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Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867 > May
May
Spiritual AtmosphereSpiritism teaches us that the Spirits constitute the invisible population of the globe, that they are in space and among us, seeing us and elbowing us incessantly, so that, when we believe ourselves alone, we constantly have secret witnesses of our actions and thoughts. This may sound embarrassing to some people, but since it is a fact, one cannot prevent it from being; it is up to each one to behave like the righteous man who would not fear that his house was made of glass. It is, undoubtedly, to this cause that we must attribute the revelation of so much wickedness and misdeeds that were believed to be buried in the shadows.
We also know that in a meeting, besides the corporeal assistants, there are always invisible listeners; that being the permeability one of the properties of the organism of the Spirits, these can be found in unlimited number in a given space. Often, we were told, that at certain sessions they were in innumerable quantities. In the explanation given to Mr. Bertrand, concerning the collective communications that he obtained, it is said that the number of Spirits present was so large, that the atmosphere was, so to speak, saturated with their fluids. This is not new to the Spiritists, but perhaps we have not deduced all the consequences.
We know that the fluids emanating from the Spirits are, to some extent, beneficial, according to their degree of depuration; we know their curative power in certain cases, as well as their morbid effects, from individual to individual. Now, since the air may be saturated with these fluids, isn’t that obvious that, depending on the nature of the Spirits that abound in a determined place, the ambient air is impregnated with healthy or unhealthy elements, that must exert an influence on physical, as well as on the moral health? When one think of the energy of the action that a Spirit can exert on a man, can one be surprised by the one that results from an agglomeration of hundreds or thousands of Spirits? Such action will be good or bad, depending on whether the Spirits pour a beneficial or harmful fluid into a given environment, a fluid that acts in the manner of strengthening emanations or harmful miasmas, disseminated in the air.
This can explain certain collective effects produced on masses of individuals, the feeling of well-being or discomfort that one experiences in certain environments, and which have no known apparent cause, the collective drive towards good or bad, general impulses, enthusiasm or discouragement, sometimes the kind of vertigo that seizes a whole assembly, a whole city, even a whole people. Each one suffers in proportion to their degree of sensitivity, influenced by this contaminated or invigorating atmosphere. By this unquestionable fact, about the relationship between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, confirmed by both theory and experience, we find a new principle of hygiene that science will, undoubtedly, one day make recognized by everyone.
Can we, however, escape these influences emanating from a source inaccessible to material means? Without a doubt; for just as we clean up unhealthy places, by destroying the source of pestilential miasmas, we can cleanse the moral atmosphere around us, escaping the pernicious influences of unhealthy spiritual fluids, and that more easily than we can escape the marshy odors, because it depends only on our will, and that will not be one of the least benefits of Spiritism, when it is universally understood and especially practiced.
A principle perfectly proven to any Spiritist, is that the qualities of the perispiritual fluid are in direct proportion to the qualities of the incarnate or discarnate Spirit; the more his feelings are elevated and freed from the influences of matter, the more his fluid is purified. According to the dominating thoughts, an incarnate radiates fluids impregnated with these same thoughts, that vitiate or cleanse them; really material fluids, although impalpable, invisible to the eyes of the body, but perceptible to the perispirit senses, and visible to the eyes of the soul, since they impress physically, and take very different appearances for those that are gifted with spiritual sight.
The sole fact of the presence of the incarnate in an assembly determines, therefore, that the ambient fluids are healthy or unhealthy, depending on whether the dominant thoughts are good or bad. Anyone that brings thoughts of hatred, envy, jealousy, pride, selfishness, animosity, greed, falsehood, hypocrisy, slander, malevolence, in a word, thoughts drawn from the source of bad passions, spreads unhealthy fluidic odors around them, reacting on those around them. In an assembly in which, on the contrary, each one would bring only feelings of goodness, charity, humility, selfless devotion, benevolence and love to their neighbor, the air is impregnated with healthy emanations, in the midst of which we feel good.
If we now consider that thoughts attract thoughts of the same nature, that fluids attract similar fluids, we understand that each individual brings along an entourage of sympathetic spirits, good or bad, and that thus the air is saturated with fluids related to the predominant thoughts. If bad thoughts are in the minority, they do not prevent good influences from occurring, but they paralyze them. If they dominate, they weaken the fluidic radiation of the good Spirits, or even sometimes, prevent the good fluids from entering this environment, as the fog weakens or stops the rays of the sun.
So, what is the way to escape the influence of bad fluids? This arises from the very cause that produces the evil. What do we do when we have recognized that a food is unhealthy? We reject it and replace it with a healthier food. Since it is bad thoughts that generate bad fluids, and attract them, we must strive to have only good ones, pushing away all that is bad, like pushing away food that can make us sick; in short, one must work for one’s moral improvement, and using a comparison from the Gospel, we must “not only clean the vessel on the outside, but especially clean it on the inside. "
Humanity, as it improves, will see the fluidic atmosphere, in which it lives, purifying, because it will only send good fluids, and these will oppose a barrier to the invasion of the bad ones. If, one day, earth happens to be populated only by people practicing the divine laws of love and charity, among themselves, there is no doubt that they will then be in conditions of physical and moral hygiene quite different from those that exist today.
This time is still far away, no doubt, but in the meantime, these conditions may partially exist, and it is up to the Spiritist assemblies to set an example. Those who have possessed the light will be all the more reprehensible as they will have had in their hands the means to enlighten themselves; they will incur the responsibility for the delays that their example and their unwillingness will have brought onto the general improvement.
Is this a utopia, a vain declamation? No; it is a logical deduction from the very facts that Spiritism reveals to us every day. Indeed, Spiritism proves to us that the spiritual element, that we have until now considered as the antithesis of the material element, has an intimate connection with the latter, from which it results a multitude of unobserved or misunderstood phenomena. When science has assimilated the elements provided by Spiritism, it will draw from them new and important resources for the very material improvement of humanity. Every day we thus see expanding the circle of applications of the doctrine, that is far from being restricted to the childish phenomenon of turning tables or other effects of pure curiosity, as some still believe. Spiritism only really took off when it entered the philosophical path; it then became less fun to some people, who were only looking for a distraction, but it is more appreciated by serious people, and will be even more so, as it is better understood in its consequences.
We also know that in a meeting, besides the corporeal assistants, there are always invisible listeners; that being the permeability one of the properties of the organism of the Spirits, these can be found in unlimited number in a given space. Often, we were told, that at certain sessions they were in innumerable quantities. In the explanation given to Mr. Bertrand, concerning the collective communications that he obtained, it is said that the number of Spirits present was so large, that the atmosphere was, so to speak, saturated with their fluids. This is not new to the Spiritists, but perhaps we have not deduced all the consequences.
We know that the fluids emanating from the Spirits are, to some extent, beneficial, according to their degree of depuration; we know their curative power in certain cases, as well as their morbid effects, from individual to individual. Now, since the air may be saturated with these fluids, isn’t that obvious that, depending on the nature of the Spirits that abound in a determined place, the ambient air is impregnated with healthy or unhealthy elements, that must exert an influence on physical, as well as on the moral health? When one think of the energy of the action that a Spirit can exert on a man, can one be surprised by the one that results from an agglomeration of hundreds or thousands of Spirits? Such action will be good or bad, depending on whether the Spirits pour a beneficial or harmful fluid into a given environment, a fluid that acts in the manner of strengthening emanations or harmful miasmas, disseminated in the air.
This can explain certain collective effects produced on masses of individuals, the feeling of well-being or discomfort that one experiences in certain environments, and which have no known apparent cause, the collective drive towards good or bad, general impulses, enthusiasm or discouragement, sometimes the kind of vertigo that seizes a whole assembly, a whole city, even a whole people. Each one suffers in proportion to their degree of sensitivity, influenced by this contaminated or invigorating atmosphere. By this unquestionable fact, about the relationship between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, confirmed by both theory and experience, we find a new principle of hygiene that science will, undoubtedly, one day make recognized by everyone.
Can we, however, escape these influences emanating from a source inaccessible to material means? Without a doubt; for just as we clean up unhealthy places, by destroying the source of pestilential miasmas, we can cleanse the moral atmosphere around us, escaping the pernicious influences of unhealthy spiritual fluids, and that more easily than we can escape the marshy odors, because it depends only on our will, and that will not be one of the least benefits of Spiritism, when it is universally understood and especially practiced.
A principle perfectly proven to any Spiritist, is that the qualities of the perispiritual fluid are in direct proportion to the qualities of the incarnate or discarnate Spirit; the more his feelings are elevated and freed from the influences of matter, the more his fluid is purified. According to the dominating thoughts, an incarnate radiates fluids impregnated with these same thoughts, that vitiate or cleanse them; really material fluids, although impalpable, invisible to the eyes of the body, but perceptible to the perispirit senses, and visible to the eyes of the soul, since they impress physically, and take very different appearances for those that are gifted with spiritual sight.
The sole fact of the presence of the incarnate in an assembly determines, therefore, that the ambient fluids are healthy or unhealthy, depending on whether the dominant thoughts are good or bad. Anyone that brings thoughts of hatred, envy, jealousy, pride, selfishness, animosity, greed, falsehood, hypocrisy, slander, malevolence, in a word, thoughts drawn from the source of bad passions, spreads unhealthy fluidic odors around them, reacting on those around them. In an assembly in which, on the contrary, each one would bring only feelings of goodness, charity, humility, selfless devotion, benevolence and love to their neighbor, the air is impregnated with healthy emanations, in the midst of which we feel good.
If we now consider that thoughts attract thoughts of the same nature, that fluids attract similar fluids, we understand that each individual brings along an entourage of sympathetic spirits, good or bad, and that thus the air is saturated with fluids related to the predominant thoughts. If bad thoughts are in the minority, they do not prevent good influences from occurring, but they paralyze them. If they dominate, they weaken the fluidic radiation of the good Spirits, or even sometimes, prevent the good fluids from entering this environment, as the fog weakens or stops the rays of the sun.
So, what is the way to escape the influence of bad fluids? This arises from the very cause that produces the evil. What do we do when we have recognized that a food is unhealthy? We reject it and replace it with a healthier food. Since it is bad thoughts that generate bad fluids, and attract them, we must strive to have only good ones, pushing away all that is bad, like pushing away food that can make us sick; in short, one must work for one’s moral improvement, and using a comparison from the Gospel, we must “not only clean the vessel on the outside, but especially clean it on the inside. "
Humanity, as it improves, will see the fluidic atmosphere, in which it lives, purifying, because it will only send good fluids, and these will oppose a barrier to the invasion of the bad ones. If, one day, earth happens to be populated only by people practicing the divine laws of love and charity, among themselves, there is no doubt that they will then be in conditions of physical and moral hygiene quite different from those that exist today.
This time is still far away, no doubt, but in the meantime, these conditions may partially exist, and it is up to the Spiritist assemblies to set an example. Those who have possessed the light will be all the more reprehensible as they will have had in their hands the means to enlighten themselves; they will incur the responsibility for the delays that their example and their unwillingness will have brought onto the general improvement.
Is this a utopia, a vain declamation? No; it is a logical deduction from the very facts that Spiritism reveals to us every day. Indeed, Spiritism proves to us that the spiritual element, that we have until now considered as the antithesis of the material element, has an intimate connection with the latter, from which it results a multitude of unobserved or misunderstood phenomena. When science has assimilated the elements provided by Spiritism, it will draw from them new and important resources for the very material improvement of humanity. Every day we thus see expanding the circle of applications of the doctrine, that is far from being restricted to the childish phenomenon of turning tables or other effects of pure curiosity, as some still believe. Spiritism only really took off when it entered the philosophical path; it then became less fun to some people, who were only looking for a distraction, but it is more appreciated by serious people, and will be even more so, as it is better understood in its consequences.
The use of the word miracle
The journal La Vérité, from Lyon, on September 16th, 1866, in an article entitled, Renan and his school, contained the following reflections on the word miracle:
“Renan and his school do not even bother to discuss the facts, they reject them all a priori, wrongly qualifying them as supernatural, and therefore impossible and absurd; they oppose them with an absolute end of inadmissibility, and a transcendent disdain. Renan said once, an eminently true and profound phrase: "The supernatural would be nothing other than the super-divine." We support this great truth with all our energy, but we point out that the very word miracle (mirum, astonishing and hitherto unexplained thing) does not mean, of course, inversion of the laws of nature, but rather the flexibility of these same laws still unknown to the human Spirit. We even say that there will always be miracles, for the ascent of humanity being always progressive towards a more perfect knowledge, this knowledge will constantly need to be surpassed and spurred on by facts that will appear marvelous to the mind, at the time when they will occur, and will not be understood and explained until later. A very accredited writer from our school let himself to accept this objection; (Allan Kardec) he repeats in many passages of his works that there are neither marvels nor miracles; it is an oversight resulting from the false sense of the supernatural, completely rejected by the etymology of the word. We say that if the word miracle did not exist, to qualify phenomena still under study and not covered by vulgar science, it would have to be invented as the most appropriate and the most logical.
Nothing is supernatural, we repeat, because apart from the created and the uncreated nature, there is nothing absolutely conceivable; but there is the superhuman, that is to say, phenomena that can be produced by intelligent beings, other than men, according to the laws of their nature, or else produced either mediately or immediately by God, still according to his nature and according to his natural relations with his creatures.
