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Energy Storage

edited by
Md. Rafiqul Islam Sheikh

SCIYO
Energy Storage
Edited by Md. Rafiqul Islam Sheikh

Published by Sciyo
Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia

Copyright © 2010 Sciyo

All chapters are Open Access articles distributed under the Creative Commons Non Commercial Share
Alike Attribution 3.0 license, which permits to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work in any
medium, so long as the original work is properly cited. After this work has been published by Sciyo,
authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author,
and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work
must explicitly identify the original source.

Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and
not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of
information contained in the published articles. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any
damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods
or ideas contained in the book.

Publishing Process Manager Jelena Marusic

Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic
Cover Designer Martina Sirotic
Image Copyright Monkey Business Images, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com

First published September 2010

Printed in India

A free online edition of this book is available at www.sciyo.com

Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected]

Energy Storage, Edited by Md. Rafiqul Islam Sheikh

p. cm.
ISBN 978-953-307-119-0
SCIYO.COM
WHERE KNOWLEDGE IS FREE
free online editions of Sciyo
Books, Journals and Videos can
be found at www.sciyo.com
Contents
Preface VII

Chapter 1 Electric Machine Topologies in Energy Storage Systems 1

Juan de Santiago and Janaína Gonçalves de Oliveira

Chapter 2 Control of a DSTATCOM Coupled with a Flywheel

Energy Storage System to Improve
the Power Quality of a Wind Power System 19
Gastón Orlando Suvire and Pedro Enrique Mercado

Chapter 3 The High-speed Flywheel Energy Storage System 37

Stanisław Piróg, Marcin Baszyński and Tomasz Siostrzonek

Chapter 4 Energy Storage in Grid-Connected Photovoltaic Plants 69

Rosario Carbone

Chapter 5 Multi-Area Frequency and Tie-Line Power Flow Control

by Fuzzy Gain Scheduled SMES 87
M.R.I. Sheikh, S.M. Muyeen, R. Takahashi, and J. Tamura

Chapter 6 Influence of Streamer-to-Glow Transition on NO Removal

by Inductive Energy Storage Pulse Generator 103
Koichi Takaki

Chapter 7 Numerical Simulation on the Continuous Operation

of Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage System 123
Kun Sang Lee
Preface
Electricity is more versatile in use because it is a highly ordered form of energy that can
be converted efficiently into other forms. However, the disadvantage of electricity is that it
cannot be easily stored on a large scale. One of the distinctive characteristics of the electric
power sector is that the amount of electricity that can be generated is relatively fixed over
short periods of time, although demand for electricity fluctuates throughout the day. Almost
all electrical energy used today is consumed as it is generated. This poses no hardship in
conventional power plants, where the fuel consumption is varied with the load requirements.
However, the photovoltaic and wind, being intermittent sources of power, cannot meet the
load demand all of the time, 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year. Wherever intermittent
power sources reach high levels of grid penetration, energy storage becomes one option to
provide reliable energy supplies.

Developing technology to store electrical energy would represent a major breakthrough

in electricity distribution as the stored energy can be available to meet demand whenever
needed. Helping to try and meet this goal, electricity storage devices can manage the amount
of power required to supply customers at times when need is greatest. These devices can help
to make renewable energy more smooth and reliable, though the power output cannot be
controlled by the grid operators. They can also balance micro grids to achieve a good match
between generation and load demand. Storage devices can provide frequency regulation to
maintain the balance between the network's load and power generated, and they can achieve
a more reliable power supply for high tech industrial facilities. Also, it can significantly
improve the load availability, a key requirement for any power system. The energy storage,
therefore, is a desired feature to incorporate with renewable power systems, particularly in
stand alone power plants.

The purpose of this book is twofold. At first, for the interested researcher it shows the
importance of different Energy Storage devices, but secondly, and more importantly, it forms
a first attempt at dissemination of knowledge to the wider non-expert community who may
wish to consider Energy Storage device for specific application. Thus this book will be helpful
to provide an indication of the tools necessary for an assessment to be made Energy Storage
device more powerful.

In Chapter 1, different topologies of electric machines which are used in Energy Storage
systems have been described. Among the various Energy Storage systems- pumped hydro
storage, compressed air energy storage (CAES) and flywheel energy storage system (FESS)
have been discussed extensively. Also different machine topologies suitable for specific
application have been presented.

The beginning of the twenty-first century is an exciting time for wind energy. With the changes
in technology, policy, environmental concern and electricity industry structure which have
occurred in recent years, the coming decade offers an unparalleled opportunity for wind
energy to emerge as a viable mainstream electricity source and a key component of the world’s
VIII

environmentally sustainable development path. However, the lack of controllability over the
wind and the type of generation system used cause problems to the electric system. Therefore,
Chapter 2 presents a detailed model and a multi-level control of a DSTATCOM controller
coupled with FESS to improve the integration of wind generators into the power system. The
DSTATCOM/FESS device is presented with all of its components in detail. Moreover, the
complete control for this device is suggested to control voltage, power factor and to minimize
output fluctuations of wind farm.

In Chapter 3, different energy storage devices like superconductive inductor, super capacitor,
battery have been discussed briefly. Finally, the principle of high-speed FESS, factors affecting
the FESS efficiency and its control systems have been discussed extensively.

Chapter 4 covers the characteristics of a grid-connected photovoltaic system and the

advantages to use it with battery energy storage system. The main idea that is presented in
this work is that batteries can be used in a new and more convenient “distributed manner”
as distributed passive maximum power point tracker (MPPT) devices, in alternative to more
expensive active MPPTs.

In Chapter 5, detailed modeling and control strategies for superconducting magnetic energy
storage (SMES) system have been discussed for improvement of load frequency control in
multi-area power system. The advantages and disadvantages of SMES system have also been
described. Finally, it is presented and evaluated that SMES is more effective to enhance the
stability of power system as it has both active and reactive power control abilities with high
response speed. Thus can be a good tool for load frequency control application.

Chapter 6 discusses about the air pollutants that are released from different sources like coal,
oil, motor vehicles, diesel engine exhaust, paper mills and natural gas-burning electric power
plants etc. and presented the harmful effects of these air pollutants. An experimental study
on nitrogen oxide (NO) removal in a pulse corona discharge reactor is presented to clarify
the influence of the streamer-to-glow transition on NO removal, where the inductive energy
storage pulsed power generator is used. The technique for improving the energy efficiency
has also been discussed.

Finally, in Chapter 7, aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) system has been discussed. It is
presented that large scale thermal energy storage can be accomplished in the aquifer through
the installation of an array of vertical boreholes. A numerical investigation and thermo
hydraulic evaluation of two-well models of aquifer thermal energy storage system under
continuous flow regime have also been presented.
At the end, the book gives numerous references for further reading.

Editor

Md. Rafiqul Islam Sheikh

Associate Professor
EEE Department
Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology
Bangladeshl
1

Electric Machine Topologies

in Energy Storage Systems
Juan de Santiago and Janaína Gonçalves de Oliveira
Division for electricity, Uppsala University
Sweden

1. Introduction
Energy storage systems based on pumped hydro storage, compressed air (CAES) and
flywheels require electric machines working both as motors and generators. Each energy
storage system has specific requirements leading to a variety of electric machine topologies.
Hydro power and CAES stations have several configurations; they may have a turbine-
generator and an independent pump-motor group or a common turbine-motor/generator
assembly, but in both cases the electric machines are coupled to turbines that are operated at
constant speed and low electric frequency at steady state. Synchronous machines are the
predominant technology for these applications.
Modern flywheel concepts based on a composite rotor driven by an electric machine started
to be studied in the 1970s and 1980s. It is therefore a relatively new field of research based
on the latest developments in strong light weight materials, new magnetic materials,
magnetic bearings and power electronics. Despite the short history of the concept, there are
already commercial applications and other potential applications have been identified such
as space applications, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), vehicles, grid quality
enhancement, integration of renewable sources, etc. Flywheels are operated at high and
variable speed and require specific machine topologies. Permanent magnet machines are
preferred for vehicular flywheel applications (Acarnley et al., 1996), although inductance
and reluctance topologies are applied for stationary flywheels.
Most common and promising types of machines use in energy storage systems discussed in
this chapter are presented in Table 1.

