Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/235

XVII ] is borne out by what follows: "The design of all this was that every kind of state, every kind of sphere, and every kind of society [of spirits], particularly the more interior, might find in my own a fit respiration, which should come into play without any reflection on my part, and that thus a medium of intercourse might be afforded with spirits and angels." 5

But at times of course he did reflect on the various changes in the rhythms of his breathing and heart-beats. Once when the "more interior" spirits of "heaven," as he called them, were "operating" on his body, he said he noted a fourfold effect. One into the left temple, one into his lungs, one into his heart, and one, but obscurely, into his loins. He was clearly aware, however, of the effect on the systole and diastole of his heart which he particularly watched. The beats were "gentler and softer than at other times," indeed, so "soft and regular" were the pulsations, he said, that he could "count them one by one." And he noted particularly the coincidence of breathing and heart-beats. "The terminations of the heart's times closed in the pulmonic beats." 6

Elsewhere he observed that "when I wished the times of respiration to agree with those of the heart . . . then the understanding began almost to fade away . . ." 7

Now and then he mentions that the respiration is to his normal respiration as three to one, quick and shallow; it seems to be a preparatory stage for an almost entire withdrawal of breath. The entry is not very clear, but apparently this shallow breathing happened before the slowing down of his heart.8

Listening to the heart sounds is one way of reaching that condition of ecstasy which the Hindu yogins call samadhi, according to students of the subject; 9 in fact, measurements of such phenomena taken with the most modern recording instruments reveal in black and white the reduction of the voltage of the heart, as well as the shallow breathing preceding it.10

Whether one consults Hindu lore or electrocardiograms made of the yogins in samadhi, there seems to be some similarity between Swedenborg's more or less conscious technique for entrancing himself, and that of the East.

But of course when he said that the understanding began to vanish when he engaged in these practices. he meant that his