Philalethes”
We are not, thank God, ignoring the etymological meaning of the word miracle; we have proved this in many articles, and particularly in the article of the Spiritist Review, September 1860. It is, therefore, neither by mistake nor inadvertently that we reject its application to the Spiritist phenomena, however extraordinary they may appear at first glance, but with full knowledge of the facts and with intention. In its usual meaning, the word miracle has lost its original connotation, like so many others, starting with the word philosophy (love of wisdom), that we use today to express the most diametrically opposing ideas, from the purest spiritualism, down to the most absolute materialism. There is no doubt that, in the mind of the masses, miracle implies the idea of a supernatural fact. Ask anyone that believes in miracles if they regard them as natural effects.
The Church is so fixated on this point that it anathematizes those that claim to explain miracles by the laws of nature. The Academy itself defines this word as: Act of divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. True, false miracle, proven miracle, work miracles. The gift of miracles.
To be understood by everyone, you have to speak like everyone else; now, it is obvious that if we had qualified the Spiritist phenomena as miraculous, the public would have misunderstood their true character, unless we used a periphrasis each time, and said that they are miracles that are not miracles like they are usually understood. Since it is generally attached to the idea of a derogation of the natural laws, and since the Spiritist phenomena are only the application of these same laws, it is much simpler and above all more logical to bluntly say: no, Spiritism does not work miracles. In this way, there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Just as the progress of the physical sciences has destroyed a host of prejudices, and brought into the order of natural facts a large number of effects formerly considered to be miraculous, Spiritism, by the revelation of new laws, further restricts the realm of the marvelous; we say more: it swings the last blow, and that is why it is not everywhere, with the odor of sanctity, any more than astronomy and geology.
If those that believe in miracles understood this word in its etymological meaning (admirable thing), they would admire Spiritism instead of anathematizing it; instead of putting Galileo in prison, for having shown that Joshua could not stop the sun, they would have woven crowns for him, for having revealed to the world much more remarkable things, and that attest infinitely better to the greatness and the power of God.
For the same reasons, we reject the supernatural word from the Spiritist vocabulary. Miracle would still have its acceptance, in its etymology, except to determine its signification; supernatural is nonsense from the point of view of Spiritism. The word superhuman, proposed by Philalethes, is also inappropriate, in our opinion, because the beings who are the primitive agents of the Spiritist phenomena, although in the state of Spirits, nevertheless belong to humanity. The word superhuman would tend to sanction the opinion long accredited, and destroyed by Spiritism, that Spirits are creatures apart, outside of humanity. Another peremptory reason is that many of these phenomena are the direct product of embodied Spirits, consequently of men, and in all cases almost always require the assistance of an incarnate; therefore, they are no more superhuman than supernatural.
A word that has also completely deviated from its original meaning is demon. We know that daimon was used among the ancients, for the Spirits of a certain order, intermediaries between men and those who were called gods. Such designation did not imply, in the origin, any bad quality; on the contrary, it was taken in good sense; Socrates' demon was certainly not an evil Spirit; while according to modern opinion, resulting from Catholic theology, demons are fallen angels, beings apart, essentially and perpetually doomed to evil. To be consistent with the opinion of Philatethes, it would be necessary that, out of respect for etymology, Spiritism should also retain the qualification of demons. If Spiritism called its phenomena miracles, and the Spirits demons, its opponents would have had a good time! It would have been rejected by three quarters of those who accept it today, because they would have seen in it a return to beliefs that are no longer of our time. To dress Spiritism in worn clothes would have been a blunder; it would have been a fatal blow on the doctrine, that would have found it difficult to dispel the prejudices maintained by improper names.
“Renan and his school do not even bother to discuss the facts, they reject them all a priori, wrongly qualifying them as supernatural, and therefore impossible and absurd; they oppose them with an absolute end of inadmissibility, and a transcendent disdain. Renan said once, an eminently true and profound phrase: "The supernatural would be nothing other than the super-divine." We support this great truth with all our energy, but we point out that the very word miracle (mirum, astonishing and hitherto unexplained thing) does not mean, of course, inversion of the laws of nature, but rather the flexibility of these same laws still unknown to the human Spirit. We even say that there will always be miracles, for the ascent of humanity being always progressive towards a more perfect knowledge, this knowledge will constantly need to be surpassed and spurred on by facts that will appear marvelous to the mind, at the time when they will occur, and will not be understood and explained until later. A very accredited writer from our school let himself to accept this objection; (Allan Kardec) he repeats in many passages of his works that there are neither marvels nor miracles; it is an oversight resulting from the false sense of the supernatural, completely rejected by the etymology of the word. We say that if the word miracle did not exist, to qualify phenomena still under study and not covered by vulgar science, it would have to be invented as the most appropriate and the most logical.
Nothing is supernatural, we repeat, because apart from the created and the uncreated nature, there is nothing absolutely conceivable; but there is the superhuman, that is to say, phenomena that can be produced by intelligent beings, other than men, according to the laws of their nature, or else produced either mediately or immediately by God, still according to his nature and according to his natural relations with his creatures.
Philalethes”
We are not, thank God, ignoring the etymological meaning of the word miracle; we have proved this in many articles, and particularly in the article of the Spiritist Review, September 1860. It is, therefore, neither by mistake nor inadvertently that we reject its application to the Spiritist phenomena, however extraordinary they may appear at first glance, but with full knowledge of the facts and with intention. In its usual meaning, the word miracle has lost its original connotation, like so many others, starting with the word philosophy (love of wisdom), that we use today to express the most diametrically opposing ideas, from the purest spiritualism, down to the most absolute materialism. There is no doubt that, in the mind of the masses, miracle implies the idea of a supernatural fact. Ask anyone that believes in miracles if they regard them as natural effects.
The Church is so fixated on this point that it anathematizes those that claim to explain miracles by the laws of nature. The Academy itself defines this word as: Act of divine power, contrary to the known laws of nature. True, false miracle, proven miracle, work miracles. The gift of miracles.
To be understood by everyone, you have to speak like everyone else; now, it is obvious that if we had qualified the Spiritist phenomena as miraculous, the public would have misunderstood their true character, unless we used a periphrasis each time, and said that they are miracles that are not miracles like they are usually understood. Since it is generally attached to the idea of a derogation of the natural laws, and since the Spiritist phenomena are only the application of these same laws, it is much simpler and above all more logical to bluntly say: no, Spiritism does not work miracles. In this way, there is no misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Just as the progress of the physical sciences has destroyed a host of prejudices, and brought into the order of natural facts a large number of effects formerly considered to be miraculous, Spiritism, by the revelation of new laws, further restricts the realm of the marvelous; we say more: it swings the last blow, and that is why it is not everywhere, with the odor of sanctity, any more than astronomy and geology.
If those that believe in miracles understood this word in its etymological meaning (admirable thing), they would admire Spiritism instead of anathematizing it; instead of putting Galileo in prison, for having shown that Joshua could not stop the sun, they would have woven crowns for him, for having revealed to the world much more remarkable things, and that attest infinitely better to the greatness and the power of God.
For the same reasons, we reject the supernatural word from the Spiritist vocabulary. Miracle would still have its acceptance, in its etymology, except to determine its signification; supernatural is nonsense from the point of view of Spiritism. The word superhuman, proposed by Philalethes, is also inappropriate, in our opinion, because the beings who are the primitive agents of the Spiritist phenomena, although in the state of Spirits, nevertheless belong to humanity. The word superhuman would tend to sanction the opinion long accredited, and destroyed by Spiritism, that Spirits are creatures apart, outside of humanity. Another peremptory reason is that many of these phenomena are the direct product of embodied Spirits, consequently of men, and in all cases almost always require the assistance of an incarnate; therefore, they are no more superhuman than supernatural.
A word that has also completely deviated from its original meaning is demon. We know that daimon was used among the ancients, for the Spirits of a certain order, intermediaries between men and those who were called gods. Such designation did not imply, in the origin, any bad quality; on the contrary, it was taken in good sense; Socrates' demon was certainly not an evil Spirit; while according to modern opinion, resulting from Catholic theology, demons are fallen angels, beings apart, essentially and perpetually doomed to evil. To be consistent with the opinion of Philatethes, it would be necessary that, out of respect for etymology, Spiritism should also retain the qualification of demons. If Spiritism called its phenomena miracles, and the Spirits demons, its opponents would have had a good time! It would have been rejected by three quarters of those who accept it today, because they would have seen in it a return to beliefs that are no longer of our time. To dress Spiritism in worn clothes would have been a blunder; it would have been a fatal blow on the doctrine, that would have found it difficult to dispel the prejudices maintained by improper names.
Retrospective review of Spiritist ideas - Punishment of the atheist
“Picturesque and sentimental journey to the resting fields of Montmartre and Père-Lachaise”; by Ant. Caillot, author of the encyclopedia of young ladies, and of the new elementary lessons of the French history. This is the title of a book published in Paris, in 1808, and that must be very rare today. The author, after having telling the history and the description of these two cemeteries, quotes a large number of tomb inscriptions, making philosophical reflections on each one, marked by a deep religious feeling, provoked by the thought that dictated them. We first noticed the following passage, in which the idea of reincarnation is clearly expressed:
“What a wise and deeply religious man was the first to name Resting Field, the last asylum of this creature whose existence, until his last breath, is tormented by the beings that surround him and by himself! Here, all lie in the womb of the common mother, and in a sleep that is only the precursor of awakening, of a new existence. Earth preserves as a sacred deposit, these venerable remains; and if it hastens to dissolve them, it is to purify their elements, and make them more worthy of the intelligence that will, one day, revive them for new destinies.”
Further down, he says:
Oh! how astonished was the blind and audacious mortal, who dared drive you out of his mind and his heart (the atheist that denies God), when his soul appeared before the Infinite Majesty! How couldn’t one see his remains shaking and trembling with surprise and terror? How come didn’t his icy tongue revive, to express the terror with which he was struck, when the flesh was no longer between him and the divine gazes! Good Lord! Universal cause, and soul of nature! All beings recognize you and celebrate you as their sole author. Would man alone, turn away from you the intelligent and rational Spirit, that you gave him to glorify you? Ah! No doubt, and I like to believe it, there wasn’t a single one of the forty thousand mortals, whose bodies lie here in the dust, who did not have the conviction of your existence and the feeling of your adorable perfections.
As I finished uttering these last words, with emotion, a noise was heard beside me. I cast my eyes towards the place where it came from, and I saw, an admirable and unheard-of thing! A specter who, wrapped in his shroud, had come out of a tomb, and gravely approached me, to speak to me. Was this apparition just a game of my imagination? This is what it is impossible for me to assure; but the following dialogue, that I remember well, makes me believe that I was not the only speaker for two roles at the same time.”
Here we will make a small critical observation, first on the qualification of specter given by the author to the appearance, real or imagined; this word is too reminiscent of the lugubrious ideas that superstition attaches to the phenomenon of apparitions, now perfectly explained from the knowledge we have of the constitution of the spiritual beings. Second, on what he brings this apparition to come out from the tomb, as if the soul made it its dwelling. But this is only a detail of form that stems from long rooted prejudices; the essential is in the picture that he presents of the moral situation of this soul, a situation identical to that revealed to us today by communications with the Spirits.
The author reports the dialogue he had, with the being that appeared to him, in the following terms:
“When the specter approached me, he made me hear these words, in a voice such that it is impossible for me to specify the sound, since I have never heard such thing among men:
Specter: You do well in worshiping God; don’t you ever imitate me, for I was an atheist.
Me: So, you didn't believe that there was a God?
Specter: No; or rather, I pretended not to believe it.
Me: What reasons did you have for not believing that the universe was produced and that it is ruled by a supreme intelligence?
Specter: None. No matter how much I looked for it, I did not find any solid ones, and I was reduced to repeating only vain sophisms that I had read in the works of a few so-called philosophers.
Me: If you didn't have good reasons for being an atheist, then you had reasons for appearing so?
Specter: Without a doubt. Seeing all my fellow human beings convinced of the idea of a God and the feeling of his existence, the pride that blinded me led me to distinguish myself from the multitude, sustaining before anyone that wanted to hear me that God did not exist, and that the universe was the work of chance, or even that it had always existed. I regarded it as a glory to think about this great subject differently from everybody, and I found nothing more flattering than to be regarded, in the world, as a Spirit strong enough to rise up against the common belief of all men and of all ages.
Me: Didn't you have another reason to embrace atheism, other than pride?
Specter: Yes.
Me: What was this motive? Tell the truth.
Specter: The truth !!… Without doubt, I will tell you that; for it is impossible for me, in the order of things in which I exist, to fight it or to conceal it.
Like all my fellows, I was born with the feeling of the existence of a God, the author and principle of all beings. This feeling, that initially was only a germ, in which my mind discovered nothing, developed little by little; and when I had reached the age of reason, and acquired the faculty of reflection, I had to make no effort to indulge myself in it. How much the lessons of my parents and my teachers pleased me, when God and his infinite perfections were the subject! How the spectacle of nature enchanted me and what sweet satisfaction I felt when I was told about this great God who created everything by his power, supports, governs, and preserves everything by his wisdom!
However, I reached adolescence, and passions began to make me hear their seductive voices. I was forming relationships with young people of my age; I followed their disastrous advice and conformed to their dangerous examples. Entering the world with these culpable dispositions, I no longer thought of anything else but of sacrificing all the principles of virtue and wisdom that had been inspired in me, at first. Those principles, every day attacked by my passions, took refuge in the depths of my conscience, and there they changed into remorse. Since that remorse wouldn’t give me a break, I resolved to annihilate, as much as I could, the cause that had given birth to them. I found that this cause was nothing more than the idea of a God, rewarding of virtue and avenging of crime; and I attacked it with all the sophisms that my Spirit could invent or discover, in the works intended to exalt the doctrine of atheism.
