The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

Mr. Sanson, one of our colleagues, died on April 21^st, 1862 after more than a year of painful suffering. Foreseeing his death he addressed the Society with a letter dated August 27^th, 1860 from which we extracted the following passage:


“Dear and honorable President,


In case of surprise for the separation of my soul from the body, I have the honor of reminding you of a wish I expressed around a year ago: the evocation of my spirit as soon as possible and as many times as you consider adequate so that, as a very useless member of our Society during my current life on this planet, I can be useful in the other world, by allowing you to study phase per phase in these evocations the several circumstances that follow what is vulgarly called death and that for us, the Spiritists, is nothing more than a transformation under the impenetrable sight of God, but always useful to the proposed objective.


Besides this authorization and request to give me the honor of this kind of spiritual autopsy that my insignificant advancement as a spirit will perhaps render sterile, a situation in which your wisdom will stop the evocations after a certain number, I personally dare ask you and all of my colleagues to beg the Almighty so that I may have the assistance of the good Spirits with their benevolent advices, particularly St. Louis, our spiritual president, with the objective of guiding me with the choice and moment of a reincarnation, since this is already reason for a great concern on my side. I tremble before the possibility of deceiving me regarding my spiritual strength, and to ask God, and too soon, and too presumptuously, for a bodily condition in which I could not justify the divine goodness, which, instead of serving to my own advancement would extend my station on Earth or elsewhere in case I failed.”

“However, having total confidence in our Creator’s indulgent equity and kindness and of his divine son, and finally waiting humbly and with resignation the atonement of my faults with the exception of those forgiven by the Eternal’s mercy. I also repeat that my greatest concern is the overpowering fear of making a mistake regarding the choice of reincarnation, in the event that I am not helped and guided by benevolent and saint Spirits, that might consider me worthy of their intervention. I also hope that your evocations and support will help me in this selection in the event that I am making this decision alone. Thus, I take the liberty of recommending myself to you, dear President, and to all of our honorable colleagues from the Spiritist Society of Paris…”


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In order to comply with the wishes of our colleague to be evoked as soon as possible after his passing we went to the mortuary chamber together with a few members of the Society and the following conversation took place in the presence of the body, one hour before the burial. Our


objective was twofold: the satisfaction of his last wishes while observing once more the situation of the soul at a time so close to death and all that in an eminently intelligent and enlightened person, profoundly conscious of the Spiritist truths. We wanted to attest the influence of such beliefs upon the state of the spirit by collecting his first impressions. As it will be seen our wait was not useless. Everybody will find, as we did, an elevated teaching stemming out of his description of the instant of transition. We must add, however, that not all Spirits would be able to describe that phenomenon with such clarity as he did. Mr. Sanson witnessed his own death, his own rebirth, a rare circumstance thanks to the elevation of his spirit.

OBSERVATION: These first words had just been pronounced and the spirit responded even before the question was completed. Moreover he answered and without being asked about the concern voiced by some attendees and about the suitability of reading such a communication at the cemetery, considering that certain people did not share our opinions. – A. Oh! My friend, I know because I saw you yesterday and I see you today and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you! Thank you! Speak so that they can understand me and may like you. Have no fear since they respect death. Speak so that the non-believers have faith. Good-bye. Speak up. Have courage and confidence and I hope my children convert to this reverenced belief!

So long!

J. Sanson


During the funeral ceremony at the cemetery he dictated the following:


“Have no fear of death my friends. It is just a phase if you lived your life well; it is a fortune if you have atoned and accomplished them well. I repeat this to you: Courage and good will! Give just a mediocre importance to earthly wealth and you shall be rewarded. One cannot enjoy too much without causing harm to the well being of others and without causing great harm to oneself. May Earth be a light burden! ”


NOTE: After the ceremony some members of the Society got together and spontaneously received the following and far from expected communication:


“My name is Bernardo and I lived in Passy which was just a village in the year 96 (1796). I was a poor devil. I used to teach and God knows the difficulties I had to endure. What a prolonged nuisance! Long years of concern and suffering! I cursed God, the devil and people in general and women in particular. None of them came to me and said: Courage, patience! I had to live alone, always alone, and evilness made me evil. Since those days I wonder around places where I lived and where I died. I heard you today. Your prayers touched me profoundly. You followed a good and honorable spirit and everything that you did and said touched me. We were in large numbers and we all prayed for you, for the future of your sacred beliefs. Pray for us who need help. Sanson’s spirit that followed us promised that you would send us your thoughts. I wish to reincarnate so that my trial can be useful and adequate to my future in the world of the Spirits. So long my friends. I say so because you love those in suffering. I wish you good thoughts and a happy future.”


It seemed to us proper to mention this episode because it was related to the evocation of Mr. Sanson and because it contains a great subject for our instruction. We believe it is our duty to recommend this spirit to the prayers of every true Spiritist. Those prayers can fortify him in his resolutions.