Type Properties
- Well established technology.
Constant Speed Synchronous
- Unlimited power rate.
- Robust and no iddle losses.
Variable Speed Induction
- Lower efficiency than other topologies.
- Highest efficiency and power density.
Permanent Magnet - Sensitive to temperature.
- Higher material price.
- Robust and no iddle losses.
Reluctance
- Complex control.
Table 1. Electric machines used in Energy Storage applications.
2 Energy Storage

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss newly research threads and specific aspects in
energy storage applications. For a general overview of the synchronous machine and a
much detailed discussion of synchronous motor and generators, consult (Rashid, 2007),
(Laughton & Warne, 2003).

2. Constant speed operation machines

Due to the specific orography and water flow at the location, every hydro power station is
unique and required tailor maid solutions in terms of water head and flow. Pumped hydro
power plants may be equipped with an independent pump with a specific motor (generally
an induction motor) or with reversible pump-turbine and a single motor/generator
machine. Hydro turbines are directly coupled to the generator shaft without an intermediate
gear box. The low speed operation of turbines forces a high number of poles in the electric
machine in order to run at synchronous speed with the grid frequency.
Currently operated CAES are integrated in hybrid power plants. The air is compressed and
stored in a reservoir when the electricity price is low, to be mixed with fuel and expanded in
a conventional gas turbine at peak demand. Air pumps are operated at higher speeds than
hydro pumps and therefore cylindrical rotor turbo machines are used in CAES power
plants.
In both hydro power station and CAES, the turbine speed is constant at steady state
operation. Synchronous machines are optimal for constant speed operation and dominate
the high power station market.

2.1 Synchronous machines

In synchronous motor/generators, the rotor is wound and a DC current creates the rotor
magnetic field. The rotor may be essentially described as an electromagnet. The magnetic
field induced by a DC current is intrinsically invariant; the rotational movement makes the
magnetic flux vary in time through the stator windings. The cross section of this kind of
machines is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Cross section of a three phase generator with a four salient pole rotor.
The mutual inductance between rotor and stator coils and pole saliency induces the
electromotive force (e.m.f.) in the stator windings. For a three phase salient pole
Electric Machine Topologies in Energy Storage Systems 3

synchronous motor with negligible stator winding resistance, the electromagnetic power is
expressed as (Laughton & Warne, 2003):

⎡V ⋅ E V2 1 1 ⎤
P = 3⋅⎢ ⋅ sin(δ ) + ⋅( − ) ⋅ sin(2 ⋅ δ )⎥ (1)
⎢⎣ Xsd 2 Xsq Xsd ⎥⎦

Where V is the input phase voltage, E is the e.m.f. induced by the rotor excitation flux or
open circuit voltage, and δ is the power angle or angle between E and V; Xsq and Xsd are the
synchronous reactances in the d axis and q axis. The equivalent one phase circuit of the
synchronous generator may be represented as in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. One phase equivalent circuit of a synchronous generator

Even though synchronous generators are a mature technology and efficiencies up exceeding
98% have been reported, there are important research threads in this type of machines as
described in following sections.

2.1.1 High voltage insulation systems

The stator is formed with a three phase winding. The armature windings in the stator are
made of copper bars and packed as tight as possible to achieve a high filling factor (copper
cross section/bar cross section). Due to the limited permeability of the laminated steel in the
stator, the electric field induced in the stator bars depends on the vertical position of the slot.
To equalize the voltage induced in each of the strands and eliminate circulating currents,
they are usually transposed. Modern generators use the so called Roebel transposition.
Every copper strand is insulated and strands are packed into bundles. High power rated
generators have hollow copper tubes in the bundles for water or gas cooling. Insulation
between copper bars is used to avoid short circuits but also to prevent corona effect. The
insulation layers are made with different materials, traditionally based on mica. The
insulation materials limit the generator voltage rates. There are several standard ratings
(Changda et al., 1998). Even high power rated generators rarely exceed 25 kV so
transformers to couple the grid voltage are required. As an example, generators at the Three
Gorges dam are rated over 700 MVA at only 20 kV. These generator low voltage rates force
high nominal currents that cause a significant amount of generator total losses.
A new technology proposes to wind the stator with high voltage, dielectric insulated cables,
to withstand higher voltage ratings. This technology is known as Powerformer. High
voltage operation increases overall efficiency and avoids the need of transformers. This
technology is particularly interesting for energy storage systems with independent motor
and generator machines in stationary systems. Motors and generators have different ratings
and therefore different machine solutions may be adopted.
4 Energy Storage

2.1.2 Multiphase systems

Increasing the voltage is not the only strategy in the windings design to improve the
performance of generators. Multiple phase systems and more than one set of windings in
the stator have been proposed and currently under development. There are several
advantages in multiple phase systems from the generators point of view. With multiphase
systems, the magnetic field distribution in the air gap is more homogeneous and the power
is distributed into more phases, reducing the current in every phase. Note that the reduction
in current per phase does not reduce the current density nor the Joule losses as the slots in
the stator have to be divided into more phases. The improvement of lower currents per
phase relies in the lower power ratings in inverters and lower short circuit current in case of
fault.
Designers are usually restricted to the three phase system as generators have to match the
standard electric grid three phase system. Nevertheless, there are several threads of
investigation in this field.
The Powerformer, discussed in section 2.1.1, has two sets of independent windings in the
stator at different voltage levels. The main windings deliver power to the grid at high
voltage, higher than the ancillary services. To supply different plant equipment, the
Powerformer may have a devoted set of windings generating at lower voltage rate (Touma-
Holmberg & Srivastava, 2004).
The first application for two winding generator was developed as early as 1920's. In order to
lower fault current in large generators and allow electrical segregation of bus sections in
power stations, two identical layers of three-phase winding were proposed. Nowadays the
same idea has been adopted to decrease the power rating of high power traction drives.
Stators designed with a double star stator configurations require two power inverters but at
half of the power rate.
The double winding configuration is also applied for inductance machines. In both cases the
optimal angle between windings has been calculated in 30 electrical degrees (Fuchs &
Rosenberg, 1974). Ground of both star windings are connected, resulting an equivalent
circuit as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit and one phase equivalent circuit of a double star winding
synchronous generator.
Electric Machine Topologies in Energy Storage Systems 5

2.1.3 Excitation system

The excitation system provides a DC current into the field winding of the generator to
produce the magnetic field in the rotor. This apparently simple device has been classified in
12 different types of excitation systems by the IEEE standards (Kim, 2002), (IEEE Std 421.1-
2007). The complexity of the excitation system lies on the control and regulation techniques.
The field current regulates the no load voltage and the reactive power delivered by the
generator. Modern excitation systems tend to avoid graphite brushes; the slip rings are
replaced by a multiphase set of windings and the power is transfer to the rotor through the
magnetic fields induced in the exciter stator. The AC currents in the rotor are rectified in
rotating rectifiers mounted in the shaft and create the DC field current in the generator. The
magnetic field in the excitation system stator is produced by a controlled current, either
from a synchronous generator or a transformer connected to the generator’s terminals. An
alternator-rectifier exciter scheme is presented in Fig. 4. The AC exciter current is rectified in
passive rectifier bridges. Controlled thyristors mounted on the rotor have been proposed,
but this technology is still not commercially developed as it significantly increases the
generator costs.

Fig. 4. Alternator-rectifier exciter employing rotating non-controlled rectifiers.

Standard excitation systems are based on a DC current that flows through a single phase
field winding, but more complex configurations are also possible. Two phase excitation
systems have been proposed to create a rotating magnetic field in the rotor. The magnetic
field rotational speed that would see the stator windings is the addition of the mechanical
rotational speed plus the magnetic field circulation around the rotor. This machine is called
asynchronised synchronous generator. They are designed to operate up to a maximum slip
of 20%. The speed regulation is particularly interesting in hydro generators with wide range
of water head changes and gas turbines to operate them with a low inertia constant
(Mamikoniants et al., 1999).
Multiple phase rotors may be also be designed to improve the magnetic field distribution in
the airgap. The magnetic field distribution in simple or double phase excitation systems rely
on the symmetry of the rotor and stator geometry. The excitation field current provides the
magnetomotive force in the magnetic field circuit that flows through rotor and stator. An
eccentricity or miss aliment in the rotor would create a non uniform magnetic reluctance
and therefore unsymmetrical magnetic field distributions. The region where the magnetic
field increases suffers saturation in the teeth steel which leads to harmonics in the e.m.f.,
6 Energy Storage

higher hysterics losses and higher current in dumping bars. Eccentricity in the rotor leads
also to unbalanced radial forces and wear (Lundin & Wolfbrandt, 2009). Multiple and
independent field winding phases controlled by rotating thyristors may be a solution for
rotor eccentricity.