Me: Have you calmed down when you piled sophisms upon sophisms against the existence of God?
Specter: No matter how much I did, rest constantly eluded me; I was convinced, in spite of myself, and although my mouth did not utter a word that was not blasphemy, I did not have a feeling that did not fight against me, in favor of God.
Me: What happened to you during the illness from which you died?
Specter: I wanted to sustain the strong-minded character until the end; and pride prevented me from confessing my error, although, internally, I felt the pressing need. It was in this criminal and false disposition that I ceased to exist.
Me: What happened to you when your eyes were forever closed to light?
Specter: I found myself fully invested with the majesty of God, and I was seized by such a deep horror that I have no term that can give you a fair idea. I expected to be severely punished; but, the sovereign judge, whose mercy softens justice, relegated me to a dark region, inhabited by Spirits who had innocent hands and a sick brain.
Me: What is the fate of atheists who committed crimes against the society of their fellow human beings?
Specter: The Being of beings punishes them for having been wicked and not for being mistaken; for he despises opinions and only rewards or punishes actions.
Me: So, you are not punished in the dark abode where you are exiled?
Specter: I am suffering there a harsher punishment than you can imagine. God, after having condemned me, moved away from me; and immediately I lost any idea of my existence, and the nothingness presented itself before me, in all its horror.
Me: What! You have completely lost the idea of the existence of God?
Specter: Yes. It is the greatest torment an immortal Spirit can endure, and nothing can explain the state of abandonment, pain, and disorder in which one finds oneself.
Me: What is it that you do then, with the Spirits subjected to the same torture?
Specter: We argue endlessly, without being able to get along; irrationality and madness preside over all our debates; and in the deep obscurity in which our intelligence is buried, there is no opinion, no system that it does not adopt, to reject them soon and to conceive new extravagances. It is, therefore, the perpetual agitation of this ebb and flow of ideas, without foundation, without continuation, without connection, that consists in the punishment of the atheist philosophers.
Me: Yet, you are reasoning at this moment.
Specter: It's because my ordeal will soon end. This torture has taken very long; because, although we only count two years since my earthly death, I have suffered so much from all this madness that I have said and heard that I seem to have already spent thousands of centuries in the region of systems and disputes.
Having said that, the Specter bowed, worshiped God, and disappeared.
When I recovered from the emotion of what I had just seen and heard had caused me, my thoughts returned to the amazing things the specter had taught me. Does what he told me, about the first Being, correspond to the idea that so many men have formed? What did I just hear? What! the atheist himself, the horror of his fellows, ends up finding favor in the eyes of this Divinity, to whom I am introduced as of a vindictive and jealous nature! Hey! Who will now dare to tell me: If you do not adopt such and such an opinion, you will be condemned to the eternal torments? What a barbarian will dare to say: Outside of my communion there is no salvation? Incomprehensible and all merciful Being, have you assigned someone to take revenge? Is it up to a vile creature to tell his fellows: think like me or be forever miserable! What limits, great God, can we, narrow-minded beings as we are, fix to your clemency and justice? And by what right would I say to you: Here you will reward, there you will punish? Answer, O dead people who lie in this dust! Was it possible for you all to have the belief in which I was born? Were all your intelligences equally struck with the proofs that establish the mysteries that I adore and the dogmas in which I believe? Hey! How could the degrees of a belief be the same everywhere, as well as the degrees of conviction? Intolerant and cruel man, come, if you have the courage, sit beside me, and dare to tell the victims of death whose lessons I have come to listen to: “You are forty thousand here; well! There are only ten, only fifty, only a hundred among you, whom the vengeful God has not destined to the eternal flames!"
If this speech was not of a fool, of what use would the religion of the tombs be? Why should I respect the ashes of those that did not worship the great Being in my own way? Is it in this place, where the enemies of my belief rest, confused with its followers, that I could hear the lessons of true wisdom? And of what impiety would I be guilty of by communicating with reprobate intelligences, to whose spoils I come to pay homage, inspired by religion, as by humanity?
“What a wise and deeply religious man was the first to name Resting Field, the last asylum of this creature whose existence, until his last breath, is tormented by the beings that surround him and by himself! Here, all lie in the womb of the common mother, and in a sleep that is only the precursor of awakening, of a new existence. Earth preserves as a sacred deposit, these venerable remains; and if it hastens to dissolve them, it is to purify their elements, and make them more worthy of the intelligence that will, one day, revive them for new destinies.”
Further down, he says:
Oh! how astonished was the blind and audacious mortal, who dared drive you out of his mind and his heart (the atheist that denies God), when his soul appeared before the Infinite Majesty! How couldn’t one see his remains shaking and trembling with surprise and terror? How come didn’t his icy tongue revive, to express the terror with which he was struck, when the flesh was no longer between him and the divine gazes! Good Lord! Universal cause, and soul of nature! All beings recognize you and celebrate you as their sole author. Would man alone, turn away from you the intelligent and rational Spirit, that you gave him to glorify you? Ah! No doubt, and I like to believe it, there wasn’t a single one of the forty thousand mortals, whose bodies lie here in the dust, who did not have the conviction of your existence and the feeling of your adorable perfections.
As I finished uttering these last words, with emotion, a noise was heard beside me. I cast my eyes towards the place where it came from, and I saw, an admirable and unheard-of thing! A specter who, wrapped in his shroud, had come out of a tomb, and gravely approached me, to speak to me. Was this apparition just a game of my imagination? This is what it is impossible for me to assure; but the following dialogue, that I remember well, makes me believe that I was not the only speaker for two roles at the same time.”
Here we will make a small critical observation, first on the qualification of specter given by the author to the appearance, real or imagined; this word is too reminiscent of the lugubrious ideas that superstition attaches to the phenomenon of apparitions, now perfectly explained from the knowledge we have of the constitution of the spiritual beings. Second, on what he brings this apparition to come out from the tomb, as if the soul made it its dwelling. But this is only a detail of form that stems from long rooted prejudices; the essential is in the picture that he presents of the moral situation of this soul, a situation identical to that revealed to us today by communications with the Spirits.
The author reports the dialogue he had, with the being that appeared to him, in the following terms:
“When the specter approached me, he made me hear these words, in a voice such that it is impossible for me to specify the sound, since I have never heard such thing among men:
Specter: You do well in worshiping God; don’t you ever imitate me, for I was an atheist.
Me: So, you didn't believe that there was a God?
Specter: No; or rather, I pretended not to believe it.
Me: What reasons did you have for not believing that the universe was produced and that it is ruled by a supreme intelligence?
Specter: None. No matter how much I looked for it, I did not find any solid ones, and I was reduced to repeating only vain sophisms that I had read in the works of a few so-called philosophers.
Me: If you didn't have good reasons for being an atheist, then you had reasons for appearing so?
Specter: Without a doubt. Seeing all my fellow human beings convinced of the idea of a God and the feeling of his existence, the pride that blinded me led me to distinguish myself from the multitude, sustaining before anyone that wanted to hear me that God did not exist, and that the universe was the work of chance, or even that it had always existed. I regarded it as a glory to think about this great subject differently from everybody, and I found nothing more flattering than to be regarded, in the world, as a Spirit strong enough to rise up against the common belief of all men and of all ages.
Me: Didn't you have another reason to embrace atheism, other than pride?
Specter: Yes.
Me: What was this motive? Tell the truth.
Specter: The truth !!… Without doubt, I will tell you that; for it is impossible for me, in the order of things in which I exist, to fight it or to conceal it.
Like all my fellows, I was born with the feeling of the existence of a God, the author and principle of all beings. This feeling, that initially was only a germ, in which my mind discovered nothing, developed little by little; and when I had reached the age of reason, and acquired the faculty of reflection, I had to make no effort to indulge myself in it. How much the lessons of my parents and my teachers pleased me, when God and his infinite perfections were the subject! How the spectacle of nature enchanted me and what sweet satisfaction I felt when I was told about this great God who created everything by his power, supports, governs, and preserves everything by his wisdom!
However, I reached adolescence, and passions began to make me hear their seductive voices. I was forming relationships with young people of my age; I followed their disastrous advice and conformed to their dangerous examples. Entering the world with these culpable dispositions, I no longer thought of anything else but of sacrificing all the principles of virtue and wisdom that had been inspired in me, at first. Those principles, every day attacked by my passions, took refuge in the depths of my conscience, and there they changed into remorse. Since that remorse wouldn’t give me a break, I resolved to annihilate, as much as I could, the cause that had given birth to them. I found that this cause was nothing more than the idea of a God, rewarding of virtue and avenging of crime; and I attacked it with all the sophisms that my Spirit could invent or discover, in the works intended to exalt the doctrine of atheism.
Me: Have you calmed down when you piled sophisms upon sophisms against the existence of God?
Specter: No matter how much I did, rest constantly eluded me; I was convinced, in spite of myself, and although my mouth did not utter a word that was not blasphemy, I did not have a feeling that did not fight against me, in favor of God.
Me: What happened to you during the illness from which you died?
Specter: I wanted to sustain the strong-minded character until the end; and pride prevented me from confessing my error, although, internally, I felt the pressing need. It was in this criminal and false disposition that I ceased to exist.
Me: What happened to you when your eyes were forever closed to light?
Specter: I found myself fully invested with the majesty of God, and I was seized by such a deep horror that I have no term that can give you a fair idea. I expected to be severely punished; but, the sovereign judge, whose mercy softens justice, relegated me to a dark region, inhabited by Spirits who had innocent hands and a sick brain.
Me: What is the fate of atheists who committed crimes against the society of their fellow human beings?
Specter: The Being of beings punishes them for having been wicked and not for being mistaken; for he despises opinions and only rewards or punishes actions.
Me: So, you are not punished in the dark abode where you are exiled?
Specter: I am suffering there a harsher punishment than you can imagine. God, after having condemned me, moved away from me; and immediately I lost any idea of my existence, and the nothingness presented itself before me, in all its horror.
Me: What! You have completely lost the idea of the existence of God?
Specter: Yes. It is the greatest torment an immortal Spirit can endure, and nothing can explain the state of abandonment, pain, and disorder in which one finds oneself.
Me: What is it that you do then, with the Spirits subjected to the same torture?
Specter: We argue endlessly, without being able to get along; irrationality and madness preside over all our debates; and in the deep obscurity in which our intelligence is buried, there is no opinion, no system that it does not adopt, to reject them soon and to conceive new extravagances. It is, therefore, the perpetual agitation of this ebb and flow of ideas, without foundation, without continuation, without connection, that consists in the punishment of the atheist philosophers.
Me: Yet, you are reasoning at this moment.
Specter: It's because my ordeal will soon end. This torture has taken very long; because, although we only count two years since my earthly death, I have suffered so much from all this madness that I have said and heard that I seem to have already spent thousands of centuries in the region of systems and disputes.
Having said that, the Specter bowed, worshiped God, and disappeared.
When I recovered from the emotion of what I had just seen and heard had caused me, my thoughts returned to the amazing things the specter had taught me. Does what he told me, about the first Being, correspond to the idea that so many men have formed? What did I just hear? What! the atheist himself, the horror of his fellows, ends up finding favor in the eyes of this Divinity, to whom I am introduced as of a vindictive and jealous nature! Hey! Who will now dare to tell me: If you do not adopt such and such an opinion, you will be condemned to the eternal torments? What a barbarian will dare to say: Outside of my communion there is no salvation? Incomprehensible and all merciful Being, have you assigned someone to take revenge? Is it up to a vile creature to tell his fellows: think like me or be forever miserable! What limits, great God, can we, narrow-minded beings as we are, fix to your clemency and justice? And by what right would I say to you: Here you will reward, there you will punish? Answer, O dead people who lie in this dust! Was it possible for you all to have the belief in which I was born? Were all your intelligences equally struck with the proofs that establish the mysteries that I adore and the dogmas in which I believe? Hey! How could the degrees of a belief be the same everywhere, as well as the degrees of conviction? Intolerant and cruel man, come, if you have the courage, sit beside me, and dare to tell the victims of death whose lessons I have come to listen to: “You are forty thousand here; well! There are only ten, only fifty, only a hundred among you, whom the vengeful God has not destined to the eternal flames!"
If this speech was not of a fool, of what use would the religion of the tombs be? Why should I respect the ashes of those that did not worship the great Being in my own way? Is it in this place, where the enemies of my belief rest, confused with its followers, that I could hear the lessons of true wisdom? And of what impiety would I be guilty of by communicating with reprobate intelligences, to whose spoils I come to pay homage, inspired by religion, as by humanity?
An earthly atonement – the young Francis
People who have read Heaven and Hell no doubt remember the touching story of Marcel, the child of No. 4, reported in chapter VIII of Terrestrial Atonement. The following fact presents a case somewhat analogous and no less instructive, as an application of sovereign justice, and as an atonement of what often seems inexplicable, in certain positions of life.
A twelve-year-old child died in October 1866, from a good and honest family; for nine years, the child’s life had been only one continuous suffering, that neither the loving care with which he was surrounded, nor even the aid of science had been able to soften. He was afflicted with paralysis and dropsy; his body was covered with wounds, invaded by gangrene, and his flesh was falling apart. In the extreme of pain he would often cry out, "What have I done, my God, to deserve such a pain? Since I came into the world, I have not harmed anyone!” Instinctively, this child understood that the suffering had to be an atonement, but in ignorance of the law of solidarity of successive existences, his thought not going back beyond the present life, he did not realize the cause that could justify in him such a cruel punishment.
