Example 3 - THE REPROACHES OF A BOHEMIAN.

— July 30. — “At present I am less unhappy, since I no longer feel the heavy chain that bound me to the body. I am free, at last, but I have not yet expiated and I need to make up for lost time if I do not wish to prolong the sufferings.

I hope that God, taking into account the sincerity of my repentance, will grant me the grace of His forgiveness. Pray still for me, I beseech you.

Men, my brothers, I lived only for myself and now I expiate and suffer! May God grant you the grace to avoid the thorns that now lacerate me. Continue along the broad path of the Lord and pray for me, for I abused the favors that God affords His creatures!

“Whoever sacrifices to the brute instincts the intelligence and the good sentiments that God gives him resembles the animal that is often mistreated.

Man must make sober use of the goods of which he is the depositary, accustoming himself to aim at the eternity that awaits him, relinquishing, consequently, material delights.

His nourishment must have for its sole aim vitality; luxury must be restricted only to the necessities of his position; tastes, inclinations, even the most natural, must obey the soundest reasoning; without which, he materializes himself instead of purifying himself.

Human passions are narrow fetters that coil into the flesh and so, give them no shelter. You do not know their price, when we return to the homeland! Human passions strip you even before leaving you, so that you arrive naked, completely naked, before the Lord.

Ah! cover yourselves with good works that may help you to cross the Space between you and eternity. A brilliant mantle, they hide your human vilenesses. Wrap yourselves in charity and in love, divine garments that last eternally.”

— Instructions from the medium’s guide. — This Spirit is on a good path, for, besides the repentance, he adds counsels tending to avoid the dangers of the path he trod.

To recognize one’s errors is already a merit and an effective step toward the good: also for this reason, his situation, without being blessed, ceases to be that of an unhappy Spirit.

Having repented, there remains for him the reparation of another existence. But, before arriving there, do you know what the existence is of those men of sensual life who gave the Spirit no other activity than the invention of new pleasures?

The influence of matter follows them beyond the tomb, without death putting an end to the appetites that their sight, as limited as when on Earth, seeks in vain the means of satiating.

Because they never sought spiritual nourishment, the soul wanders in the void, without bearing, without hope, prey to that anxiety of one who has before him nothing more than a limitless desert.

The inexistence of spiritual lucubrations naturally brings about the nullity of spiritual work after death; and because no means remain to him to satiate the body, nothing will remain to satisfy the Spirit; hence, a deadly tedium whose end they do not foresee and to which they would prefer nothingness; but nothingness does not exist; 7 they were able to kill the body, but they cannot annihilate the Spirit; it is fitting, therefore, that they live in those moral tortures, until, overcome by weariness, they decide to turn their eyes toward God.