3. Variable speed operation machines

Flywheel energy storage systems are base on the variation of rotational energy with
rotational speed. Almost constant speed flywheels with synchronous generators, with a
speed deviation of around 2% of the nominal speed, have been studied, but the high
moment of inertia required make this configuration impractical (Carrillo et al., 2009).
Therefore flywheels are designed to vary speed with a maximum nominal speed of about
twice the minimum speed, and require variable speed machines. The speed range varies
from applications, but generally nominal speeds are over the standard 50 or 60 Hz.
Electronic converters are required to couple flywheels to the electric grid.
The flywheel market is not mature and lacks of standardization. Brushless machines are
preferred in flywheel applications, but there is still a great variety of machine topologies and
system parameters discussed. The machine configurations may be classified into: induction,
reluctance and permanent magnet machines.

3.1 Permanent Magnet machines

High coercitive materials have been developed and applied only for the last 20 years and the
technology is still evolving. The rotor is shelf excited with Permanent Magnet (PM)
excitation and allows high power density and efficiency as it lacks excitation losses (Gieras
& Wing, 2002). These properties make PM machines preferred in many vehicular
applications.

3.1.1 PM machine topologies

There is a great variety of permanent magnet arrangements to increase the magnetic field in
the airgap, to obtain a sinusoidal distribution and to reduce eddy current losses in the
magnets that may lead to reduction in performance and permanent demagnetization.
Regarding the flux path, most common types of machines have radial or axial flux
configurations. Other topologies have been described without much widespread as conical,
transversal or spherical. Magnets may be surface mounted or internal mounted on the rotor
surface. The magnets are mounted on the rotor in different ways. Axial-flux machines
usually have their magnets mounted on the surface of the rotor, while radial-flux machines
may have the magnets either surface mounted or internal mounted (Kolehmainen &
Ikäheimo, 2008). Internal mounted magnet machine properties vary with the geometry and
configuration of the rotor. A magnetic material conducts the magnetic flux so the magnets
are isolated from the harmonics produced by the stator. The iron bridges may be
mechanized to obtain a sinusoidal magnetic flux distribution and produces a significant
saliency. The saliency affects the performance of electric motors as lead to higher
synchronous reactance in the direct axis (Xsd) than in the quadrature axis (Xsq). Iron bridges
between and over the magnets produce a leakage in the magnetic flux, despite of the
complexity of the arrangement.
The differences in geometry between surface mounted and Internal mounted magnets are
clearly shown in Fig. 5.
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
I asked the hermit whether he could tell me anything of the present
state of that beloved sister of mine. The foreigner—was the reply—
would never believe in the words, or trust to the knowledge of any
person but himself. Were the Yamabooshi to tell him, the impression
would wear out hardly a few hours later, and the inquirer find
himself as miserable as before. There was but one means; and that
was to make the foreigner (myself) see with his own eyes, and thus
learn the truth for himself. Was the inquirer ready to be placed by a
Yamabooshi, a stranger to him, in the required state?
I had heard in Europe of mesmerized somnambules and
pretenders to clairvoyance, and having no faith in them, I had,
therefore, nothing against the process itself. Even in the midst of my
never-ceasing mental agony, I could not help smiling at the
ridiculous nature of the operation I was willingly submitting to.
Nevertheless I silently bowed consent.

III
Psychic Magic

The old Yamabooshi lost no time. He looked at the setting sun, and
finding probably, the Lord Ten-Dzio-Dai-Dzio (the Spirit who darts his
Rays) propitious for the coming ceremony, he speedily drew out a
little bundle. It contained a small lacquered box, a piece of vegetable
paper, made from the bark of the mulberry tree, and a pen, with
which he traced upon the paper a few sentences in the Naiden
character—a peculiar style of written language used only for
religious and mystical purposes. Having finished, he exhibited from
under his clothes a small round mirror of steel of extraordinary
brilliancy, and placing it before my eyes, asked me to look into it.
I had not only heard before of these mirrors, which are frequently
used in the temples, but I had often seen them. It is claimed that
under the direction and will of instructed priests, there appear in
them the Daij-Dzin, the great spirits who notify the inquiring
devotees of their fate. I first imagined that his intention was to
evoke such a spirit, who would answer my queries. What happened,
however, was something of quite a different character.
No sooner had I, not without a last pang of mental
squeamishness, produced by a deep sense of my own absurd
position, touched the mirror, than I suddenly felt a strange sensation
in the arm of the hand that held it. For a brief moment I forgot to
“sit in the seat of the scorner” and failed to look at the matter from
a ludicrous point of view. Was it fear that suddenly clutched my
brain, for an instant paralyzing its activity—
... that fear
When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear?

No; for I still had consciousness enough left to go on persuading

myself that nothing would come out of an experiment, in the nature
of which no sane man could ever believe. What was it then, that
crept across my brain like a living thing of ice, producing therein a
sensation of horror, and then clutched at my heart as if a deadly
serpent had fastened its fangs into it? With a convulsive jerk of the
hand I dropped the—I blush to write the adjective—“magic” mirror,
and could not force myself to pick it up from the settee on which I
was reclining. For one short moment there was a terrible struggle
between some undefined, and to me utterly inexplicable, longing to
look into the depths of the polished surface of the mirror and my
pride, the ferocity of which nothing seemed capable of taming. It
was finally so tamed, however, its revolt being conquered by its own
defiant intensity. There was an opened novel lying on a lacquer table
near the settee, and as my eyes happened to fall upon its pages, I
read the words, “The veil which covers futurity is woven by the hand
of mercy.” This was enough. That same pride which had hitherto
held me back from what I regarded as a degrading, superstitious
experiment, caused me to challenge my fate. I picked up the
ominously shining disk and prepared to look into it.
While I was examining the mirror, the Yamabooshi hastily spoke a
few words to the Bonze, Tamoora, at which I threw a furtive and
suspicious glance at both. I was wrong once more.
“The holy man desires me to put you a question and give you at
the same time a warning,” remarked the Bonze. “If you are willing to
see for yourself now, you will have—under the penalty of seeing for
ever, in the hereafter, all that is taking place, at whatever distance,
and that against your will or inclination—to submit to a regular
course of purification, after you have learned what you want through
the mirror.”
“What is this course, and what have I to promise?” I asked
defiantly.
“It is for your own good. You must promise him to submit to the
process, lest, for the rest of his life, he should have to hold himself
responsible, before his own conscience, for having made an
irresponsible seer of you. Will you do so, friend?”
“There will be time enough to think of it, if I see anything”—I
sneeringly replied, adding under my breath—“something I doubt a
good deal, so far.”
“Well, you are warned, friend. The consequences will now remain
with yourself,” was the solemn answer.
I glanced at the clock, and made a gesture of impatience, which
was remarked and understood by the Yamabooshi. It was just seven
minutes after five.
“Define well in your mind what you would see and learn,” said the
“conjuror,” placing the mirror and paper in my hands, and instructing
me how to use them.
His instructions were received by me with more impatience than
gratitude; and for one short instant, I hesitated again. Nevertheless
I replied, while fixing the mirror:
“I desire but one thing—to learn the reason or reasons why my
sister has so suddenly ceased writing to me.”...
Had I pronounced these words in reality, and in the hearing of the
two witnesses, or had I only thought them? To this day I cannot
decide the point. I now remember but one thing distinctly: while I
sat gazing in the mirror, the Yamabooshi kept gazing at me. But
whether this process lasted half a second or three hours, I have
never since been able to settle in my mind with any degree of
satisfaction. I can recall every detail of the scene up to the moment
when I took up the mirror with the left hand, holding the paper
inscribed with the mystic characters between the thumb and finger
of the right, when all of a sudden I seemed to quite lose
consciousness of the surrounding objects. The passage from the
active waking state to one that I could compare with nothing I had
ever experienced before, was so rapid, that while my eyes had
ceased to perceive external objects and had completely lost sight of
the Bonze, the Yamabooshi, and even of my room, I could
nevertheless distinctly see the whole of my head and my back, as I
sat leaning forward with the mirror in my hand. Then came a strong
sensation of an involuntary rush forward, of snapping off, so to say,
from my place—I had almost said from my body. And, then, while
every one of my other senses had become totally paralysed, my
eyes, as I thought, unexpectedly caught a clearer and far more vivid
glimpse than they had ever had in reality, of my sister’s new house
at Nuremberg, which I had never visited and knew only from a
sketch, and other scenery with which I had never been very familiar.
Together with this, and while feeling in my brain what seemed like
flashes of a departing consciousness—dying persons must feel so,
no doubt—the very last, vague thought, so weak as to have been
hardly perceptible, was that I must look very, very ridiculous.... This
feeling—for such it was rather than a thought—was interrupted,
suddenly extinguished, so to say, by a clear mental vision (I cannot
characterize it otherwise) of myself, of that which I regarded as, and
knew to be my body, lying with ashy cheeks on the settee, dead to
all intents and purposes, but still staring with the cold and glassy
eyes of a corpse into the mirror. Bending over it, with his two
emaciated hands cutting the air in every direction over its white
face, stood the tall figure of the Yamabooshi, for whom I felt at that
instant an inextinguishable, murderous hatred. As I was going, in
thought, to pounce upon the vile charlatan, my corpse, the two old
men, the room itself, and every object in it, trembled and danced in
a reddish glowing light, and seemed to float rapidly away from “me.”
A few more grotesque, distorted shadows before “my” sight; and,
with a last feeling of terror and a supreme effort to realise who then
was I now, since I was not that corpse—a great veil of darkness fell
over me, like a funeral pall, and every thought in me was dead.