A particularity worth noting was the birth of a sister, when he was about three years old. It was at this time that the first symptoms of the terrible disease to which he was to succumb began. From this moment, he also established such a repulsion for the newcomer that he could not bear her presence, and that her sight seemed to redouble his sufferings. He frequently reproached himself for this feeling that nothing justified, because the little girl did not share it; on the contrary, she was gentle and loving to him. He said to his mother: "Why is the sight of my little sister so painful to me? She's good to me, but I can't help it but hate her.” However, he could not bear to see her hurt or grieved; far from rejoicing in her sorrows, he suffered when he saw her crying. It was obvious that two feelings were fighting in him; he understood the injustice of his antipathy, but his efforts to overcome it were powerless.
It would be quite natural for such illnesses to be the consequences of misconduct, at a certain age; but of what serious enough sins can a child of this age be guilty of enduring such a martyrdom? Where else could this repulsion for a harmless being come from? These are problems that present themselves every moment, and that lead a multitude of people to doubt the justice of God, because they find no solution in any religion; These apparent anomalies, on the contrary, find their complete justification in the solidarity of existences. A Spiritist observer could therefore say, with every reason, that these two beings had known each other, and had been placed next to each other in the present existence for some atonement and reparation of some wrongdoing. From the brother's state of suffering, one could conclude that he was the culprit, and that the ties of close kinship, that united him to the object of his antipathy, were imposed on him to prepare, between them, the ways of a re-approximation. Thus, we already see in the brother a tendency and efforts to overcome his estrangement, that he recognizes as unjust. This antipathy did not have the characteristics of the jealousy that is sometimes noticed in children of the same blood; it came therefore, in all likelihood, from painful memories, and perhaps from remorse that the little girl's presence aroused. Such are the deductions that one could rationally draw, by analogy, from the observation of the facts, and that were confirmed by the Spirit of the child.
Evoked, almost immediately after his death, by a friend of the family to whom he was very fond, he could not, at first, fully explain himself, and promised to give more details later. Among the various communications he gave, here are the two that relate more particularly to the question:
“You expect from me the account I promised you of what I was in a previous existence and the explanation of the cause of my great suffering; it will be a lesson for all. These teachings are everywhere, I know; it is found everywhere, but the account of facts of which one has seen the consequences oneself, is always, for those that exist, a much more striking proof.
I have sinned, yes, I have sinned! Do you know what it is to have been a murderer, to have attempted against the life of your fellow human? I did not do it the way the assassins do when killing immediately, either with a string, or with a knife, or any other instrument; no, it is not how I did it. I killed, but I killed slowly, causing suffering to a creature I hated! Yes, I hated him, this child that I thought didn't belong to me! Poor innocent! Had he deserved such a sad fate? No, my poor friends, he hadn't deserved it, or at least it wasn't up to me to put him through this torment. I did, however, and that is why I was forced to suffer, as you have seen.
I suffered, my God! Is it enough? You are too good, Lord! Yes, in the presence of my crime and atonement, I believe you were too merciful. Pray for me, dear parents, dear friends; my sufferings are now over. Poor Mrs. D ... I make you suffer! It is because it was very painful for me to come and confess this immense crime!
Hope, my good friends, God has forgiven my fault; I am now in joy, and yet also in sorrow; do you see! It is all very well to be in a better state, have atoned: the thought, the memory of our crimes leave such an impression that it is impossible not to feel all the horror for a long time yet, because it is not only on earth that I suffered, but before, in this spiritual life! And, what pain I had in deciding to come and suffer this terrible atonement! I cannot tell you all this, for it would be too dreadful! The constant sight of my victim, and the other, the poor mother! Finally, my friends: prayers for me and thanks to the Lord! I promised you this story. I had to pay my debt to the end, whatever it might cost me.
(up until this point the medium had written under the influence of great emotion; he continued with more calm).
And now, my good parents, a word of consolation. Thank you, oh thank you that helped me in this atonement, and who carried part of it; you have softened, as much as it depended on you, what was bitter in my state. Do not be upset, it is a thing of the past; I am happy, I told you, especially when comparing the past state with the present state. I love you all; Thank you; I kiss you; love me always. We will meet again, and, all together, we will continue this eternal life, trying that the future life completely redeems the past life.
Your son, François E.”
In another communication the Spirit of young Francis supplemented the above information:
“Question: Dear child, you did not say where your antipathy for your little sister came from.
Answer: Can't you guess it? This poor and innocent creature was my victim whom God had attached to my last existence, like a living remorse; that is why her sight made me suffer so much.
Request. However, you didn't know who she was.
Answer: I did not know it when I was awake, otherwise my torments would have been a hundred times more dreadful; as dreadful as they had been in the spiritual life, when I saw her endlessly; but do you believe that my Spirit, in the times when it was free, did not know it? It was the cause of my hatred, and if I tried to fight it, it was that I felt instinctively that it was unfair. I was not yet strong enough to do good to the one I couldn't help hating, but I didn't want her to be harmed: it was the beginning of reparation. God took this feeling into account for me, which is why he allowed me to be released early from my life of suffering, otherwise I could have lived for many more years in the horrible situation in which you saw me.
Therefore, bless my death that put an end to the atonement, for it was the pledge of my rehabilitation.
Question: (to the medium's guide). Why aren’t atonement and repentance in the spiritual life sufficient for rehabilitation, without adding bodily suffering?
Answer: Suffering in one world or another is always suffering, and one suffers while the rehabilitation is not complete. This child suffered a lot on earth; Well, that is nothing compared to what he endured in the spiritual world. Here he had, as a compensation, the care and affection with which he was surrounded. There is still this difference between bodily suffering and spiritual suffering, that the former is almost always voluntarily, accepted as a complement of atonement, or as a test to advance more rapidly, while the other is imposed.
But there are other reasons for the corporeal suffering: it is, first of all, so that reparation may take place under the same conditions in which the damage was done; then to serve as an example for the incarnate. Seeing their fellows suffer and knowing the reason for it, they are much more impressed by it than knowing that they are unhappy as Spirits; they can better understand the cause of their own suffering; divine justice is somehow palpable in their eyes. Finally, bodily suffering is an opportunity for the incarnate to exercise charity among themselves, a test for their feelings of compassion, and often a means of repairing previous wrongs; for, believe it, when an unfortunate person is in your way, it is not the result of chance. For the parents of young François, it was a great test to have a child in this sad condition; well, they have fulfilled their mandate with dignity, and they will be all the better rewarded for it, for having acted spontaneously, by the impulse of their own heart. If the Spirits did not suffer in the incarnation, it is because there would only be perfect Spirits on earth.
A twelve-year-old child died in October 1866, from a good and honest family; for nine years, the child’s life had been only one continuous suffering, that neither the loving care with which he was surrounded, nor even the aid of science had been able to soften. He was afflicted with paralysis and dropsy; his body was covered with wounds, invaded by gangrene, and his flesh was falling apart. In the extreme of pain he would often cry out, "What have I done, my God, to deserve such a pain? Since I came into the world, I have not harmed anyone!” Instinctively, this child understood that the suffering had to be an atonement, but in ignorance of the law of solidarity of successive existences, his thought not going back beyond the present life, he did not realize the cause that could justify in him such a cruel punishment.
A particularity worth noting was the birth of a sister, when he was about three years old. It was at this time that the first symptoms of the terrible disease to which he was to succumb began. From this moment, he also established such a repulsion for the newcomer that he could not bear her presence, and that her sight seemed to redouble his sufferings. He frequently reproached himself for this feeling that nothing justified, because the little girl did not share it; on the contrary, she was gentle and loving to him. He said to his mother: "Why is the sight of my little sister so painful to me? She's good to me, but I can't help it but hate her.” However, he could not bear to see her hurt or grieved; far from rejoicing in her sorrows, he suffered when he saw her crying. It was obvious that two feelings were fighting in him; he understood the injustice of his antipathy, but his efforts to overcome it were powerless.
It would be quite natural for such illnesses to be the consequences of misconduct, at a certain age; but of what serious enough sins can a child of this age be guilty of enduring such a martyrdom? Where else could this repulsion for a harmless being come from? These are problems that present themselves every moment, and that lead a multitude of people to doubt the justice of God, because they find no solution in any religion; These apparent anomalies, on the contrary, find their complete justification in the solidarity of existences. A Spiritist observer could therefore say, with every reason, that these two beings had known each other, and had been placed next to each other in the present existence for some atonement and reparation of some wrongdoing. From the brother's state of suffering, one could conclude that he was the culprit, and that the ties of close kinship, that united him to the object of his antipathy, were imposed on him to prepare, between them, the ways of a re-approximation. Thus, we already see in the brother a tendency and efforts to overcome his estrangement, that he recognizes as unjust. This antipathy did not have the characteristics of the jealousy that is sometimes noticed in children of the same blood; it came therefore, in all likelihood, from painful memories, and perhaps from remorse that the little girl's presence aroused. Such are the deductions that one could rationally draw, by analogy, from the observation of the facts, and that were confirmed by the Spirit of the child.
Evoked, almost immediately after his death, by a friend of the family to whom he was very fond, he could not, at first, fully explain himself, and promised to give more details later. Among the various communications he gave, here are the two that relate more particularly to the question:
“You expect from me the account I promised you of what I was in a previous existence and the explanation of the cause of my great suffering; it will be a lesson for all. These teachings are everywhere, I know; it is found everywhere, but the account of facts of which one has seen the consequences oneself, is always, for those that exist, a much more striking proof.
I have sinned, yes, I have sinned! Do you know what it is to have been a murderer, to have attempted against the life of your fellow human? I did not do it the way the assassins do when killing immediately, either with a string, or with a knife, or any other instrument; no, it is not how I did it. I killed, but I killed slowly, causing suffering to a creature I hated! Yes, I hated him, this child that I thought didn't belong to me! Poor innocent! Had he deserved such a sad fate? No, my poor friends, he hadn't deserved it, or at least it wasn't up to me to put him through this torment. I did, however, and that is why I was forced to suffer, as you have seen.
I suffered, my God! Is it enough? You are too good, Lord! Yes, in the presence of my crime and atonement, I believe you were too merciful. Pray for me, dear parents, dear friends; my sufferings are now over. Poor Mrs. D ... I make you suffer! It is because it was very painful for me to come and confess this immense crime!
Hope, my good friends, God has forgiven my fault; I am now in joy, and yet also in sorrow; do you see! It is all very well to be in a better state, have atoned: the thought, the memory of our crimes leave such an impression that it is impossible not to feel all the horror for a long time yet, because it is not only on earth that I suffered, but before, in this spiritual life! And, what pain I had in deciding to come and suffer this terrible atonement! I cannot tell you all this, for it would be too dreadful! The constant sight of my victim, and the other, the poor mother! Finally, my friends: prayers for me and thanks to the Lord! I promised you this story. I had to pay my debt to the end, whatever it might cost me.
(up until this point the medium had written under the influence of great emotion; he continued with more calm).
And now, my good parents, a word of consolation. Thank you, oh thank you that helped me in this atonement, and who carried part of it; you have softened, as much as it depended on you, what was bitter in my state. Do not be upset, it is a thing of the past; I am happy, I told you, especially when comparing the past state with the present state. I love you all; Thank you; I kiss you; love me always. We will meet again, and, all together, we will continue this eternal life, trying that the future life completely redeems the past life.
Your son, François E.”
In another communication the Spirit of young Francis supplemented the above information:
“Question: Dear child, you did not say where your antipathy for your little sister came from.
Answer: Can't you guess it? This poor and innocent creature was my victim whom God had attached to my last existence, like a living remorse; that is why her sight made me suffer so much.
Request. However, you didn't know who she was.
Answer: I did not know it when I was awake, otherwise my torments would have been a hundred times more dreadful; as dreadful as they had been in the spiritual life, when I saw her endlessly; but do you believe that my Spirit, in the times when it was free, did not know it? It was the cause of my hatred, and if I tried to fight it, it was that I felt instinctively that it was unfair. I was not yet strong enough to do good to the one I couldn't help hating, but I didn't want her to be harmed: it was the beginning of reparation. God took this feeling into account for me, which is why he allowed me to be released early from my life of suffering, otherwise I could have lived for many more years in the horrible situation in which you saw me.
Therefore, bless my death that put an end to the atonement, for it was the pledge of my rehabilitation.
Question: (to the medium's guide). Why aren’t atonement and repentance in the spiritual life sufficient for rehabilitation, without adding bodily suffering?
Answer: Suffering in one world or another is always suffering, and one suffers while the rehabilitation is not complete. This child suffered a lot on earth; Well, that is nothing compared to what he endured in the spiritual world. Here he had, as a compensation, the care and affection with which he was surrounded. There is still this difference between bodily suffering and spiritual suffering, that the former is almost always voluntarily, accepted as a complement of atonement, or as a test to advance more rapidly, while the other is imposed.
But there are other reasons for the corporeal suffering: it is, first of all, so that reparation may take place under the same conditions in which the damage was done; then to serve as an example for the incarnate. Seeing their fellows suffer and knowing the reason for it, they are much more impressed by it than knowing that they are unhappy as Spirits; they can better understand the cause of their own suffering; divine justice is somehow palpable in their eyes. Finally, bodily suffering is an opportunity for the incarnate to exercise charity among themselves, a test for their feelings of compassion, and often a means of repairing previous wrongs; for, believe it, when an unfortunate person is in your way, it is not the result of chance. For the parents of young François, it was a great test to have a child in this sad condition; well, they have fulfilled their mandate with dignity, and they will be all the better rewarded for it, for having acted spontaneously, by the impulse of their own heart. If the Spirits did not suffer in the incarnation, it is because there would only be perfect Spirits on earth.