The conversation with Mr. Sanson continued during the session at the Society on the first Friday after April 25^th and must still continue. We take the opportunity of his good will and his enlightenment in order to obtain new clarifications about the invisible world as accurate as possible when compared to the visible one and particularly about his transition from one to the other, something that is of general interest since everyone and without exception must go through this. Mr. Sanson kindly offered to be at our services with his continued benevolence.


His answers form a detailed instruction set whose importance is even greater given that it comes from the personal experience of someone that has just gone through the transition, analyzing his sensations and expressing them with elegance, profoundness and clarity. The set of communications will be published in the next issue.


Something important that must be pointed out is the fact that the medium who served as intermediary on the very day of his funeral and the following days, Mr. Leymarie, had never seen Mr. Sanson before and did not know his character or customs. He did not know whether Mr. Sanson had children and even less so if they shared his ideas about Spiritism. He then refers to that in a very spontaneous way and his character is expressed through the pencil without any influence of imagination.


This fact demonstrates that communications are not based on the thoughts from the source medium. Bernardo, the medium, had no background on Mr. Sanson and yet scribed the communication from Sanson. Everyone thought that it would likely come from one of his customary Spirits like Baluze or Sonnet. In time we would ask who would have produced any thought that could somehow reflect in that communication.


Speech given by Mr. Allan Kardec at the funeral services of Mr. Sanson


Ladies and gentlemen and dear colleagues from the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies:


It is the first time that we bring a colleague to his last dwelling. This one to whom we came to say farewell is familiar to you and you were able to appreciate his eminent qualities. By remembering them here I would just say what is known by all: eminently righteous heart, unyielding loyalty, his life was that of a good man in the full extent of the word. I believe he shall not be rebuked by anyone. Those qualities would shine even further for his great goodness and extreme benevolence. Given that, would there be the need for him to have practiced remarkable actions and have left a name to posterity? It would not give a better place in the world where he lives now. If now we do not lay garlands onto his tomb all of us here who met him deposit wreaths of sincerity from their Spirits and the most precious crowns: love and respect.


Know this, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Sanson was a man of rare intelligence and of a great fairness in his appreciations, augmented by a broad and profound education. A man of a remarkable simplicity he found in his inner self the elements for a strong intellectual activity in his researches and inventions that were certainly very ingenious but that unfortunately did not bring him the expected results.


He was one of those men who never got upset. Although his position had prevented him from enjoying the sweetness of life, he always had a good sense of humor. I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that he was the true philosopher: not the cynical philosopher but the one who is always happy with his condition and never tempted by what he lacks.


Deep inside himself he maintained a strong character but in his final years it was significantly strengthened by his Spiritists beliefs. These ideas helped him to withstand long and cruel sufferings with a Christian patience and resignation. There isn’t a single one among us that has not learned from his calmness and unalterable serenity. He had forecasted his end long ago but far from showing desperation he looked forward to that as the moment of his liberation.


Ah! At these moments of truth the Spiritist faith provides a strength that only those who have it understand. And Mr. Sanson had it in the highest degree.


What is the Spiritist faith then? Some of you who hear me now may be asking.


The Spiritist faith is an intimate conviction that we have a soul; that the soul or spirit, that are the same thing, outlives the body; that the soul is happy or unhappy according to the good or bad that was practiced during one’s life. Some may say that everybody knows that. Yes, with the exception of those who believe that everything ends when we die and these count on larger numbers than one would think in this century! Thus, in the opinion of the latter, the mortal remains before us that some say shall be reduced to dust are all that is left from the one we are saying farewell now. Then, what is it that we are paying tribute to now? A cadaver? Since of his intelligence, his thought, the qualities that made him love, nothing will remain, everything will be annihilated. The same will happen to us when we die.


Hasn’t this idea of obliviousness waiting for us something very overpowering and glacial?


Who before this open grave does not feel the goose bumps just by thinking that tomorrow perhaps the same may happen to us and that after a few shovels of earth thrown over our body it will all be over forever; that there will be no more thoughts, feelings and love? However, besides those who deny there is an even larger number of those who doubt for not having a positive certainty and to whom doubt is a torture.


All of you who firmly believed that Mr. Sanson had a soul what is it that you believe that has become of him? Where is he? What is he doing? Ah! You say, if we only knew there would never be any doubt in our heart! Probe well the bottom of your hearts and convince yourselves that more than one among you have already spoke from your inner self about a future life: “And if it were not like that?” You say that because you do not understand it, because the idea you have about it cannot be conciliated with reason.


Spiritism comes to explain it, so to speak, making it so tangible and evident that one can no longer deny it as one cannot deny light.