IV
A Vision of Horror

How strange!... Where was I now? It was evident to me that I had

once more returned to my senses. For there I was, vividly realizing
that I was rapidly moving forward, while experiencing a queer,
strange sensation as though I were swimming, without impulse or
effort on my part, and in total darkness. The idea that first
presented itself to me was that of a long subterranean passage of
water, of earth, and stifling air, though bodily I had no perception,
no sensation, of the presence or contact of any of these. I tried to
utter a few words, to repeat my last sentence, “I desire but one
thing: to learn the reason or reasons why my sister has so suddenly
ceased writing to me”—but the only words I heard out of the
twenty-one, were the two, “to learn,” and these, instead of their
coming out of my own larynx, came back to me in my own voice,
but entirely outside myself, near, but not in me. In short, they were
pronounced by my voice, not by my lips....
One more rapid, involuntary motion, one more plunge into the
Cimmerian darkness of a (to me) unknown element, and I saw
myself standing—actually standing—underground, as it seemed. I
was compactly and thickly surrounded on all sides, above and below,
right and left, with earth, and in the mould, and yet it weighed not,
and seemed quite immaterial and transparent to my senses. I did
not realize for one second the utter absurdity, nay, impossibility of
that seeming fact! One second more, one short instant, and I
perceived—oh, inexpressible horror, when I think of it now; for then,
although I perceived, realized, and recorded facts and events far
more clearly than ever I had done before, I did not seem to be
touched in any other way by what I saw. Yes—I perceived a coffin at
my feet. It was a plain unpretentious shell, made of deal, the last
couch of the pauper, in which, notwithstanding its closed lid, I plainly
saw a hideous, grinning skull, a man’s skeleton, mutilated and
broken in many of its parts, as though it had been taken out of some
hidden chamber of the defunct Inquisition, where it had been
subjected to torture. “Who can it be?”—I thought.
At this moment I heard again proceeding from afar the same voice
—my voice ... “the reason or reasons why” ... it said; as though
these words were the unbroken continuation of the same sentence
of which it had just repeated the two words “to learn.” It sounded
near, and yet as from some incalculable distance; giving me then the
idea that the long subterranean journey, the subsequent mental
reflexions and discoveries, had occupied no time; had been
performed during the short, almost instantaneous interval between
the first and the middle words of the sentence, begun, at any rate, if
not actually pronounced by myself in my room at Kioto, and which it
was now finishing, in interrupted, broken phrases, like a faithful echo
of my own words and voice....
Forthwith, the hideous, mangled remains began assuming a form,
and to me, but too familiar appearance. The broken parts joined
together one to the other, the bones became covered once more
with flesh, and I recognized in these disfigured remains—with some
surprise, but not a trace of feeling at the sight—my sister’s dead
husband, my own brother-in-law, whom I had for her sake loved so
truly. “How was it, and how did he come to die such a terrible
death?”—I asked myself. To put oneself a query seemed, in the state
in which I was, to instantly solve it. Hardly had I asked myself the
question, when, as if in a panorama, I saw the retrospective picture
of poor Karl’s death, in all its horrid vividness, and with every
thrilling detail, every one of which, however, left me then entirely
and brutally indifferent. Here he is, the dear old fellow, full of life
and joy at the prospect of more lucrative employment from his
principal, examining and trying in a wood-sawing factory a monster
steam engine just arrived from America. He bends over, to examine
more closely an inner arrangement, to tighten a screw. His clothes
are caught by the teeth of the revolving wheel in full motion, and
suddenly he is dragged down, doubled up, and his limbs half
severed, torn off, before the workmen, unacquainted with the
mechanism can stop it. He is taken out, or what remains of him,
dead, mangled, a thing of horror, an unrecognizable mass of
palpitating flesh and blood! I follow the remains, wheeled as an
unrecognizable heap to the hospital, hear the brutally given order
that the messengers of death should stop on their way at the house
of the widow and orphans. I follow them, and find the unconscious
family quietly assembled together. I see my sister, the dear and
beloved, and remain indifferent at the sight, only feeling highly
interested in the coming scene. My heart, my feelings, even my
personality, seemed to have disappeared, to have been left behind,
to belong to somebody else.
There “I” stand, and witness her unprepared reception of the
ghastly news. I realize clearly, without one moment’s hesitation or
mistake, the effect of the shock upon her, I perceive clearly,
following and recording, to the minutest detail, her sensations and
the inner process that takes place in her. I watch and remember,
missing not one single point.
As the corpse is brought into the house for identification I hear
the long agonizing cry, my own name pronounced, and the dull thud
of the living body falling upon the remains of the dead one. I follow
with curiosity the sudden thrill and the instantaneous perturbation in
her brain that follow it, and watch with attention the worm-like,
precipitate, and immensely intensified motion of the tubular fibers,
the instantaneous change of color in the cephalic extremity of the
nervous system, the fibrous nervous matter passing from white to
bright red and then to a dark red, bluish hue. I notice the sudden
flash of a phosphorous-like, brilliant Radiance, its tremor and its
sudden extinction followed by darkness—complete darkness in the
region of memory—as the Radiance, comparable in its form only to a
human shape, oozes out suddenly from the top of the head,
expands, loses its form and scatters. And I say to myself: “This is
insanity; life-long, incurable insanity, for the principle of intelligence
is not paralyzed or extinguished temporarily, but has just deserted
the tabernacle for ever, ejected from it by the terrible force of the
sudden blow.... The link between the animal and the divine essence
is broken.”... And as the unfamiliar term “divine” is mentally uttered
my “Thought”—laughs.
Suddenly I hear again my far-off yet near voice pronouncing
emphatically and close by me the words ... “why my sister has so
suddenly ceased writing.”... And before the two final words “to me”
have completed the sentence, I see a long series of sad events,
immediately following the catastrophe.
I behold the mother, now a helpless, grovelling idiot, in the lunatic
asylum attached to the city hospital, the seven younger children
admitted into a refuge for paupers. Finally I see the two elder, a boy
of fifteen, and a girl a year younger, my favorites, both taken by
strangers into their service. A captain of a sailing vessel carries away
my nephew, an old Jewess adopts the tender girl. I see the events
with all their horrors and thrilling details, and record each, to the
smallest detail, with the utmost coolness.
For, mark well: when I use such expressions as “horrors,” etc.,
they are to be understood as an after-thought. During the whole
time of the events described I experienced no sensation of either
pain or pity. My feelings seemed to be paralyzed as well as my
external senses; it was only after “coming back” that I realized my
irretrievable losses to their full extent.
Much of that which I had so vehemently denied in those days,
owing to sad personal experience I have to admit now. Had I been
told by anyone at that time, that man could act and think and feel,
irrespective of his brain and senses; nay, that by some mysterious,
and to this day, for me, incomprehensible power, he could be
transported mentally, thousands of miles away from his body, there
to witness not only present but also past events, and remember
these by storing them in his memory—I would have proclaimed that
man a madman. Alas, I can do so no longer, for I have become
myself that “madman.” Ten, twenty, forty, a hundred times during
the course of this wretched life of mine, have I experienced and
lived over such moments of existence, outside of my body. Accursed
be that hour when this terrible power was first awakened in me! I
have not even the consolation left of attributing such glimpses of
events at a distance to insanity. Madmen rave and see that which
exists not in the realm they belong to. My visions have proved
invariably correct. But to my narrative of woe.
I had hardly had time to see my unfortunate young niece in her
new Israelitish home, when I felt a shock of the same nature as the
one that had sent me “swimming” through the bowels of the earth,
as I had thought. I opened my eyes in my own room, and the first
thing I fixed upon by accident, was the clock. The hands of the dial
showed seven minutes and a half past five!... I had thus passed
through these most terrible experiences, which it takes me hours to
narrate, in precisely half a minute of time!
But this, too, was an after-thought. For one brief instant I
recollected nothing of what I had seen. The interval between the
time I had glanced at the clock when taking the mirror from the
Yamabooshi’s hand and this second glance, seemed to me merged in
one. I was just opening my lips to hurry on the Yamabooshi with his
experiment, when the full remembrance of what I had just seen
flashed lightning-like into my brain. Uttering a cry of horror and
despair, I felt as though the whole creation were crushing me under
its weight. For one moment I remained speechless, the picture of
human ruin amid a world of death and desolation. My heart sank
down in anguish: my doom was closed; and a hopeless gloom
seemed to settle over the rest of my life for ever.