Galileo – fragments of Mr. Ponsard’s drama
(see the preceding issue)
A century before Galileo, Copernicus had designed the astronomical system that bears his name.[1] Galileo, using the telescope he had invented, adding direct observation to the theory, completed Copernicus' ideas and demonstrated their truth by calculation. With his instrument, he was able to study the nature of the planets, and their similarity with earth: he concluded that they were habitable. He also recognized that the stars are so many suns scattered in boundless space and believed that each should be the center of motion of a planetary system. He had just discovered the four satellites of Jupiter, and this event stirred the educated world and the religious world. In his drama, the poet endeavors to paint the diversity of the feelings that he aroused, according to the character and the prejudices of the individuals.
Two university students discuss Galileo's discovery, and as they disagree, they seek the advice of a renowned professor.
ALBERT: On a certain point, doctor, we are arguing,
and we would like to know what you think about it.
Pompeo: It is appropriate to seek advice from sensible people. What is it?
Vivian: It is about four satellites, describing their orbits around Jupiter.
Pompeo: They do not exist.
Vivian: But…
Pompeo: They could not exist.
Vivian: Nonetheless, they can be seen and counted.
Pompeo: Since they do not exist, they cannot be numbered.
Albert: Vivian, do you hear?
Vivian: And why is that professor?
Pompeo: Because the idea that God may have
Created four globes in addition to the seven
We know, is a bad talk, a chimerical
Theme, antireligious, anti-philosophical.
(Seeing Galileo escorted by a many students)
Silly fly catchers! And infamous charlatan!
Albert to Vivian: As you can see, Dr. Pompeo is against you.
Vivian: So much the better for the doctrine I have faith.
The natural march of all truth
Is first to arouse all dogmatists
against it.
This is indeed the force of reasoning of certain deniers of new ideas: it is not, because it cannot be. We asked a scientist: What would you say if you saw a table lifting off without a support? - I wouldn't believe it, he replied, because I know it can't be.
A monk speaking to the crowd:
Hear what the Apostle says: In heavens,
Why, Galileans, are you wandering your eyes?
This is how the anathema was launched, in advance,
Against you, Galileo, and against your system.
We ourselves today see clearly,
How heaven sees this teaching, horribly,
And the Arno overflowed, the hail on our vines,
Regrettable signs of wrath, divine.
My brothers despise these gross lies.
For the earth to move, does it have feet?
If the moon moves, it is because an angel is guiding it.
Over each planet, a conductor presides.
But the earth, where would its angel be? - On the mountains?
We would see him there. - In the center? It houses demons.
Livia, wife of Galileo, is the kind of narrow-minded person, more concerned with material life than with glory and truth.
Livia (to Galileo)
. . . Why, overheating the brains,
By spouting a bunch of new maxims!
All these novelties are, to put it mildly,
Devilish inventions that smell badly.
By the way everyone is looking at you,
It will not be good, if you are not careful.
Oh! why don't you imitate these worthy teachers
Who say the same as their predecessors?
These are good people, or order and commonsensical.
They quietly teach what they want them to teach,
And, without working to debate in public
If we must believe Aristotle or Copernicus.
The true opinion, they wisely hold,
Must be the one paid, to do as they are told.
And that, if Aristotle opens the safe,
Aristotle is right, Copernicus in a mistake.
So, with nobody a disagreement.
They receive, in peace, the florins they are given.
They thrive; they are well fed and well housed,
Their daughters have dowries and find spouses.
Their audience is gentle and exalts never.
They return home in time for supper.
But you, you rage, you are applauded,
And, meanwhile, dinner is getting cold.
Fragments of Galileo's monologue at the beginning of the second act:
No, the times are gone for the queen alone,
The earth was seated on her motionless throne.
No, the swift chariot, carrying the star of the day,
From dawn to sunset, no longer rotates.
The firmament is no longer the crystalline dome,
Which, like a blue ceiling, of chandeliers illuminates.
It is no longer for us alone that God made the universe.
But far from holding down, let us proud ourselves!
For if we abdicate a false royalty,
Science elevates us to the kingdom of veracity.
The more the body shrinks, the taller the Spirit stands.
Our nobility grows or our rank lessens.
It is more beautiful for man, tiny creature,
To seize the secrets veiled by nature,
And dare to embrace in its conception
The universal law of creation,
Than to be, as in the days of lying vanities,
King of an illusion and owner of a reverie,
Ignorant center of a whole, his work, a misbelief he conveys,
And that by thought he conquers today.
Sun, globe of fire, gigantic furnace,
Incandescent chaos where a genesis terminates,
Furious ocean where frantic float
Granite liquids and molten metals,
Smashing, shattering, mingling their flaming waves
Laden with smoke, under black hurricanes,
Ardent swell, where sometimes swims a ruddy islet,
Spot today, tomorrow solar crust.
Around you, o fruitful brazier,
The earth moves, barely cooled, our mother,
And, as cold as her, and, as she inhabited,
Bloody Mars, and Venus, of white clarities.
Near your splendor, Mercury bathing,
And Saturn in exile at the edge of your reign,
And by God, then by me, crowned in the ether
From a quadruple diadem of moons, Jupiter.
But, sovereign star, center of all these globes,
Beyond your empire with deep boundaries,
Millions of suns, so many, so profuse,
That they cannot be counted in their groups, confused,
Extend, like you, their immense craters,
Move around, like you, planetary centers,
That revolve around them, courting,
And taking heat and day from their king.
Oh! yes you are better than night lighters,
That would light for us, taciturn watchers,
Countless shines, stars hazing
The azure paths, in gold sanding.
Universal life also pulsates in you, large
foci where our eye only sees a spark.
…………..
And everywhere action, movement, and soul!
Everywhere, around their flaming centers, roll
Inhabited globes, thinking beings still,
Live as I live, feel what I feel,
Some below, others maybe
Higher than us, life has so many degrees!
How big! how beautiful! In what deep adoration
The Spirit, full of amazement, breaks down in amalgamation!
Inexhaustible author, may your omnipotence
Show itself in its glory and magnificence!
That life, poured out in waves in infinity,
Proclaim your blessed name everywhere, widely!
Go, persecutors! launch your blasphemies!
I am much more religious than yourselves.
God, whom you invoke, better than you I serve.
This little heap of mud, for you, is the universe.
For me, in all points, the divine work elates.
You shrink it, and I make it dilate.
As we put kings in the chariot of the victor,
I put universes at the feet of the Creator.
Fragments of the dialogue between the Inquisitor and Galileo.
The Inquisitor
There is no truth, except in the Scriptures.
All the rest is error, visions, impostures.
What is believed to be contrary to their teaching
Is not clarity, it is loss of sighting!
Galileo
Yes, faith is governed by the rule of Christianity.
Their sole authority reigns in theology,
And worship must bow all minds
To the divine dogmas that it prescribes.
But the physical world escapes their domain.
God delivers it entirely to human argument.
As these are objects that are apparent,
The senses and reason show themselves to be omnipotent.
The authority is silent; no order can aspire
Unequal rays in the center of the sphere,
No one can accuse the compass of blasphemy,
Nor that a rotating body does not revolve, by decree.
The eye is the judge, in a word, of the universe, visible.
If the unchanging dogma is fixed by the Bible,
Science rejects immortality,
And, dying in chains, lives for liberty.
The Inquisitor
Now, don't you see that your new system,
Troubles astronomy, shaking faith itself?
The material error, admitted on one point,
Throughout the Testament, makes the witness suspect.
Whoever may have failed is, therefore, no longer infallible.
Doubt is allowed, examination is possible,
And we soon conclude, if judge we venture,
From false physics to false dogma.
……………………….
Galileo
Me, destroy the faith, when I aggrandize worshiping!
Showing God in his work, is it insulting him?
Ah! to understand it better, it is to adore him better,
And by disfiguring it, one does a dishonor.
The heavens, according to the Bible in which
We must trust, tell us the glory of its authorship!
Well I, better than anyone, listened to their story,
And I repeated it, as I learned from what heavens said.
……………………
Can the course of a new truth be stopped?
By stopping a drop, can the river be blocked?
Believe me, respect these aspirations,
They have many impulses and many expansions
To allow a jailer to hold them prisoners.
Leave the field open to them, or woe to the barriers!
- Ah! Rome, in the early days of your proscribed worship,
You said to oppose to the sword, only the spirit!
Did you only succeeded to change roles?
And you, yourself, oppose the sword to the word?
Antonia, daughter of Galileo, seeing her father proscribed, said to him:
Here is your Antigone. Yes, my pious love
Lead the outcast, conqueror of the sphinx of heaven.
Leading your staff from valley to valley,
I will say: "Give me bread for Galileo,
The one deprived of a home by the Christians,
Would have altars among pagan peoples."
Galileo probed the depths of heavens and revealed the plurality of material worlds. It was, as we have said, quite a revolution in ideas; a new field of exploration was opened to science. Spiritism comes to operate an equally great one, by revealing the existence of the spiritual world that surrounds us; thanks to that, man knows his past and his true destiny. Galileo overturned the barriers that circumscribed the universe; Spiritism inhabits and fills the void of infinite spaces. Although more than two centuries separate us from the discoveries of Galileo, many prejudices are still alive; the new emancipating doctrine encounters the same obstacles; it is attacked with the same weapons, opposed with the same arguments. By reading Mr. Ponsard's drama, we could give modern names to each of his characters. However, ill-will and persecution did not prevent Galileo's doctrine from succeeding, because it was the truth; it will be the same with Spiritism, because it is also a truth. Its detractors will be regarded, by the next generation, with the same eyes that we regard those of Galileo.
[1] Copernicus, Polish astronomer, born in Thorn (Prussian State) in 1473, died in 1543. Galileo, born in Florence in 1564, condemned in 1633, died blind in 1644. The system of Copernicus was already condemned by the Church.
Two university students discuss Galileo's discovery, and as they disagree, they seek the advice of a renowned professor.
ALBERT: On a certain point, doctor, we are arguing,
and we would like to know what you think about it.
Pompeo: It is appropriate to seek advice from sensible people. What is it?
Vivian: It is about four satellites, describing their orbits around Jupiter.
Pompeo: They do not exist.
Vivian: But…
Pompeo: They could not exist.
Vivian: Nonetheless, they can be seen and counted.
Pompeo: Since they do not exist, they cannot be numbered.
Albert: Vivian, do you hear?
Vivian: And why is that professor?
Pompeo: Because the idea that God may have
Created four globes in addition to the seven
We know, is a bad talk, a chimerical
Theme, antireligious, anti-philosophical.
(Seeing Galileo escorted by a many students)
Silly fly catchers! And infamous charlatan!
Albert to Vivian: As you can see, Dr. Pompeo is against you.
Vivian: So much the better for the doctrine I have faith.
The natural march of all truth
Is first to arouse all dogmatists
against it.
This is indeed the force of reasoning of certain deniers of new ideas: it is not, because it cannot be. We asked a scientist: What would you say if you saw a table lifting off without a support? - I wouldn't believe it, he replied, because I know it can't be.
A monk speaking to the crowd:
Hear what the Apostle says: In heavens,
Why, Galileans, are you wandering your eyes?
This is how the anathema was launched, in advance,
Against you, Galileo, and against your system.
We ourselves today see clearly,
How heaven sees this teaching, horribly,
And the Arno overflowed, the hail on our vines,
Regrettable signs of wrath, divine.
My brothers despise these gross lies.
For the earth to move, does it have feet?
If the moon moves, it is because an angel is guiding it.
Over each planet, a conductor presides.
But the earth, where would its angel be? - On the mountains?
We would see him there. - In the center? It houses demons.
Livia, wife of Galileo, is the kind of narrow-minded person, more concerned with material life than with glory and truth.
Livia (to Galileo)
. . . Why, overheating the brains,
By spouting a bunch of new maxims!
All these novelties are, to put it mildly,
Devilish inventions that smell badly.
By the way everyone is looking at you,
It will not be good, if you are not careful.
Oh! why don't you imitate these worthy teachers
Who say the same as their predecessors?
These are good people, or order and commonsensical.
They quietly teach what they want them to teach,
And, without working to debate in public
If we must believe Aristotle or Copernicus.
The true opinion, they wisely hold,
Must be the one paid, to do as they are told.
And that, if Aristotle opens the safe,
Aristotle is right, Copernicus in a mistake.
So, with nobody a disagreement.
They receive, in peace, the florins they are given.
They thrive; they are well fed and well housed,
Their daughters have dowries and find spouses.
Their audience is gentle and exalts never.
They return home in time for supper.
But you, you rage, you are applauded,
And, meanwhile, dinner is getting cold.
Fragments of Galileo's monologue at the beginning of the second act:
No, the times are gone for the queen alone,
The earth was seated on her motionless throne.
No, the swift chariot, carrying the star of the day,
From dawn to sunset, no longer rotates.
The firmament is no longer the crystalline dome,
Which, like a blue ceiling, of chandeliers illuminates.
It is no longer for us alone that God made the universe.
But far from holding down, let us proud ourselves!
For if we abdicate a false royalty,
Science elevates us to the kingdom of veracity.
The more the body shrinks, the taller the Spirit stands.
Our nobility grows or our rank lessens.
It is more beautiful for man, tiny creature,
To seize the secrets veiled by nature,
And dare to embrace in its conception
The universal law of creation,
Than to be, as in the days of lying vanities,
King of an illusion and owner of a reverie,
Ignorant center of a whole, his work, a misbelief he conveys,
And that by thought he conquers today.
