of events that have occurred in one of your former lives, or even a sort of intuition of the future.

The only difference between hypnotic trance and state of death trance is that the hypnotic trance is produced artificially. The so-called magnetic fluid or hypnotic force is a vital auro or universal fluid and all conditions of clairvoyance, second sight, me-diumship, mind reading, somnambulism, etc., are pure soul sight. The reason why soul-sight or clairvoyance can see through opaque bodies is that opaque bodies only become such to the gross or physical organs as matter is not an obstacle for the spirit of soul, for it can pass and see freely through it. A person who has soul-sight or clairvoyance may often tell you that he sees through his forehead or some part of his body, and you living a pure material existence may not understand that this clairvoyance or soul-sight is both independent and superior to the outward or physical organs of sight and the soul left to itself readily understands that it can see into every part of his own body or another body, that is to say, that it can see its own body independent of its own body.