Return of Doubts

Then came a reaction as sudden as my grief itself. A doubt arose in

my mind, which forthwith grew into a fierce desire of denying the
truth of what I had seen. A stubborn resolution of treating the whole
thing as an empty, meaningless dream, the effect of my overstrained
mind, took possession of me. Yes; it was but a lying vision, an idiotic
cheating of my own senses, suggesting pictures of death and misery
which had been evoked by weeks of incertitude and mental
depression.
“How could I see all that I have seen in less than half a
minute?”—I exclaimed. “The theory of dreams, the rapidity with
which the material changes on which our ideas in vision depend, are
excited in the hemispherical ganglia, is sufficient to account for the
long series of events I have seemed to experience. In dream alone
can the relations of space and time be so completely annihilated.
The Yamabooshi is for nothing in this disagreeable nightmare. He is
only reaping that which has been sown by myself, and, by using
some infernal drug, of which his tribe have the secret, he has
contrived to make me lose consciousness for a few seconds and see
that vision—as lying as it is horrid. Avaunt all such thoughts, I
believe them not. In a few days there will be a steamer sailing for
Europe.... I shall leave to-morrow!”
This disjointed monologue was pronounced by me aloud,
regardless of the presence of my respected friend the Bonze,
Tamoora, and the Yamabooshi. The latter was standing before me in
the same position as when he placed the mirror in my hands, and
kept looking at me calmly, I should perhaps say looking through me,
and in dignified silence. The Bonze, whose kind countenance was
beaming with sympathy, approached me as he would a sick child,
and gently laying his hand on mine, and with tears in his eyes, said:
“Friend, you must not leave this city before you have been
completely purified of your contact with the lower Daij-Dzins
(spirits), who had to be used to guide your inexperienced soul to the
places it craved to see. The entrance to your Inner Self must be
closed against their dangerous intrusion. Lose no time, therefore, my
son, and allow the holy Master yonder, to purify you at once.”
But nothing can be more deaf than anger once aroused. “The sap
of reason” could no longer “quench the fire of passion,” and at that
moment I was not fit to listen to his friendly voice. His is a face I can
never recall to my memory without genuine feeling; his, a name I
will ever pronounce with a sigh of emotion; but at that ever
memorable hour when my passions were inflamed to white heat, I
felt almost a hatred for the kind, good old man, I could not forgive
him his interference in the present event. Hence, for all answer,
therefore, he received from me a stern rebuke, a violent protest on
my part against the idea that I could ever regard the vision I had
had, in any other light save that of an empty dream, and his
Yamabooshi as anything better than an impostor. “I will leave to-
morrow, had I to forfeit my whole fortune as a penalty”—I
exclaimed, pale with rage and despair.
“You will repent it the whole of your life, if you do so before the
holy man has shut every entrance in you against intruders ever on
the watch and ready to enter the open door,” was the answer. “The
Daij-Dzins will have the best of you.”
I interrupted him with a brutal laugh, and a still more brutally
phrased inquiry about the fees I was expected to give the
Yamabooshi, for his experiment with me.
“He needs no reward,” was the reply. “The order he belongs to is
the richest in the world, since its adherents need nothing, for they
are above all terrestrial and venal desires. Insult him not, the good
man who came to help you out of pure sympathy for your suffering,
and to relieve you of mental agony.”
But I would listen to no words of reason and wisdom. The spirit of
rebellion and pride had taken possession of me, and made me
disregard every feeling of personal friendship, or even of simple
propriety. Luckily for me, on turning round to order the mendicant
monk out of my presence, I found he had gone.
I had not seen him move, and attributed his stealthy departure to
fear at having been detected and understood.
Fool! blind, conceited idiot that I was! Why did I fail to recognize
the Yamabooshi’s power, and that the peace of my whole life was
departing with him, from that moment for ever? But I did so fail.
Even the fell demon of my long fears—uncertainty—was now entirely
overpowered by that fiend scepticism—the silliest of all. A dull,
morbid unbelief, a stubborn denial of the evidence of my own
senses, and a determined will to regard the whole vision as a fancy
of my overwrought mind, had taken firm hold of me.
“My mind,” I argued, “what is it? Shall I believe with the
superstitious and the weak that this production of phosphorus and
gray matter is indeed the superior part of me; that it can act and see
independently of my physical senses? Never! As well believe in the
planetary ‘intelligences’ of the astrologer, as in the ‘Daij-Dzins’ of my
credulous though well-meaning friend, the priest. As well confess
one’s belief in Jupiter and Sol, Saturn and Mercury, and that these
worthies guide their spheres and concern themselves with mortals,
as to give one serious thought to the airy nonentities supposed to
have guided my ‘soul’ in its unpleasant dream! I loathe and laugh at
the absurd idea. I regard it as a personal insult to the intellect and
rational reasoning powers of a man, to speak of invisible creatures,
‘subjective intelligences,’ and all that kind of insane superstition.” In
short, I begged my friend the Bonze to spare me his protests, and
thus the unpleasantness of breaking with him for ever.
Thus I raved and argued before the venerable Japanese
gentleman, doing all in my power to leave on his mind the indelible
conviction of my having gone suddenly mad. But his admirable
forbearance proved more than equal to my idiotic passion; and he
implored me once more, for the sake of my whole future, to submit
to certain “necessary purificatory rites.”
“Never! Far rather dwell in air, rarefied to nothing by the air-pump
of wholesome unbelief, than in the dim fog of silly superstition,” I
argued, paraphrazing Richter’s remark. “I will not believe,” I
repeated; “but as I can no longer bear such uncertainty about my
sister and her family, I will return by the first steamer to Europe.”
This final determination upset my old acquaintance altogether. His
earnest prayer not to depart before I had seen the Yamabooshi once
more, received no attention from me.
“Friend of a foreign land!”—he cried, “I pray that you may not
repent of your unbelief and rashness. May the ‘Holy One’ (Kwan-On,
the Goddess of Mercy) protect you from the Dzins! For, since you
refuse to submit to the process of purification at the hands of the
holy Yamabooshi, he is powerless to defend you from the evil
influences evoked by your unbelief and defiance of truth. But let me,
at this parting hour, I beseech you, let me, an older man who wishes
you well, warn you once more and persuade you of things you are
still ignorant of. May I speak?”
“Go on and have your say,” was the ungracious assent. “But let me
warn you, in my turn, that nothing you can say can make of me a
believer in your disgraceful superstitions.” This was added with a
cruel feeling of pleasure in bestowing one more needless insult.
But the excellent man disregarded this new sneer as he had all
others. Never shall I forget the solemn earnestness of his parting
words, the pitying, remorseful look on his face when he found that it
was, indeed, all to no purpose, that by his kindly meant interference
he had only led me to my destruction.
“Lend me your ear, good sir, for the last time,” he began, “learn
that unless the holy and venerable man, who, to relieve your
distress, opened your ‘soul vision,’ is permitted to complete his work,
your future life will, indeed, be little worth living. He has to
safeguard you against involuntary repetitions of visions of the same
character. Unless you consent to it of your own free will, however,
you will have to be left in the power of Forces which will harass and
persecute you to the verge of insanity. Know that the development
of ‘Long Vision’ (clairvoyance)—which is accomplished at will only by
those for whom the Mother of Mercy, the great Kwan-On, has no
secrets—must, in the case of the beginner, be pursued with help of
the air Dzins (elemental spirits) whose nature is soulless, and hence
wicked. Know also that, while the Arihat, ‘the destroyer of the
enemy,’ who has subjected and made of these creatures his
servants, has nothing to fear; he who has no power over them
becomes their slave. Nay, laugh not in your great pride and
ignorance, but listen further. During the time of the vision and while
the inner perceptions are directed towards the events they seek, the
Daij-Dzin has the seer—when, like yourself, he is an inexperienced
tyro—entirely in its power; and for the time being that seer is no
longer himself. He partakes of the nature of his ‘guide.’ The Daij-
Dzin, which directs his inner sight, keeps his soul in durance vile,
making of him, while the state lasts, a creature like itself. Bereft of
his divine light, man is but a soulless being; hence during the time of
such connection, he will feel no human emotions, neither pity nor
fear, love nor mercy.”
“Hold!” I involuntarily exclaimed, as the words vividly brought back
to my recollection the indifference with which I had witnessed my
sister’s despair and sudden loss of reason in my “hallucination.”
“Hold!... But no; it is still worse madness in me to heed or find any
sense in your ridiculous tale! But if you knew it to be so dangerous
why have advised the experiment at all?”—I added mockingly.
“It had to last but a few seconds, and no evil could have resulted
from it, had you kept your promise to submit to purification,” was
the sad and humble reply. “I wished you well, my friend, and my
heart was nigh breaking to see you suffering day by day. The
experiment is harmless when directed by one who knows, and
becomes dangerous only when the final precaution is neglected. It is
the ‘Master of Visions,’ he who has opened an entrance into your
soul, who has to close it by using the Seal of Purification against any
further and deliberate ingress of....”
“The ‘Master of Visions,’ forsooth!” I cried, brutally interrupting
him, “say rather the Master of Imposture!”
The look of sorrow on his kind old face was so intense and painful
to behold that I perceived I had gone too far; but it was too late.
“Farewell, then!” said the old bonze, rising; and after performing
the usual ceremonials of politeness, Tamoora left the house in
dignified silence.

