Note XV.

As an exposition of the doctrine of free will and of various other questions treated in this book, we transcribe verbatim the evocation of a man eminent in learning, recently deceased. The elevation of the thoughts he expresses is an indication of the superiority of his Spirit.

In the name of Almighty God, we ask you, Spirit Théophile Z…, to come to us and to deign, with the permission of God, to answer our questions. — I am here; what do you want of me?

Could you give us your impressions after you left the body? — I will tell you that I did not expect to have any, and that the astonishment was therefore greater in me than in many others, for, I confess, I was far from thinking of impressions felt at such a moment, even believing that this parcel of life that animates us returned to the great whole.

Then you did not believe in the immortality of the soul? — You will understand how difficult it is for a man who has a little reasoning to believe in hell and in beings of little advancement; I thought it better to believe that the soul was nothing but an electric spark that returned to its focus of origin.

Is your way of viewing the soul still the same as before death? — No; I had many doubts; now I have none. I know that not everything ends when the material envelope falls; on the contrary, it is only then that we are ourselves.

Where do you wander now? — Wandering on this globe, contributing to the happiness of men.

In what can you contribute to the happiness of men? — By helping them in the reforms that are necessary.

Will you remain wandering for a long time? — My mission, as a wandering spirit, is, so to speak, only beginning. I am going to try to inspire men in various grave questions.

Will you succeed in your mission? — Not so easily as I would like; as you know, we are loath to abandon old habits and men are stubborn.

Are you happy in the state in which you now find yourself? — I am very happy in the present state in which I find myself; I know that my task is beautiful, though difficult, and I also know that I am going to be born in a superior world when my mission is over.

Do you confirm, then, the doctrine of reincarnation? — Yes; why not? Do you believe that in this existence you will have acquired all knowledge? Certainly, if you practice evil, you will be punished, but by means of a life of trials in which you will not be conscious of what is evil.

Before your last existence were you incarnated on Earth? — No, on Saturn.

When you dwelt on Saturn did you come to recognize some evil in yourself? — Yes, as you see some in yourself; would you dare, perchance, to say that you are perfect? I tell you that I felt in myself the evil of ignorance, and that, being on Saturn, where the inhabitant is a little more perfect than on Earth, I felt myself somewhat out of place, for I well knew that I had not acquired, through the trials of the inferior worlds, the happiness that I enjoyed by finding myself in a world so humane and so fraternal. I was exactly like an ignorant and coarse peasant suddenly placed in the midst of the most illustrious court. How is it explained that you should have been on Saturn before acquiring sufficient perfection to remain there at ease? — A stimulus for me to instruct myself on other planets, in order to be able to go to worlds superior even to Saturn, which is still very imperfect.

Under what form do you find yourself among us and what idea could we form of your presence? — A semimaterial form.

Does that semimaterial form have the appearance you had when you lived? — Yes.

Are you glad that we evoked you? — Yes; because, in being evoked, I can speak to you of the impressions we have after leaving this life, and that is great instruction for men.

When you lived on Earth, what was your opinion about the free will of man and what is it now? — I believed that man was free to conduct himself well or ill; now, however, I define this better; on Earth I admitted this liberty because I saw only the present life. Now I believe in it firmly, for I now know that man, in the state of Spirit, is the one who chooses his career. This that I do now, I asked for it; it is only the continuation of the existence that I led there. Liberty is relative to the trial that we choose. There is liberty of good and of evil whenever it depends on the will; but, once again: liberty is relative to the trial that we choose. Yes, the free will of man exists; there is no fatality as you understand it. Free will consists in the choice of our future life, in the instants of detachment of the Spirit, and in the acceptance of all the consequences that proceed from it. Thus, if each one examines his previous position and his present position in this life, he will see that he always had to struggle against evil and that often he was the stronger. A consequence of the position that you accepted. Is evil a necessity? — Yes; without evil we would be incapable of discerning good. It was through having consciousness of the evil that was in me that I chose this existence. To do good is to extirpate evil; as progress is constant, evil must disappear. The free will of man consists principally in our improving ourselves in each one of the phases of our existence.

Can man, by force of his will and of his acts, prevent events that were to take place from taking place, and vice versa? — He can, if that apparent deviation can fit within the life he chose. Furthermore, in order to do good as it should be done, as the sole end of life, he can prevent evil, above all that which may contribute to keeping a greater evil from happening; because here, as in all other worlds, progress is continual: it suffers no interruptions. Are there facts that must necessarily happen? — Yes, but which, in the state of Spirit, you saw and foresaw in making your choice. If you burn your finger, that has little importance: it is a consequence of matter. Only the great pains that bear upon the moral nature are foreseen by God, because they are useful to your purification and instruction. [Question 859 a.]

Listen! When we choose an existence, the hour, as you call it, is unknown to us. We know that, choosing such a path, we will acquire knowledge that is necessary to us; but, as you were told a moment ago, we do not calculate time as you others do, principally in the state of Spirit, when we have perfect consciousness that a century, such as you consider it, is nothing but a second in eternity, the epochs mattering little to us. Did the one who dies murdered know beforehand by what kind of death he was going to perish, and can he avoid it? — We already know that we are going to die murdered, but we do not know by whom... Wait! We know that we are going to die murdered, just as we also know, if we choose that life, of the struggles we have to wage to prevent it from happening, and that, if God permits it, we will not be murdered.

Did the man who commits a murder already know, in choosing such an existence, that he would become a murderer? — No; choosing a life of struggles, he knows that he will have a chance of killing one of his fellow men, but he does not know whether he will do it, since almost always he finds himself in struggle with himself. [Question 861.]

Why must we not know the nature and the epoch of future events? — In order that these take place when God wills, and that, being ignorant of them, you work with zeal, since all must contribute to them, even to the harmful ones. If you know that something is to happen in six months, for example, you will say: I can do nothing, it is going to happen in six months anyway. That must not be so.

* * * The question of free will and of fatality could not be better elucidated than it was by this communication. It can be summed up thus: man is not fatally led to evil; the acts he performs are not written beforehand; the crimes he commits do not result from a sentence of destiny. He can, as a trial or expiation, choose an existence in which he is dragged into crime, whether by the milieu in which he finds himself placed, whether by the circumstances that supervene, whether even by the very organization of the body, in giving him such or such a predisposition; nevertheless, he will always have the liberty to act or not to act. Thus, free will exists in the choice of the existence and of the trials that the Spirit elected in erraticity and, in the condition of one incarnated, in the faculty of yielding to or resisting the impulses to which we are all voluntarily subjected. It falls to education to combat these evil tendencies, and it will do so in an efficient manner when it is based on the deepened study of the moral nature of man. Through the knowledge of the laws that govern this moral nature, one will come to modify it, as one modifies the intelligence through instruction and the temperament through hygiene. [Question 872.]