Sun, globe of fire, gigantic furnace,
Incandescent chaos where a genesis terminates,
Furious ocean where frantic float
Granite liquids and molten metals,
Smashing, shattering, mingling their flaming waves
Laden with smoke, under black hurricanes,
Ardent swell, where sometimes swims a ruddy islet,
Spot today, tomorrow solar crust.
Around you, o fruitful brazier,
The earth moves, barely cooled, our mother,
And, as cold as her, and, as she inhabited,
Bloody Mars, and Venus, of white clarities.
Near your splendor, Mercury bathing,
And Saturn in exile at the edge of your reign,
And by God, then by me, crowned in the ether
From a quadruple diadem of moons, Jupiter.
But, sovereign star, center of all these globes,
Beyond your empire with deep boundaries,
Millions of suns, so many, so profuse,
That they cannot be counted in their groups, confused,
Extend, like you, their immense craters,
Move around, like you, planetary centers,
That revolve around them, courting,
And taking heat and day from their king.
Oh! yes you are better than night lighters,
That would light for us, taciturn watchers,
Countless shines, stars hazing
The azure paths, in gold sanding.
Universal life also pulsates in you, large
foci where our eye only sees a spark.
…………..
And everywhere action, movement, and soul!
Everywhere, around their flaming centers, roll
Inhabited globes, thinking beings still,
Live as I live, feel what I feel,
Some below, others maybe
Higher than us, life has so many degrees!
How big! how beautiful! In what deep adoration
The Spirit, full of amazement, breaks down in amalgamation!
Inexhaustible author, may your omnipotence
Show itself in its glory and magnificence!
That life, poured out in waves in infinity,
Proclaim your blessed name everywhere, widely!
Go, persecutors! launch your blasphemies!
I am much more religious than yourselves.
God, whom you invoke, better than you I serve.
This little heap of mud, for you, is the universe.
For me, in all points, the divine work elates.
You shrink it, and I make it dilate.
As we put kings in the chariot of the victor,
I put universes at the feet of the Creator.
Fragments of the dialogue between the Inquisitor and Galileo.
The Inquisitor
There is no truth, except in the Scriptures.
All the rest is error, visions, impostures.
What is believed to be contrary to their teaching
Is not clarity, it is loss of sighting!
Galileo
Yes, faith is governed by the rule of Christianity.
Their sole authority reigns in theology,
And worship must bow all minds
To the divine dogmas that it prescribes.
But the physical world escapes their domain.
God delivers it entirely to human argument.
As these are objects that are apparent,
The senses and reason show themselves to be omnipotent.
The authority is silent; no order can aspire
Unequal rays in the center of the sphere,
No one can accuse the compass of blasphemy,
Nor that a rotating body does not revolve, by decree.
The eye is the judge, in a word, of the universe, visible.
If the unchanging dogma is fixed by the Bible,
Science rejects immortality,
And, dying in chains, lives for liberty.
The Inquisitor
Now, don't you see that your new system,
Troubles astronomy, shaking faith itself?
The material error, admitted on one point,
Throughout the Testament, makes the witness suspect.
Whoever may have failed is, therefore, no longer infallible.
Doubt is allowed, examination is possible,
And we soon conclude, if judge we venture,
From false physics to false dogma.
……………………….
Galileo
Me, destroy the faith, when I aggrandize worshiping!
Showing God in his work, is it insulting him?
Ah! to understand it better, it is to adore him better,
And by disfiguring it, one does a dishonor.
The heavens, according to the Bible in which
We must trust, tell us the glory of its authorship!
Well I, better than anyone, listened to their story,
And I repeated it, as I learned from what heavens said.
……………………
Can the course of a new truth be stopped?
By stopping a drop, can the river be blocked?
Believe me, respect these aspirations,
They have many impulses and many expansions
To allow a jailer to hold them prisoners.
Leave the field open to them, or woe to the barriers!
- Ah! Rome, in the early days of your proscribed worship,
You said to oppose to the sword, only the spirit!
Did you only succeeded to change roles?
And you, yourself, oppose the sword to the word?
Antonia, daughter of Galileo, seeing her father proscribed, said to him:
Here is your Antigone. Yes, my pious love
Lead the outcast, conqueror of the sphinx of heaven.
Leading your staff from valley to valley,
I will say: "Give me bread for Galileo,
The one deprived of a home by the Christians,
Would have altars among pagan peoples."
Galileo probed the depths of heavens and revealed the plurality of material worlds. It was, as we have said, quite a revolution in ideas; a new field of exploration was opened to science. Spiritism comes to operate an equally great one, by revealing the existence of the spiritual world that surrounds us; thanks to that, man knows his past and his true destiny. Galileo overturned the barriers that circumscribed the universe; Spiritism inhabits and fills the void of infinite spaces. Although more than two centuries separate us from the discoveries of Galileo, many prejudices are still alive; the new emancipating doctrine encounters the same obstacles; it is attacked with the same weapons, opposed with the same arguments. By reading Mr. Ponsard's drama, we could give modern names to each of his characters. However, ill-will and persecution did not prevent Galileo's doctrine from succeeding, because it was the truth; it will be the same with Spiritism, because it is also a truth. Its detractors will be regarded, by the next generation, with the same eyes that we regard those of Galileo.
[1] Copernicus, Polish astronomer, born in Thorn (Prussian State) in 1473, died in 1543. Galileo, born in Florence in 1564, condemned in 1633, died blind in 1644. The system of Copernicus was already condemned by the Church.
Lumen, by Camille Flammarion
(2nd Article – see Spiritist Review, March 1867)
“We left Lumen in Capella, busy with considering the land he had just left. This world being located 170 trillion, 392 billion leagues from earth, and the light traveling at 70,000 leagues per second, it can only arrive from one to the other in 71 years, 8 months, and 24 days, i.e. in about 72 years. As a result, the ray of light, that bears the imprint of the image of earth, does not reach the inhabitants of Capella until 72 years have passed. Having Lumen died in 1864, and casting his sight onto Paris, he saw it as it was 72 years before, or in 1793, the year of his birth. Therefore, he was very surprised at first, to find it quite different from what he had seen it, to see alleys, convents, gardens, fields instead of avenues, new boulevards, railway stations, etc. He saw the Place de la Concorde occupied by a huge crowd and was an eyewitness to the event of January 21st. The theory of light gave him the key to this strange phenomenon. Here is the solution to some of the difficulties it raises.[1]
Sitiens. But then, if the past can thus merge into the present; if reality and vision come together in this way; whether long-dead characters can still be seen performing on the stage; if the new constructions and the metamorphoses of a city, like Paris, can disappear and let be seen, in their place, the city of the past; if, finally, the present can vanish for the resurrection of the past, what certainty can we henceforth trust? What happens to science and observation? What happens to deductions and theories? What is our most solid knowledge based on? And if these things are true, shouldn't we now doubt everything or believe everything?
Lumen. These considerations and many others, my friend, have absorbed and tormented me; but it did not prevent them from being the reality that I observed. When I was certain that we had the year 1793 before us, I immediately thought that science itself, instead of combating this reality (because two truths cannot be opposed to each other), had to give me the explanation. So, I questioned physics, and waited for its answer. (The scientific demonstration of the phenomenon follows).
Sitiens. Thus, the light ray is like a mail that brings us news of the state of the country that sends it, and if it takes 72 years to reach us, gives us the state of that country at the time of its departure, that is to say, almost 72 years before the moment when it gets to us.
Lumen. You guessed the mystery right. To speak more precisely still, the ray of light would be a letter that would bring us, not written news, but the photograph, or more rigorously still, the aspect itself of the country from which it came. So, when we examine the surface of a star with a telescope, we do not yet see this surface as it is at the very moment we observe it, but as it was when the light that reaches us from it was emitted by this surface.
Sitiens. So that if a star whose light takes, say, ten years to reach us, were suddenly destroyed today, we would still see it for ten years, since its last ray would not reach us for another ten years.
Lumen. It is precisely so. There is, therefore, a surprising transformation from past to present. For the star observed, it is the past, already gone; for the observer it is the present, the actual. The past of the star is rigorously and positively the present of the observer.
Lumen later sees himself as a child, at the age of six, playing and arguing with a bunch of other children at Panthéon Square.
Sitiens. I confess that it seems impossible to me that one can see oneself in this way. You cannot be two people. Since you were 72 years old when you died, your childhood state was past, gone, long passed out. You cannot see a thing that is no more. We cannot see ourselves as a double, a child and an old man.
Lumen. You have not thought enough, my friend. You have understood the general fact well enough to admit it; but you have not sufficiently observed that this last fact fits absolutely into the first one. You admit that the image of earth takes 72 years to come to me, don't you? That the events only happen to me at this interval, after they occurred? In short, that I see the world as it was at that time. You also admit that by seeing the streets of that time, I see, at the same time, the children running around in those streets? Well! Since I see this group of children; and that I was part of that group then, why do you want me not to see myself, as well as I see others?
Sitiens. But are you no longer there, in that group!
Lumen. Once again, that group itself no longer exists now, but I see it as it existed at the moment when the ray of light that reaches me today left, and since I distinguish the fifteen or eighteen children in the group, there is no reason why the child who was me should disappear, because I am the one watching him. Other observers would see him in the company of his mates. Why do you want an exception when it's me watching? I see them all, and I see myself with them.
Lumen reviews the series of major political events that have taken place from 1793 until 1864, when he sees himself on his deathbed.
Sitiens. Have these events passed quickly before your eyes?
Lumen. I cannot appreciate the measure of time; but all this retrospective panorama certainly took place in less than a day… in a few hours, perhaps.
Sitiens. So, I don't understand anymore. If 72 earth years have passed before your eyes, it should have taken exactly 72 years to appear to you, not a few hours. If the year 1793 appeared to you only in 1864, the year 1864, in turn, should therefore not appear to you until 1936.
Lumen. Your objection is well founded and proves to me that you have correctly understood the theory of the fact. Thus, I will explain to you how it was not necessary for me to wait another 72 years to review my life, and how, under the impulse of an unconscious force, I did indeed see it again in less than a day.
Continuing to follow my existence, I arrived at the last remarkable years for the radical transformation that Paris had undergone; I saw my last friends and yourself; my family and my circle of acquaintances; and finally, the moment arrived when I saw myself lying on my deathbed, and witnessed the last scene. This is to tell you that I was back on earth.
Attracted by the contemplation that absorbed it, my soul had quickly forgotten the mountain of the old men and Capella. As we, sometimes, feel in dreams, it flew towards the goal of its gazes. I did not notice it at first, so much the strange vision captivated all my senses. I cannot tell you by what law, nor by what power, how souls can be transported so rapidly from one place to another; but the truth is that I had returned to earth, in less than a day, and that I was entering my room at the very moment of my funeral.
Since, in this return journey, I was going in front of the rays of light, I constantly shortened the distance that separated me from earth; light had less and less distance to travel, and thus narrowed the succession of events. In the middle of the path, when I was only 36 years old, they no longer showed me the land of 72 years before, but 36. Three quarters of the way, and the images were only 18 years late. Halfway through the last shift, they happened to me only 9 years after they had happened, and so on; so that the whole series of my existence was condensed in less than a day, owing to the rapid return of my soul, ahead of the rays of light.
When Lumen arrived in Capella, he saw a group of old men engaged in considerations about earth, and talking about the event of 1793; one of them said to his companions:
On your knees, my brothers; let us ask the universal God for indulgence. This world, this nation, this city is soiled with a great crime; the head of an innocent king has just fallen. I approached the elder, said Lumen, and asked him to recount his observations to me.
He taught me that, by the intuition with which the Spirits at the level of those that inhabit this world are endowed, and by the intimate faculty of perception that they shared, they possess a kind of magnetic relation with the neighboring stars. These stars are twelve or fifteen in number; they are the closest ones; outside this region, perception becomes confused. Our sun is one of these neighboring stars[2]. They thus know, vaguely but appreciably, the state of the humanities that inhabit the planets dependent on this sun, and their relative degree of intellectual and moral elevation.
Moreover, when a great disturbance hits one of these humanities, either in the physical order or in the moral order, they undergo a kind of intimate commotion, as one sees a vibrating string causing a vibration onto another string, located at a distance. For a year (the year of that world is equal to ten of ours), they felt drawn by a particular emotion towards the terrestrial planet; and the observers had followed with interest and concern the progress of this world.”
We would be mistaken if we were to infer from the above that the inhabitants of the different globes keep, from the point where they are, an investigative look at what is happening in the other worlds, and that the events that take place there pass before their eyes as in the field of a telescope. Besides, each world has its special concerns that captivate the attention of its inhabitants, according to their own needs, their very different habits, and their degree of advancement. When the Spirits incarnated in a planet have a personal motive to be interested in what is happening in another world, or in some of those that inhabit it, their soul is transported there, as did that of Lumen, in the state of detachment, and then they temporarily become, so to speak, spiritual inhabitants of that world, or else they incarnate there in a mission. This is, at least, what results from the teaching of the Spirits. This last part of Lumen's account, therefore, lacks accuracy; but we must not lose sight of the fact that this story is only a hypothesis, intended to make more accessible to the understanding, and in a way palpable by the putting into action the demonstration of a scientific theory, as we observed in our preceding article. We draw attention to the paragraph above where it says: "The great physical and moral disturbances of a world produce on the neighboring worlds a kind of intimate commotion, as a vibrating string makes another string vibrate placed at a distance.” The author, who does not speak lightly in science, sets out a principle that could one day be converted into law. Science already admits, as a result of observation, the reciprocal material action of the stars. If, as one begins to suspect, this action, increased by the fact of certain circumstances, can cause disturbances and cataclysms, it would not be impossible that these same disturbances had their backlash. So far, science has considered only the material principle; but if we take into account the spiritual principle as an active element of the universe, and if we consider that this principle is just as general and just as essential as the material principle, we can imagine that a great effervescence of this element and the modifications that it undergoes, at a given point, may have their reaction, in consequence of the necessary correlation that exists between matter and spirit. There is, certainly, in this idea, the germ of a fruitful principle and of a serious study to which Spiritism opens the way.