VI
I Depart—But Not Alone

Several days later I sailed, but during my stay I saw my venerable

friend the Bonze, no more. Evidently on that last, and to me for ever
memorable evening, he had been seriously offended with my more
than irreverent, my downright insulting remark about one whom he
so justly respected. I felt sorry for him, but the wheel of passion and
pride was too incessantly at work to permit me to feel a single
moment of remorse. What was it that made me so relish the
pleasure of wrath, that when, for one instant, I happened to lose
sight of my supposed grievance toward the Yamabooshi, I forthwith
lashed myself back into a kind of artificial fury against him. He had
only accomplished what he had been expected to do, and what he
had tacitly promised; not only so, but it was I myself who had
deprived him of the possibility of doing more, even for my own
protection, if I might believe the Bonze—a man whom I knew to be
thoroughly honorable and reliable. Was it regret at having been
forced by my pride to refuse the proffered precaution, or was it the
fear of remorse that made me rake together, in my heart, during
those evil hours, the smallest details of the supposed insult to that
same suicidal pride? Remorse, as an old poet has aptly remarked, “is
like the heart in which it grows:...
... if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the utmost,
Weeps only tears of blood.”

Perchance, it was the indefinite fear of something of that sort which

caused me to remain so obdurate, and led me to excuse, under the
plea of terrible provocation, even the unprovoked insults that I had
heaped upon the head of my kind and all-forgiving friend, the priest.
However, it was now too late in the day to recall the words of
offence I had uttered; and all I could do was to promise myself the
satisfaction of writing him a friendly letter, as soon as I reached
home. Fool, blind fool, elated with insolent self-conceit, that I was!
So sure did I feel, that my vision was due merely to some trick of
the Yamabooshi, that I actually gloated over my coming triumph in
writing to the Bonze that I had been right in answering his sad
words of parting with an incredulous smile, as my sister and family
were all in good health—happy!
I had not been at sea for a week, before I had cause to remember
his words of warning!
From the day of my experience with the magic mirror, I perceived
a great change in my whole state, and I attributed it, at first, to the
mental depression I had struggled against for so many months.
During the day I very often found myself absent from the
surrounding scenes, losing sight for several minutes of things and
persons. My nights were disturbed, my dreams oppressive, and at
times horrible. Good sailor I certainly was; and besides, the weather
was unusually fine, the ocean as smooth as a pond. Notwithstanding
this, I often felt a strange giddiness, and the familiar faces of my
fellow-passengers assumed at such times the most grotesque
appearances. Thus, a young German I used to know well was once
suddenly transformed before my eyes into his old father, whom we
had laid in the little burial place of the European colony some three
years before. We were talking on deck of the defunct and of a
certain business arrangement of his, when Max Grunner’s head
appeared to me as though it were covered with a strange film. A
thick greyish mist surrounded him, and gradually condensing around
and upon his healthy countenance, settled suddenly into the grim
old head I had myself seen covered with six feet of soil. On another
occasion, as the captain was talking of a Malay thief whom he had
helped to secure and lodge in jail, I saw near him the yellow,
villainous face of a man answering to his description. I kept silence
about such hallucinations; but as they became more and more
frequent, I felt very much disturbed, though still attributing them to
natural causes, such as I had read about in medical books.
One night I was abruptly wakened by a long and loud cry of
distress. It was a woman’s voice, plaintive like that of a child, full of
terror and of helpless despair. I awoke with a start to find myself on
land, in a strange room. A young girl, almost a child, was
desperately struggling against a powerful middle-aged man, who
had surprised her in her own room, and during her sleep. Behind the
closed and locked door, I saw listening an old woman, whose face,
notwithstanding the fiendish expression upon it, seemed familiar to
me, and I immediately recognized it: it was the face of the Jewess
who had adopted my niece in the dream I had at Kioto. She had
received gold to pay for her share in the foul crime, and was now
keeping her part of the covenant.... But who was the victim? O
horror unutterable! Unspeakable horror! When I realized the
situation after coming back to my normal state, I found it was my
own child-niece.
But, as in my first vision, I felt in me nothing of the nature of that
despair born of affection that fills one’s heart, at the sight of a wrong
done to, or a misfortune befalling, those one loves; nothing but a
manly indignation in the presence of suffering inflicted upon the
weak and the helpless. I rushed, of course, to her rescue, and seized
the wanton, brutal beast by the neck. I fastened upon him with
powerful grasp, but, the man heeded it not, he seemed not even to
feel my hand. The coward, seeing himself resisted by the girl, lifted
his powerful arm, and the thick fist, coming down like a heavy
hammer upon the sunny locks, felled the child to the ground. It was
with a loud cry of the indignation of a stranger, not with that of a
tigress defending her cub, that I sprang upon the lewd beast and
sought to throttle him. I then remarked, for the first time, that, a
shadow myself, I was grasping but another shadow!....
My loud shrieks and imprecations had awakened the whole
steamer. They were attributed to a nightmare. I did not seek to take
anyone into my confidence; but, from that day forward, my life
became a long series of mental tortures, I could hardly shut my eyes
without becoming witness of some horrible deed, some scene of
misery, death or crime, whether past, present or even future—as I
ascertained later on. It was as though some mocking fiend had
taken upon himself the task of making me go through the vision of
everything that was bestial, malignant and hopeless, in this world of
misery. No radiant vision of beauty or virtue ever lit with the faintest
ray these pictures of awe and wretchedness that I seemed doomed
to witness. Scenes of wickedness, of murder, of treachery and of lust
fell dismally upon my sight, and I was brought face to face with the
vilest results of man’s passions, the most terrible outcome of his
material earthly cravings.
Had the Bonze foreseen, indeed, the dreary results, when he
spoke of Daij-Dzins to whom I left “an ingress” “a door open” in me?
Nonsense! There must be some physiological, abnormal change in
me. Once at Nuremberg, when I have ascertained how false was the
direction taken by my fears—I dared not hope for no misfortune at
all—these meaningless visions will disappear as they came. The very
fact that my fancy follows but one direction, that of pictures of
misery, of human passions in their worst, material shape, is a proof
to me, of their unreality.
“If, as you say, man consists of one substance, matter, the object
of the physical senses; and if perception with its modes is only the
result of the organization of the brain, then should we be naturally
attracted but to the material, the earthly”.... I thought I heard the
familiar voice of the Bonze interrupting my reflections, and repeating
an often used argument of his in his discussions with me.
“There are two planes of visions before men,” I again heard him
say, “the plane of undying love and spiritual aspirations, the efflux
from the eternal light; and the plane of restless, ever changing
matter, the light in which the misguided Daij-Dzins bathe.”

