Example 4 - MR. VAN DURST.

— Shortly after his decease, a medium having asked his guide whether he might be evoked, the answer was: “This Spirit is slowly recovering from his disturbance, and although he could answer you immediately, such a communication would cost him much sorrow. I ask you to wait four more days, for by then he will have learned of the good intentions expressed regarding him, and will respond to them in a friendly and grateful manner.”

When the four days had elapsed, we received the following communication:

“My friend, the burden of my existence weighed very lightly in the balance of eternity, and yet I am far from being happy. My humble and relatively fortunate condition is that of one who did no evil, without, however, aiming at perfection by that. And if there can be happy persons in a limited sphere, I am of that number.

What I feel is not having known what you now know, for then my disturbance would not have lasted so long, and would have been less painful. Indeed, it was great; to live and not live, to be roughly bound to the body without being able to use it, to see those who were dear to us while feeling extinguished the thought that binds us to them, oh! what a horrible thing! What a cruel moment that is, in which bewilderment seizes and constrains us, only to dissolve into darkness right afterward! To feel everything, only to be annihilated a moment later! One wishes to have consciousness of one’s self, without finding it; not to exist, and to feel that one exists; but one is in a profound disturbance!

Then, after an incalculable time of contained anguish, without strength to feel it, then, I say, after that time which seems interminable, the gradual rebirth of life, the awakening of a new dawn in another world!

No material body nor earthly life! Life, yes, but immortal! No more carnal men, but diaphanous forms, Spirits that glide, that arise on all sides, that surround you and that you cannot take in with your sight, for it is in the infinite that they float! To have Space before oneself and to be able to traverse it at will! To communicate by thought with everything that envelops you! What a new life, my friend, new, brilliant and full of bliss!

Hail, oh! hail, eternity that holds me in your bosom!… Farewell, Earth that for so long kept me apart from the natural element of my soul! No… I depended no more on you, for you are the land of exile, and the greatest of the felicities you grant is worth nothing!

Had I known what you know, how easy and pleasant the initiation into the spiritual life would have been for me! Yes, because I would have known, before dying, what I should only come to know later, at the moment of separation, in such a way as to detach myself easily. You are on the path, but be assured that all advancement is too little. Tell it to my son as many times as may suffice for him to be instructed, because otherwise our separation continues here.

“Friends, farewell to all of you; I await you, and, while you are on Earth, I will come many times to instruct myself with you, seeing that I know even less than many among you. Note that here where I am, with no old age to weaken me nor hindrances of any kind, I will learn more quickly and easily. Here one lives in the open, walking with confidence, having before one’s eyes horizons so beautiful that one becomes impatient to take them in.

“Farewell, I leave you, farewell.”

Van Durst.”