[1] According to the calculation, and because of the distance from the sun, that is 38 million, 230 thousand leagues, and 4 kilometers, the light of this star reaches us in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. It follows that a phenomenon that would occur on its surface would appear to us only 8 min. 13 s later, and that if the phenomenon were instantaneous, it would no longer exist when we saw it. The distance from the moon being only 85 thousand leagues, its light reaches us in about a second, and a quarter, the disturbances that could occur there would appear to us, therefore, at about the time where they take place. If Lumen had been on the moon, he would have seen the Paris of 1864, and not that of 1793; if he had been in a world twice as distant as Capella, he would have seen the Regency.
[2] 170 trillion, 392 billion leagues! By the distance that separates the neighboring stars one can assess the extent occupied by all those that to us appear to be so close to each other, without counting the infinitely greater number of those that are only perceptible by the telescope, and that are themselves only a tiny fraction of those that, lost in the depths of infinity, escape all our means of investigation. If we consider that each star is a sun, the center of a planetary vortex, we will understand that our own vortex is only a point in this immensity. What then is our 3,000 leagues in diameter globe, among those billions of worlds? What are its inhabitants who have long believed their little world to be the central point of the universe, and have believed themselves the only living beings of creation, concentrating in themselves alone the concerns and solicitude of the Eternal, and believing, in good faith, that the spectacle of heavens was only made to entertain their sight? This whole egoistic and petty system, that for many centuries formed the basis of religious faith, collapsed before the discoveries of Galileo.
Sitiens. But then, if the past can thus merge into the present; if reality and vision come together in this way; whether long-dead characters can still be seen performing on the stage; if the new constructions and the metamorphoses of a city, like Paris, can disappear and let be seen, in their place, the city of the past; if, finally, the present can vanish for the resurrection of the past, what certainty can we henceforth trust? What happens to science and observation? What happens to deductions and theories? What is our most solid knowledge based on? And if these things are true, shouldn't we now doubt everything or believe everything?
Lumen. These considerations and many others, my friend, have absorbed and tormented me; but it did not prevent them from being the reality that I observed. When I was certain that we had the year 1793 before us, I immediately thought that science itself, instead of combating this reality (because two truths cannot be opposed to each other), had to give me the explanation. So, I questioned physics, and waited for its answer. (The scientific demonstration of the phenomenon follows).
Sitiens. Thus, the light ray is like a mail that brings us news of the state of the country that sends it, and if it takes 72 years to reach us, gives us the state of that country at the time of its departure, that is to say, almost 72 years before the moment when it gets to us.
Lumen. You guessed the mystery right. To speak more precisely still, the ray of light would be a letter that would bring us, not written news, but the photograph, or more rigorously still, the aspect itself of the country from which it came. So, when we examine the surface of a star with a telescope, we do not yet see this surface as it is at the very moment we observe it, but as it was when the light that reaches us from it was emitted by this surface.
Sitiens. So that if a star whose light takes, say, ten years to reach us, were suddenly destroyed today, we would still see it for ten years, since its last ray would not reach us for another ten years.
Lumen. It is precisely so. There is, therefore, a surprising transformation from past to present. For the star observed, it is the past, already gone; for the observer it is the present, the actual. The past of the star is rigorously and positively the present of the observer.
Lumen later sees himself as a child, at the age of six, playing and arguing with a bunch of other children at Panthéon Square.
Sitiens. I confess that it seems impossible to me that one can see oneself in this way. You cannot be two people. Since you were 72 years old when you died, your childhood state was past, gone, long passed out. You cannot see a thing that is no more. We cannot see ourselves as a double, a child and an old man.
Lumen. You have not thought enough, my friend. You have understood the general fact well enough to admit it; but you have not sufficiently observed that this last fact fits absolutely into the first one. You admit that the image of earth takes 72 years to come to me, don't you? That the events only happen to me at this interval, after they occurred? In short, that I see the world as it was at that time. You also admit that by seeing the streets of that time, I see, at the same time, the children running around in those streets? Well! Since I see this group of children; and that I was part of that group then, why do you want me not to see myself, as well as I see others?
Sitiens. But are you no longer there, in that group!
Lumen. Once again, that group itself no longer exists now, but I see it as it existed at the moment when the ray of light that reaches me today left, and since I distinguish the fifteen or eighteen children in the group, there is no reason why the child who was me should disappear, because I am the one watching him. Other observers would see him in the company of his mates. Why do you want an exception when it's me watching? I see them all, and I see myself with them.
Lumen reviews the series of major political events that have taken place from 1793 until 1864, when he sees himself on his deathbed.
Sitiens. Have these events passed quickly before your eyes?
Lumen. I cannot appreciate the measure of time; but all this retrospective panorama certainly took place in less than a day… in a few hours, perhaps.
Sitiens. So, I don't understand anymore. If 72 earth years have passed before your eyes, it should have taken exactly 72 years to appear to you, not a few hours. If the year 1793 appeared to you only in 1864, the year 1864, in turn, should therefore not appear to you until 1936.
Lumen. Your objection is well founded and proves to me that you have correctly understood the theory of the fact. Thus, I will explain to you how it was not necessary for me to wait another 72 years to review my life, and how, under the impulse of an unconscious force, I did indeed see it again in less than a day.
Continuing to follow my existence, I arrived at the last remarkable years for the radical transformation that Paris had undergone; I saw my last friends and yourself; my family and my circle of acquaintances; and finally, the moment arrived when I saw myself lying on my deathbed, and witnessed the last scene. This is to tell you that I was back on earth.
Attracted by the contemplation that absorbed it, my soul had quickly forgotten the mountain of the old men and Capella. As we, sometimes, feel in dreams, it flew towards the goal of its gazes. I did not notice it at first, so much the strange vision captivated all my senses. I cannot tell you by what law, nor by what power, how souls can be transported so rapidly from one place to another; but the truth is that I had returned to earth, in less than a day, and that I was entering my room at the very moment of my funeral.
Since, in this return journey, I was going in front of the rays of light, I constantly shortened the distance that separated me from earth; light had less and less distance to travel, and thus narrowed the succession of events. In the middle of the path, when I was only 36 years old, they no longer showed me the land of 72 years before, but 36. Three quarters of the way, and the images were only 18 years late. Halfway through the last shift, they happened to me only 9 years after they had happened, and so on; so that the whole series of my existence was condensed in less than a day, owing to the rapid return of my soul, ahead of the rays of light.
When Lumen arrived in Capella, he saw a group of old men engaged in considerations about earth, and talking about the event of 1793; one of them said to his companions:
On your knees, my brothers; let us ask the universal God for indulgence. This world, this nation, this city is soiled with a great crime; the head of an innocent king has just fallen. I approached the elder, said Lumen, and asked him to recount his observations to me.
He taught me that, by the intuition with which the Spirits at the level of those that inhabit this world are endowed, and by the intimate faculty of perception that they shared, they possess a kind of magnetic relation with the neighboring stars. These stars are twelve or fifteen in number; they are the closest ones; outside this region, perception becomes confused. Our sun is one of these neighboring stars[2]. They thus know, vaguely but appreciably, the state of the humanities that inhabit the planets dependent on this sun, and their relative degree of intellectual and moral elevation.
Moreover, when a great disturbance hits one of these humanities, either in the physical order or in the moral order, they undergo a kind of intimate commotion, as one sees a vibrating string causing a vibration onto another string, located at a distance. For a year (the year of that world is equal to ten of ours), they felt drawn by a particular emotion towards the terrestrial planet; and the observers had followed with interest and concern the progress of this world.”
We would be mistaken if we were to infer from the above that the inhabitants of the different globes keep, from the point where they are, an investigative look at what is happening in the other worlds, and that the events that take place there pass before their eyes as in the field of a telescope. Besides, each world has its special concerns that captivate the attention of its inhabitants, according to their own needs, their very different habits, and their degree of advancement. When the Spirits incarnated in a planet have a personal motive to be interested in what is happening in another world, or in some of those that inhabit it, their soul is transported there, as did that of Lumen, in the state of detachment, and then they temporarily become, so to speak, spiritual inhabitants of that world, or else they incarnate there in a mission. This is, at least, what results from the teaching of the Spirits. This last part of Lumen's account, therefore, lacks accuracy; but we must not lose sight of the fact that this story is only a hypothesis, intended to make more accessible to the understanding, and in a way palpable by the putting into action the demonstration of a scientific theory, as we observed in our preceding article. We draw attention to the paragraph above where it says: "The great physical and moral disturbances of a world produce on the neighboring worlds a kind of intimate commotion, as a vibrating string makes another string vibrate placed at a distance.” The author, who does not speak lightly in science, sets out a principle that could one day be converted into law. Science already admits, as a result of observation, the reciprocal material action of the stars. If, as one begins to suspect, this action, increased by the fact of certain circumstances, can cause disturbances and cataclysms, it would not be impossible that these same disturbances had their backlash. So far, science has considered only the material principle; but if we take into account the spiritual principle as an active element of the universe, and if we consider that this principle is just as general and just as essential as the material principle, we can imagine that a great effervescence of this element and the modifications that it undergoes, at a given point, may have their reaction, in consequence of the necessary correlation that exists between matter and spirit. There is, certainly, in this idea, the germ of a fruitful principle and of a serious study to which Spiritism opens the way.
[1] According to the calculation, and because of the distance from the sun, that is 38 million, 230 thousand leagues, and 4 kilometers, the light of this star reaches us in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. It follows that a phenomenon that would occur on its surface would appear to us only 8 min. 13 s later, and that if the phenomenon were instantaneous, it would no longer exist when we saw it. The distance from the moon being only 85 thousand leagues, its light reaches us in about a second, and a quarter, the disturbances that could occur there would appear to us, therefore, at about the time where they take place. If Lumen had been on the moon, he would have seen the Paris of 1864, and not that of 1793; if he had been in a world twice as distant as Capella, he would have seen the Regency.
[2] 170 trillion, 392 billion leagues! By the distance that separates the neighboring stars one can assess the extent occupied by all those that to us appear to be so close to each other, without counting the infinitely greater number of those that are only perceptible by the telescope, and that are themselves only a tiny fraction of those that, lost in the depths of infinity, escape all our means of investigation. If we consider that each star is a sun, the center of a planetary vortex, we will understand that our own vortex is only a point in this immensity. What then is our 3,000 leagues in diameter globe, among those billions of worlds? What are its inhabitants who have long believed their little world to be the central point of the universe, and have believed themselves the only living beings of creation, concentrating in themselves alone the concerns and solicitude of the Eternal, and believing, in good faith, that the spectacle of heavens was only made to entertain their sight? This whole egoistic and petty system, that for many centuries formed the basis of religious faith, collapsed before the discoveries of Galileo.
Spiritist Dissertations
Spiritist DissertationsSpiritual Life
Group Lampérière, January 9th, 1867 – medium Mr. Delanne
“I am here, happy to come and greet you, encourage you and tell you this:
Brothers, God fills you with his blessings, promising you, in these times of disbelief, to breathe deeply the air of spiritual life that blows vigorously through the compact masses.
Believe your former member, believe your intimate friend, your brother by heart, thoughts, and faith; believe in the truths that are taught: they are as certain as logical; believe in me who, a few days ago, contented myself, like you do, with believing and hoping, while today, the sweet fiction is for me an immense and deep truth. I touch, I see, I am, I possess, therefore, this exists; I analyze my impressions from today and compare them to those still fresh from the day before.
Not only am I allowed to compare, to synthesize, to weigh in my actions, my thoughts, my reflections, to judge them by the criterion of my common sense, but I see them, I feel them, I am an eyewitness, I am the realized thing; they are no longer consoling hypotheses, golden dreams, hopes, it is more than a moral certainty: it is the real, tangible fact, the material fact that we touch, that grasps us in its tangible form, and says: that is.
Here, everything breathes calm, wisdom, happiness; everything is harmony, everything says: This is the pinnacle of intimate sense; no more chimeras, false joys, no more childish fears, no more false shame, no more doubts, no more anxieties, no more falsehoods, no more this ugly procession of fabulous sorrows, of gross mistakes, as we see every day on Earth.
Here, one is instilled with an ineffable tranquility; we admire, we pray, we worship, we render thanksgiving to the sublime author of so many benefits, we study, and we catch a glimpse of all the infinite powers; we see the movement of the laws that govern nature. Each work has a goal that leads to love, the tuning fork of the general harmony. We see progress presiding over all physical and moral transformations, for progress is infinite, like God that created it. Everything is understandable; everything is neat, precise; no more abstractions, for we touch with our fingers and our reason the why of human things. The advanced spiritual legions have only one goal, that of becoming useful to their backward brethren, to raise them up to them.
So, work without stopping, according to your own strength, my good brothers, to improve yourself, to be useful to your fellow human beings; not only will you take the doctrine, that is your joy, a step, but you will also have contributed powerfully to the progress of your planet; following the example of the great Christian legislator, you will be men, men of love, and you will help to establish the reign of God on Earth.
The one that is still, and more than ever, your fellow student.
Leclerc.”
