The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1862

The three communications below are in a certain way the initiation of a young medium. One can see what they promise for the future. They are the introduction of a series of studies dictated by the spirit who proposes to develop them under the title “Cosmological studies”. We leave it up to the reader the appreciation of the form and substance of the text.

I

It has been announced for some time here, elsewhere, and by several Spirits that you would receive revelations about the system of the globes. I have been tasked to contribute to such a prediction in the order of my own destiny. Before starting what could be called cosmological studies it is important to make the first principle very clear so that the edifice may last long and rest on a solid foundation.

That first principle, the first cause is the great and sovereign power that gave life to the worlds and creatures; the preface to any serious meditation is God. Everything bows before such a venerable name and the ethereal harp of heavens vibrates its golden strings.

Oh! Children of Earth, you who have mumbled that great name for such a long time without understanding it, how many adventurous theories were written since the beginning of times of the human philosophy! How many wrong interpretations of the universal consciousness came to be through crazy beliefs of ancient peoples! And today in the very splendor of the Christian era what is the idea that people have of the first of all beings, of the one who is by excellence?

Haven’t we seen the proud pantheism arrogantly rising to the one considered to be the whole, from where everything has come out and to where everything must return and confound as one, without distinction or individuality?

Haven’t we seen crude atheism shamefully propagating skepticism and corrupting intellectual progress, despite what has been said by their sophist defenders?

We could mention the endless mistakes made with respect to the primary and eternal principle and these thoughts are sufficient to demonstrate that the human mind will always be wrong on trying to explain this unsolvable problem even to many discarnate minds.

What you must do, or better saying, what we all must do is to humbly bow before the Great Being. All we have to say, children, is that it is up to us to rise up to the idea of an Infinite Being and that must be enough to prevent anybody from the proud pretension of staring directly at the Sun light without becoming immediately blind by the dazzling splendor of God in His eternal glory.


Pay special attention to this for it is the prelude of our studies: believe in God, Creator and Organizer of the cosmos; love God, Creator and Protector of souls and we can then humbly enter together and respect the sanctuary where He has disseminated the gifts of His infinite power.

Galileo


II

Having established the first point in our thesis the second question to be addressed is the power conventionally called nature. After the word that summarizes everything comes the other that represents everything. However, what is nature?

Let us hear first the definition of the modern naturalist. He says nature is the exterior throne of the divine power. I will add the definition that encompasses the idea of all observers: nature is the effective power of God.

Notice two explanations for the same word and that through a remarkable subtleness of language represents two apparently different things. In fact nature in the first definition represents the effect whose cause is expressed in the second one.

A sight of the endless horizon; of exuberant trees showing the rising sap of life; of the fields covered in beautiful perfumed flowers, crowned by the sun; that is what is called nature. The power that controls the spheres in space and gets a single grain to germinate is still nature.

May all this be a source of profound reflections to you; that if we utilize the same word to represent cause and effect it is because in reality they are the one and the same thing! The globe attracts the globe in space following laws that are inherent to the constitution of the universe and the force of attraction is identical to the very force exerted by itself. That is cause and effect.

The solar ray reaches the flower that feeds the bee. Here still the ray is the effect and the cause. Wherever you set your eyes on Earth there you will find such a duality in nature.

We must conclude that if nature is, as defined, the effective power of God, it is at the same time the throne of that very power; it is simultaneously active and passive, effect and cause, material and immaterial force; it is the creative law, is the law that governs, the law that embellishes; it is the creature and the image; it is the manifestation of the creative power, infinitely beautiful, infinitely admirable, infinitely worthy of the very power that it represents.


Galileo


III

The theme of our third study is going to be space. Many definitions have been given to space but this is the main one: the separation between two bodies. From that some sophists have then concluded that if there aren’t bodies there is no space. That is the foundation of thinking of some theologians who established that the space is then finite since the number of bodies is finite there could not be an infinite space between them. The space has also been defined as the place navigated by the globes, the emptiness where the matter acts, etc. Let us leave all these definitions in the treaties where they belong and defining nothing.

Space is one of those words that represent a primitive and axiomatic idea, evident by itself and that several other definitions do no more than obscure its meaning. We all know what space is and I only wish to reestablish its infinity so that future works do not find obstacles to the investigation of our point of view.

Now I say that space is infinite because it is impossible to provide any boundary and because, despite the difficulty of the idea of infinite, it is easier for us to travel eternally in our thoughts than to stop at a point beyond which there would not be anything.

In order to try to imagine limitless space in our minds, let us suppose that we travel from Earth, lost amidst infinity, towards any given point in the universe at the speed of an electrical spark that travels thousands of leagues in a split second. After having just left this planet and travelled millions of leagues, we would have reached a point from where Earth would look like a pale star. An instant later and following in the same direction we get to faraway stars that we can hardly see form Earth. Even your Sun will be invisible from there, hidden by the huge distances that separate us. Still at the same lightning speed we pass by systems of planets as we advance in space, islands of ethereal lights, galaxies, sumptuous sceneries where God has spread globes with the same profusion as plants were sown on Earth’s soil.

Well, we have been travelling for a few minutes only and we are already millions and millions of leagues away from Earth; we have already seen millions and millions of globes and still, listen to this: in reality we have not walked a single step in the universe. If we continue for years, centuries, thousands of centuries, millions of secular periods and endlessly at the same speed of light, we would not have advanced much! And that applies to any direction of our choice, starting from this single and invisible particle called Earth.

That is what space is.

Galileo