What has become of the soul of our friend, then? It is here, by our side, hearing us; penetrating our minds and judging our thoughts and feelings that animate each one in this sad ceremony. The soul is not what people commonly believe to be like a flame, a spark, something vague and undefined. You will not see it wondering around at night like in the superstitious stories. No. It has a form, a body as it had when alive, but a vaporous body, invisible to our rough senses but that in certain cases becomes visible. When alive the soul had a secondary envelope, heavy, material and destructible. When this envelope is worn out and cannot function any more it breaks down like the skin of a ripe fruit and the soul leaves as if leaving behind old working clothes. It is that envelope of Mr. Sanson’s soul that made him suffer and that lays down there on the bottom of the grave. It is all that remains from that body. But he kept his ethereal, radiant and indestructible envelope, a body that is no longer subjected to ailments and diseases. That is how he is among us.


But you must not believe that he is alone. There are thousands here in the same situation, watching our farewell and congratulating the newcomer for having been liberated from the miseries of Earth, in such a way that if the veil that covers them right now could have been removed we would see a whole crowd around us, elbowing us and among them we would see Mr. Sanson no longer weak and lying down on his sick bed but strong, alert and moving around effortlessly at the speed of thoughts and without the barrage of any obstacle.


These souls or Spirits constitute the invisible world in which we also live unconsciously. That is how our lost relatives and friends are closer to us than if they had gone to a distant country when alive.


What Spiritism does it to put that invisible world in evidence through the relationships that can be established with that and because we find our loved ones there. Then it is no longer a vague memory: it is a positive proof. Now, a proof of the invisible world is a proof of a future life. Once that certainty is acquired the ideas change completely for the importance of our earthly life diminishes as that of the forthcoming life increases. That is the faith that Mr. Sanson had in the invisible world. He saw it and understood it so well that death to him was no more than a portal that must be transposed from a painful and miserable life to a blessed one.


Hence the serenity of his final moments was at the same time the result of his absolute confidence in a future life that he had already foreseen and an irreproachable conscience telling him that he owned nobody or nothing.


He acquired such a faith with Spiritism for it is necessary to say that before the time when he got to know this reassuring science he was not exactly materialistic but he was skeptical. His doubts, however, disappeared before the evidence of the facts that he witnessed and since then everything changed for him.


Placing himself aside from the material life in his thoughts he saw this life but like an unfortunate day among an infinite number of happy days. Far from complaining about the hardships of life he blessed the sufferings as trials that were necessary to accelerate his progress.


Dear Mr. Sanson! You are the witness of the sincerity of all us who met you and whose affection remains. In the name of all of my present and absent colleagues; in the name of all of your relatives and friends I say goodbye but not an eternal goodbye since it would be blasphemy against the Providence and a negation of future life. We the Spiritists less than anybody else we must not pronounce such a word.


Therefore, so long my dear Mr. Sanson. We wish you may enjoy now the deserved happiness in the world where you are and come to reach out to us when our time comes to move to that world.


Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to say a short prayer by this grave before it is sealed.


“May your mercy Almighty God reach the soul of Mr. Sanson that you have just claimed! May the trials that he has endured on Earth count on his favor and our prayers mitigate and shorten the penalties that he might still suffer as a spirit. Good Spirits who came to receive this soul and particularly you, his guardian angel, assist this soul helping him with the separation from matter. Give him light and consciousness of himself in order to move him away from the confusion that follows the passage from the corporeal to the spiritual life. Inspire in him regret for the faults that he may have committed and may he have the desire to repair them so as to speed up his progress towards a blessed eternal life.”


“Soul of Mr. Sanson that have just entered the world of the Spirits, you are here among us. You see and hear us since between you and us there is only the perishable body that you have just left behind and that will soon become dust. That body, instrument of so much pain, is still by your side. You see it like the prisoner sees the chains from which he has been freed. You left the dense envelope subject to the vicissitudes and death and you kept the ethereal envelope, imperishable and unreachable by the sufferings. If you no longer live the life of the body you live the life of the spirit that is exempt from the miseries that afflict humanity.”


“You no longer bear the veil that hides from our eyes the splendors of the life of the spirit. From now on you can contemplate new wonders while we are still surrounded by darkness.”


“Go freely and explore the spaces and visit the worlds while we drag down here on Earth, retained by the material body like a heavy burden to us. The horizon of infinity will unfold before you and before such a greatness you will understand the vanity of our earthly desires, of our worldly ambitions and futile joys that humanity transforms into delights. Death is no more than a short material separation between us. From this exile where the will of God still keeps us and the duties that we still must carry out we follow you in our thoughts up until the moment when we are allowed to meet you again as you have yourself reunited with those that preceded you. If we cannot go to where you are you can come to us. Come then to those that love you and were loved by you. Help them in the trials of their lives. Wake for those who are dear to you. Protect them according to your possibilities and mitigate their sorrows through your thoughts that you are now happy and through the reassuring certainty that we shall one day meet again in a better world.”


“We hope that from now on and for your own future happiness that you become unreachable by the worldly resentments! You must then forgive tho against you as they forgive you for your own faults against them! Amen”