Observation: Such, in fact, is the character of the spiritual life; but it would be a mistake to believe that it is enough to be a Spirit to consider it from this point of view. It is with the spiritual world, as it is with the corporeal world: in order to appreciate things from a high order, an intellectual and moral development is necessary, that is peculiar only to advanced Spirits; belated Spirits are foreign to what takes place in the high spiritual spheres, as they were, on Earth, to what is esteemed by enlightened men, because they cannot understand it; since their thought is circumscribed to a limited horizon, they are not able to embrace the infinite, they cannot have the pleasures that result from the widening of the sphere of spiritual activity. The sum of happiness, in the world of the Spirits, is therefore, by the very nature of things, proportional to the development of the moral sense; hence, it follows that by working down here for our improvement and our instruction, we increase the sources of happiness for the future life. For the materialist, work has only a limited result to the present life, that can end at any moment; the Spiritist, on the contrary, knows that nothing that he acquires, even at the last hour, is wasted, and that any accomplished progress will be beneficial to him.
The profound considerations of our former colleague, Mr. Leclerc, on the spiritual life, are therefore proof of his advancement in the hierarchy of the Spirits, and we congratulate him for that.
Brothers, God fills you with his blessings, promising you, in these times of disbelief, to breathe deeply the air of spiritual life that blows vigorously through the compact masses.
Believe your former member, believe your intimate friend, your brother by heart, thoughts, and faith; believe in the truths that are taught: they are as certain as logical; believe in me who, a few days ago, contented myself, like you do, with believing and hoping, while today, the sweet fiction is for me an immense and deep truth. I touch, I see, I am, I possess, therefore, this exists; I analyze my impressions from today and compare them to those still fresh from the day before.
Not only am I allowed to compare, to synthesize, to weigh in my actions, my thoughts, my reflections, to judge them by the criterion of my common sense, but I see them, I feel them, I am an eyewitness, I am the realized thing; they are no longer consoling hypotheses, golden dreams, hopes, it is more than a moral certainty: it is the real, tangible fact, the material fact that we touch, that grasps us in its tangible form, and says: that is.
Here, everything breathes calm, wisdom, happiness; everything is harmony, everything says: This is the pinnacle of intimate sense; no more chimeras, false joys, no more childish fears, no more false shame, no more doubts, no more anxieties, no more falsehoods, no more this ugly procession of fabulous sorrows, of gross mistakes, as we see every day on Earth.
Here, one is instilled with an ineffable tranquility; we admire, we pray, we worship, we render thanksgiving to the sublime author of so many benefits, we study, and we catch a glimpse of all the infinite powers; we see the movement of the laws that govern nature. Each work has a goal that leads to love, the tuning fork of the general harmony. We see progress presiding over all physical and moral transformations, for progress is infinite, like God that created it. Everything is understandable; everything is neat, precise; no more abstractions, for we touch with our fingers and our reason the why of human things. The advanced spiritual legions have only one goal, that of becoming useful to their backward brethren, to raise them up to them.
So, work without stopping, according to your own strength, my good brothers, to improve yourself, to be useful to your fellow human beings; not only will you take the doctrine, that is your joy, a step, but you will also have contributed powerfully to the progress of your planet; following the example of the great Christian legislator, you will be men, men of love, and you will help to establish the reign of God on Earth.
The one that is still, and more than ever, your fellow student.
Leclerc.”
Observation: Such, in fact, is the character of the spiritual life; but it would be a mistake to believe that it is enough to be a Spirit to consider it from this point of view. It is with the spiritual world, as it is with the corporeal world: in order to appreciate things from a high order, an intellectual and moral development is necessary, that is peculiar only to advanced Spirits; belated Spirits are foreign to what takes place in the high spiritual spheres, as they were, on Earth, to what is esteemed by enlightened men, because they cannot understand it; since their thought is circumscribed to a limited horizon, they are not able to embrace the infinite, they cannot have the pleasures that result from the widening of the sphere of spiritual activity. The sum of happiness, in the world of the Spirits, is therefore, by the very nature of things, proportional to the development of the moral sense; hence, it follows that by working down here for our improvement and our instruction, we increase the sources of happiness for the future life. For the materialist, work has only a limited result to the present life, that can end at any moment; the Spiritist, on the contrary, knows that nothing that he acquires, even at the last hour, is wasted, and that any accomplished progress will be beneficial to him.
The profound considerations of our former colleague, Mr. Leclerc, on the spiritual life, are therefore proof of his advancement in the hierarchy of the Spirits, and we congratulate him for that.
Earthly proofs of men on a mission
Douay, March 8th, 1867 – medium Mrs. M…
“… The blood must, my children, purify the earth; terrible struggle, more horrible still by the splendor of the civilization amid which it breaks out. Oh, Lord! when everything is being prepared to strengthen the bonds of peoples from one end of the world to the other, when in the dawn of material fraternity we see the lines of demarcation of races, customs, and language tending to unity, the war comes, war and its entourage of ruins, fires, deep divisions, and religious hatred; yes, all that because nothing in our progress has followed the Spirit of God; because your bonds were not tightened neither by kindness nor by loyalty, but by interest alone; because it is not true charity that imposes silence to religious hatreds, but indifference; because the barriers were not lowered at your frontiers by the love of all, but by mercantile calculations; finally, because the views are human and instinctive and not spiritual and charitable; because the rulers only seek their own interests and each one of the peoples does the same.
Sublime selflessness of Jesus and his apostles, where are you? You are saddened, my children, when you sometimes think of the harsh mission of these sublime Spirits, that come to lift the courage of humanity, and die at the task, after having emptied the cup of human ingratitude. You moan when you see that the Lord, who sent them, seems to abandon them, when his protection seems most necessary. Have you not been told of the trials that the superior Spirits endure when they take a higher step in their spiritual initiative? Have you not been told that each rank of the celestial hierarchy is acquired by merit, by dedication, like with you in the army, by the bloodshed and by the services accomplished? Well, that is the case with the Messiahs in this land of sorrows; they are supported while their humanitarian work lasts, as long as they work for man and for God, but, when they alone are at stake, when their ordeal becomes individual, the visible help disappears, and the struggle becomes as bitter and harsh as man must endure it.
That is the explanation for this apparent abandonment, that afflicts you in the life of missionaries of all ranks of your humanity. Do not ever think that God abandons his creature out of whim or powerlessness; no, but in the interest of one’s own advancement, He leaves it to one’s own strength, to the entire use of one’s free will.
Cura D’Ars.”
Sublime selflessness of Jesus and his apostles, where are you? You are saddened, my children, when you sometimes think of the harsh mission of these sublime Spirits, that come to lift the courage of humanity, and die at the task, after having emptied the cup of human ingratitude. You moan when you see that the Lord, who sent them, seems to abandon them, when his protection seems most necessary. Have you not been told of the trials that the superior Spirits endure when they take a higher step in their spiritual initiative? Have you not been told that each rank of the celestial hierarchy is acquired by merit, by dedication, like with you in the army, by the bloodshed and by the services accomplished? Well, that is the case with the Messiahs in this land of sorrows; they are supported while their humanitarian work lasts, as long as they work for man and for God, but, when they alone are at stake, when their ordeal becomes individual, the visible help disappears, and the struggle becomes as bitter and harsh as man must endure it.
That is the explanation for this apparent abandonment, that afflicts you in the life of missionaries of all ranks of your humanity. Do not ever think that God abandons his creature out of whim or powerlessness; no, but in the interest of one’s own advancement, He leaves it to one’s own strength, to the entire use of one’s free will.
Cura D’Ars.”
The genius
Douay, March 13th, 1867 – medium Mrs. M…
“Question: Is the genius assigned to each Spirit according to their acquired knowledge, or according to a divine law in relation to the needs of a people or of humanity?
Answer: Genius, dear children, is the radiation of previous achievements. This radiation is the state of the Spirit in detachment or in the superior incarnations: there are, therefore, two distinctions to be made. The most ordinary genius, among you, is simply the state of a Spirit of which one or two faculties have remained unveiled, and able to act freely; he received a body that allows them to flourish in their acquired plenitude. The other kind of genius is the Spirit that comes from the happy and advanced worlds, where the acquisitions are universal, on all points; where all the faculties of the soul have come to a prominent degree, unknown on earth. These kinds of geniuses are distinguished from the first, by an exceptional aptitude for all talents, all studies. They conceive of all things by a sure intuition and that confuses the science learned from the most renowned. They excel in goodness, in greatness of soul, in true nobility, in excellent works. They are lighthouses, initiators, examples. They are men from other lands, who have come to shine light from above onto a dark world, just as one sends a few scholars from a civilized capital among barbarians, to educate them; such were among you the men who, at various times, have advanced humanity, the wise men who have pushed back the limits of knowledge, and dispelled the darkness of ignorance. They saw and foresaw the earthly destiny, however far they were from the accomplishment of this destiny; they all laid the foundations of some science or were its culmination.
The genius, therefore, is not gratuitous, and is not subordinated to a law; it comes from man himself and his antecedents. Consider that the background is all human. The criminal is by his antecedents; the man of merit and the man of genius are superior for the same reason. Not everything is veiled in the incarnation to the point that it does not touch our former being. Intelligence and goodness are too bright lights, too brilliant foci for earthly life to have them reduced to darkness.
The trials to be undergone may well veil, attenuate some of our faculties, put them to sleep, but if they have reached a high degree, the Spirit cannot entirely lose their possession and their exercise; he has the assurance that he has them at his disposal; often he cannot even consent to deprive himself of them. This is what causes the painful lives of certain advanced men who have preferred to suffer through their high faculties rather than let them vanish for a time.
Yes, we are all by hope, and some by memory, citizens of these high celestial spheres where thought radiates pure and powerful. Yes, we will all be Platos, Aristotles, Erasmus; our Spirit will no longer see its achievements fading under the weight of the life of the body or die out under the weight of old age and illnesses.
Friends, this is truly the most sublime hope; given all this, what are the dignities and treasures that were placed at the feet of these men? The sovereigns begged for their works, strived for their presence. Do you think these vain honors flattered them? No. The memory of their glorious homeland was too vivid. They went back, happily, on the shine of their glory, to those worlds that their Spirit longed for incessantly.
Earth! Earth! Cold, dark, restless region; blind, ungrateful, and rebellious land! You could not make them forget the heavenly homeland where they had lived, where they were returning to live.
Farewell, friends, rest assured that every good man will become a citizen of these happy worlds, of these splendid Jerusalems, where the Spirit lives free in an ethereal body, possessing all his assets, without clouds and without veil. You will then know all that you aspire to know, you will understand all that you seek to understand, even my name, dear medium, that I do not want to tell you.
A Spirit.”
Answer: Genius, dear children, is the radiation of previous achievements. This radiation is the state of the Spirit in detachment or in the superior incarnations: there are, therefore, two distinctions to be made. The most ordinary genius, among you, is simply the state of a Spirit of which one or two faculties have remained unveiled, and able to act freely; he received a body that allows them to flourish in their acquired plenitude. The other kind of genius is the Spirit that comes from the happy and advanced worlds, where the acquisitions are universal, on all points; where all the faculties of the soul have come to a prominent degree, unknown on earth. These kinds of geniuses are distinguished from the first, by an exceptional aptitude for all talents, all studies. They conceive of all things by a sure intuition and that confuses the science learned from the most renowned. They excel in goodness, in greatness of soul, in true nobility, in excellent works. They are lighthouses, initiators, examples. They are men from other lands, who have come to shine light from above onto a dark world, just as one sends a few scholars from a civilized capital among barbarians, to educate them; such were among you the men who, at various times, have advanced humanity, the wise men who have pushed back the limits of knowledge, and dispelled the darkness of ignorance. They saw and foresaw the earthly destiny, however far they were from the accomplishment of this destiny; they all laid the foundations of some science or were its culmination.
The genius, therefore, is not gratuitous, and is not subordinated to a law; it comes from man himself and his antecedents. Consider that the background is all human. The criminal is by his antecedents; the man of merit and the man of genius are superior for the same reason. Not everything is veiled in the incarnation to the point that it does not touch our former being. Intelligence and goodness are too bright lights, too brilliant foci for earthly life to have them reduced to darkness.
The trials to be undergone may well veil, attenuate some of our faculties, put them to sleep, but if they have reached a high degree, the Spirit cannot entirely lose their possession and their exercise; he has the assurance that he has them at his disposal; often he cannot even consent to deprive himself of them. This is what causes the painful lives of certain advanced men who have preferred to suffer through their high faculties rather than let them vanish for a time.
Yes, we are all by hope, and some by memory, citizens of these high celestial spheres where thought radiates pure and powerful. Yes, we will all be Platos, Aristotles, Erasmus; our Spirit will no longer see its achievements fading under the weight of the life of the body or die out under the weight of old age and illnesses.
Friends, this is truly the most sublime hope; given all this, what are the dignities and treasures that were placed at the feet of these men? The sovereigns begged for their works, strived for their presence. Do you think these vain honors flattered them? No. The memory of their glorious homeland was too vivid. They went back, happily, on the shine of their glory, to those worlds that their Spirit longed for incessantly.
Earth! Earth! Cold, dark, restless region; blind, ungrateful, and rebellious land! You could not make them forget the heavenly homeland where they had lived, where they were returning to live.
Farewell, friends, rest assured that every good man will become a citizen of these happy worlds, of these splendid Jerusalems, where the Spirit lives free in an ethereal body, possessing all his assets, without clouds and without veil. You will then know all that you aspire to know, you will understand all that you seek to understand, even my name, dear medium, that I do not want to tell you.
A Spirit.”