62 ROSICRUCIANCOSMO-CONCEPTION
Then the etheric hand of the vital body may be seen hanging
below the dense arm like a glove and the points cause the
peculiar pricking sensation felt when the etheric hand re-
enters the dense hand. Sometimes in hypnosis the head of
the vital body divides and hangs outside the dense head, one
half over each shoulder, or lies around the neck like the
collar of a sweater. The absence of the prickly sensation
upon awakening in cases like this is because during the
hypnosis, part of the hypnotist's vital body had been
substituted for that of the victim’s vital body.
When anesthetics are used the vital body is partially
driven out, along with the higher vehicles, and if the
application is too strong and the life ether is driven out,
death ensues. This same phenomenon may also be observed
in the case of materializing mediums. In fact the difference
between a materializing medium and an ordinary man or
woman is just this: In the ordinary man or woman the vital
body and the dense body are, at the present stage of
evolution, quite firmly interlocked, while in the medium
they are loosely connected. It has not always been so, and
the time will come again when the vital body may normally
leave the dense vehicle, but that is not normally
accomplished at present. When a medium allows his or her
vital body to be used by entities from the Desire World who
wish to materialize, the vital body generally oozes from the
left side—through the spleen, which is its particular “gate.”
Then the vital forces cannot flow into the body as they do
normally, the medium becomes greatly exhausted, and some
of them resort to stimulants to counteract the effects, in time
becoming incurable drunkards.
The vital force from the sun, which surrounds us as a
colorless fluid, is absorbed by the vital body through the