VII
Eternity in a Short Dream

In those days I could hardly bring myself to realize, even for a

moment, the absurdity of a belief in any kind of spirits, whether
good or bad. I now understood, if I did not believe, what was meant
by the term, though I still persisted in hoping that it would finally
prove some physical derangement or nervous hallucination. To fortify
my unbelief the more, I tried to bring back to my memory all the
arguments used against a faith in such superstitions, that I had ever
read or heard. I recalled the biting sarcasms of Voltaire, the calm
reasoning of Hume, and I repeated to myself ad nauseam the words
of Rousseau, who said that superstition, “the disturber of Society,”
could never be too strongly attacked. “Why should the sight, the
phantasmagoria, rather”—I argued—“of that which we know in a
waking sense to be false, come to affect us at all?” Why should—
Names, whose sense we see not
Fray us with things that be not?

One day the old captain was narrating to us the various

superstitions to which sailors were addicted; a pompous English
missionary remarked that Fielding had declared long ago that
“superstition renders a man a fool,”—after which he hesitated for an
instant, and abruptly stopped. I had not taken any part in the
general conversation; but no sooner had the reverend speaker
relieved himself of the quotation, than I saw in that halo of vibrating
light, which I now noticed almost constantly over every human head
on the steamer, the words of Fielding’s next proposition—“and
scepticism makes him mad.”
I had heard and read of the claims of those who pretend to
seership, that they often see the thoughts of people traced in the
aura of those present. Whatever “aura” may mean with others, I had
now a personal experience of the truth of the claim, and felt
sufficiently disgusted with the discovery! I—a clairvoyant! a new
horror added to my life, an absurd and ridiculous gift developed,
which I shall have to conceal from all, feeling ashamed of it as if it
were a case of leprosy. At this moment my hatred to the
Yamabooshi, and even to my venerable old friend, the Bonze, knew
no bounds. The former had evidently by his manipulations over me
while I was lying unconscious, touched some unknown physiological
spring in my brain, and by loosing it had called forth a faculty
generally hidden in the human constitution; and it was the Japanese
priest who had introduced the wretch into my house!
But my anger and my curses were alike useless, and could be of
no avail. Moreover, we were already in European waters, and in a
few more days we should be at Hamburg. Then would my doubts
and fears be set at rest, and I should find, to my intense relief, that
although clairvoyance, as regards the reading of human thoughts on
the spot, may have some truth in it, the discernment of such events
at a distance, as I had dreamed of, was an impossibility for human
faculties. Notwithstanding all my reasoning, however, my heart was
sick with fear, and full of the blackest presentiments; I felt that my
doom was closing. I suffered terribly, my nervous and mental
prostration becoming intensified day by day.
The night before we entered port I had a dream.
I fancied I was dead. My body lay cold and stiff in its last sleep,
whilst its dying consciousness, which still regarded itself as “I,”
realizing the event, was preparing to meet in a few seconds its own
extinction. It had been always my belief that as the brain preserved
heat longer than any of the other organs, and was the last to cease
its activity, the thought in it survived bodily death by several
minutes. Therefore, I was not in the least surprised to find in my
dream that while the frame had already crossed that awful gulf “no
mortal e’er repassed,” its consciousness was still in the gray twilight,
the first shadows of the great Mystery. Thus my Thought wrapped, as
I believed, in the remnants, of its now fast retiring vitality, was
watching with intense and eager curiosity the approaches of its own
dissolution, i.e., of its annihilation. “I” was hastening to record my
last impressions, lest the dark mantle of eternal oblivion should
envelope me, before I had time to feel and enjoy, the great, the
supreme triumph of learning that my life-long convictions were true,
that death is a complete and absolute cessation of conscious being.
Everything around me was getting darker with every moment. Huge
gray shadows were moving before my vision, slowly at first, then
with accelerated motion, until they commenced whirling around with
an almost vertiginous rapidity. Then, as though that motion had
taken place only for purposes of brewing darkness, the object once
reached, it slackened its speed, and as the darkness became
gradually transformed into intense blackness, it ceased altogether.
There was nothing now within my immediate perceptions, but that
fathomless black Space, as dark as pitch: to me it appeared as
limitless and as silent as the shoreless Ocean of Eternity upon which
Time, the progeny of man’s brain, is for ever gliding, but which it
can never cross.
Dream is defined by Cato as “but the image of our hopes and
fears.” Having never feared death when awake, I felt, in this dream
of mine, calm and serene at the idea of my speedy end. In truth, I
felt rather relieved at the thought—probably owing to my recent
mental suffering—that the end of all, of doubt, of fear for those I
loved, of suffering, and of every anxiety, was close at hand. The
constant anguish that had been gnawing ceaselessly at my heavy,
aching heart for many a long and weary month, had now become
unbearable; and if as Seneca thinks, death is but “the ceasing to be
what we were before,” it was better that I should die. The body is
dead; “I,” its consciousness—that which is all that remains of me
now, for a few moments longer—am preparing to follow. Mental
perceptions will get weaker, more dim and hazy with every second of
time, until the longed for oblivion envelopes me completely in its
cold shroud. Sweet is the magic hand of Death, the great World-
Comforter; profound and dreamless is sleep in its unyielding arms.
Yea, verily, it is a welcome guest.... A calm and peaceful haven
amidst the roaring billows of the Ocean of life, whose breakers lash
in vain the rock-bound shores of Death. Happy the lonely bark that
drifts into the still waters of its black gulf, after having been so long,
so cruelly tossed about by the angry waves of sentient life. Moored
in it for evermore, needing no longer either sail or rudder, my bark
will now find rest. Welcome then, O Death, at this tempting price;
and fare thee well, poor body, which, having neither sought it nor
derived pleasure from it, I now readily give up!...
While uttering this death-chant to the prostrate form before me, I
bent over, and examined it with curiosity. I felt the surrounding
darkness oppressing me, weighing on me almost tangibly, and I
fancied I found in it the approach of the Liberator I was welcoming.
And yet ... how very strange! If real, final Death takes place in our
consciousness; if after the bodily death, “I” and my conscious
perceptions are one—how is it that these perceptions do not become
weaker, why does my brain-action seem as vigorous as ever now ...
that I am de facto dead?... Nor does the usual feeling of anxiety, the
“heavy heart” so-called, decrease in intensity; nay, it even seems to
become worse ... unspeakably so!... How long it takes for full
oblivion to arrive!... Ah, here’s my body again!... Vanished out of
sight for a second or two, it reappears before me once more.... How
white and ghastly it looks! Yet ... its brain cannot be quite dead,
since “I,” its consciousness, am still acting, since we two fancy that
we still are, that we live and think, disconnected from our creator
and its ideating cell.
Suddenly I felt a strong desire to see how much longer the
progress of dissolution was likely to last, before it placed its last seal
on the brain and rendered it inactive. I examined my brain in its
cranial cavity, through the (to me) entirely transparent walls and roof
of the skull, and even touched the brain-matter.... How, or with
whose hands, I am now unable to say; but the impression of the
slimy, intensely cold matter produced a very strong impression on
me, in that dream. To my great dismay, I found that the blood
having entirely congealed and the brain-tissues having themselves
undergone a change that would no longer permit any molecular
action, it became impossible for me to account for the phenomena
now taking place with myself. Here was I,—or my consciousness,
which is all one—standing apparently entirely disconnected from my
brain which could no longer function.... But I had no time left for
reflection. A new and most extraordinary change in my perceptions
had taken place and now engrossed my whole attention.... What
does this signify?...
The same darkness was around me as before, a black,
impenetrable space, extending in every direction. Only now, right
before me, in whatever direction I was looking, moving with me
which way soever I moved, there was a gigantic round clock; a disk,
whose large white face shone ominously on the ebony-black
background. As I looked at its huge dial, and at the pendulum
moving to and fro regularly and slowly in Space, as if its swinging
meant to divide eternity, I saw its needles pointing to seven minutes
past five. “The hour at which my torture had commenced at Kioto!” I
had barely found time to think of the coincidence, when, to my
unutterable horror, I felt myself going through the same, the
identical, process that I had been made to experience on that
memorable and fatal day. I swam underground, dashing swiftly
through the earth; I found myself once more in the pauper’s grave
and recognized my brother-in-law in the mangled remains; I
witnessed his terrible death; entered my sister’s house; followed her
agony, and saw her go mad. I went over the same scenes without
missing a single detail of them. But, alas! I was no longer iron-
bound in the calm indifference that had then been mine, and which
in that first vision had left me as unfeeling to my great misfortune as
if I had been a heartless thing of rock. My mental tortures were now
becoming beyond description and well-nigh unbearable. Even the
settled despair, the never ceasing anxiety I was constantly
experiencing when awake, had become now, in my dream and in the
face of this repetition of visions and events, as an hour of darkened
sunlight compared to a deadly cyclone. Oh! how I suffered in this
wealth and pomp of infernal horrors, to which the conviction of the
survival of man’s consciousness after death—for in that dream I
firmly believed that my body was dead—added the most terrifying of
all!
The relative relief I felt, when, after going over the last scene, I
saw once more the great white face of the dial before me was not of
long duration. The long, arrow-shaped needle was pointing on the
colossal disk at—seven minutes and a-half past five o’clock. But,
before I had time to well realize the change, the needle moved
slowly backwards, stopped at precisely the seventh minute, and—O
cursed fate!... I found myself driven into a repetition of the same
series over again! Once more I swam underground, and saw, and
heard, and suffered every torture that hell can provide; I passed
through every mental anguish known to man or fiend. I returned to
see the fatal dial and its needle—after what appeared to me an
eternity—moved, as before, only half a minute forward. I beheld it,
with renewed terror, moving back again, and felt myself propelled
forward anew. And so it went on, and on, and on, time after time, in
what seemed to me an endless succession, a series which never had
any beginning, nor would it ever have an end....
Worst of all; my consciousness, my “I,” had apparently acquired
the phenomenal capacity of trebling, quadrupling, and even of
decuplating itself. I lived, felt and suffered, in the same space of
time, in half-a-dozen different places at once, passing over various
events of my life, at different epochs, and under the most dissimilar
circumstances; though predominant over all was my spiritual
experience at Kioto. Thus, as in the famous fugue in Don Giovanni,
the heart-rending notes of Elvira’s aria of despair ring high above,
but interfere in no way with the melody of the minuet, the song of
seduction, and the chorus, so I went over and over my travailed
woes, the feelings of agony unspeakable at the awful sights of my
vision, the repetition of which blunted in no wise even a single pang
of my despair and horror; nor did these feelings weaken in the least
scenes and events entirely disconnected with the first one, that I
was living through again, or interfere in any way the one with the
other. It was a maddening experience! A series of contrapuntal,
mental phantasmagoria from real life. Here was I, during the same
half-a-minute of time, examining with cold curiosity the mangled
remains of my sister’s husband; following with the same indifference
the effects of the news on her brain, as in my first Kioto vision, and
feeling at the same time hell-torture for these very events, as when I
returned to consciousness. I was listening to the philosophical
discourses of the Bonze, every word of which I heard and
understood, and was trying to laugh him to scorn. I was again a
child, then a youth, hearing my mother’s and my sweet sister’s
voices, admonishing me and teaching duty to all men. I was saving a
friend from drowning, and was sneering at his aged father who
thanks me for having saved a “soul” yet unprepared to meet his
Maker.
“Speak of dual consciousness, you psycho-physiologists!”—I cried,
in one of the moments when agony, mental and as it seemed to me
physical also, had arrived at a degree of intensity which would have
killed a dozen living men; “speak of your psychological and
physiological experiments, you schoolmen, puffed up with pride and
book-learning! Here am I to give you the lie....” And now I was
reading the works and holding converse with learned professors and
lecturers, who had led me to my fatal scepticism. And, while arguing
the impossibility of consciousness divorced from its brain, I was
shedding tears of blood over the supposed fate of my nieces and
nephews. More terrible than all: I knew, as only a liberated
consciousness can know, that all I had seen in my vision at Japan,
and all that I was seeing and hearing over and over again now, was
true in every point and detail, that it was a long string of ghastly and
terrible, still of real, actual, facts.
For, perhaps, the hundredth time, I had rivetted my attention on
the needle of the clock, I had lost the number of my gyrations and
was fast coming to the conclusion that they would never stop, that
consciousness, is, after all, indestructible, and that this was to be my
punishment in Eternity. I was beginning to realize from personal
experience how the condemned sinners would feel—“were not
eternal damnation a logical and mathematical impossibility in an ever
progressing Universe”—I still found the force to argue. Yea, indeed;
at this hour of my ever-increasing agony, my consciousness—now
my synonym for “I”—had still the power of revolting at certain
theological claims, of denying all their propositions, all—save
ITSELF.... No; I denied the independent nature of my consciousness
no longer, for I knew it now to be such. But is it eternal withal? O
thou incomprehensible and terrible Reality! But if thou art eternal,
who then art thou?—since there is no deity, no God. Whence dost
thou come, and when didst thou first appear, if thou art not a part of
the cold body lying yonder? And whither dost thou lead me, who am
thyself, and shall our thought and fancy have an end? What is thy
real name, thou unfathomable Reality, and impenetrable Mystery!
Oh, I would fain annihilate thee.... “Soul-Vision”!—who speaks of
Soul, and whose voice is this?... It says that I see now for myself,
that there is a Soul in man, after all.... I deny this. My Soul, my vital
Soul, or the Spirit of life, has expired with my body, with the gray
matter of my brain. This “I” of mine, this consciousness, is not yet
proven to me as eternal. Reincarnation, in which the Bonze felt so
anxious I should believe may be true.... Why not? Is not the flower
born year after year from the same root? Hence this “I” once
separated from its brain, losing its balance, and calling forth such a
host of visions ... before reincarnating....
I was again face to face with the inexorable, fatal clock. And as I
was watching its needle, I heard the voice of the Bonze, coming out
of the depths of its white face, saying: “In this case, I fear, you
would only have to open and to shut the temple door, over and over
again, during a period which, however short, would seem to you an
eternity.”...
The clock had vanished, darkness made room for light, the voice
of my old friend was drowned by a multitude of voices overhead on
deck; and I awoke in my berth, covered with a cold perspiration, and
faint with terror.

VIII
A Tale of Woe

We were at Hamburg, and no sooner had I seen my partners, who

could hardly recognize me, than with their consent and good wishes
I started for Nuremberg.
Half-an-hour after my arrival, the last doubt with regard to the
correctness of my vision had disappeared. The reality was worse
than any expectations could have made it, and I was henceforward
doomed to the most desolate life. I ascertained that I had seen the
terrible tragedy with all its heartrending details. My brother-in-law,
killed under the wheels of a machine; my sister, insane, and now
rapidly sinking towards her end; my niece—the sweet flower of
nature’s fairest work—dishonored, in a den of infamy; the little
children dead of a contagious disease in an orphanage; my last
surviving nephew at sea, no one knew where. A whole house, a
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