Example 6 - Mrs. ANNA BELLEVILLE.

— A young woman who died at thirty-five years of age, after a cruel illness.

Vivacious, witty, endowed with rare intelligence, with meticulous judgment and eminent moral qualities; a devoted wife and mother of a family, she possessed, moreover, an integrity of character that was uncommon and a fertility of resources that always kept her sheltered from the most critical contingencies of existence.

Holding no resentment toward people of whom she might have complained, she was always ready to render them timely service.

Intimately bound to her person for long years, we were able to follow all the phases of her existence, as well as all the vicissitudes of her end.

The illness that was to carry her off came from an accident, after keeping her three years in bed, a prey to the cruelest sufferings, which were, moreover, borne to the end with a heroic courage, and in spite of which the natural grace of her spirit never abandoned her.

She believed firmly in the existence of the soul and in the future life, but concerned herself little with it; all her thoughts related to the present, which mattered greatly to her, although she had no fear of death and was indifferent to material enjoyments, because her life was simple and she relinquished without sacrifice what she could not obtain; but she possessed an innate sentiment of the good and the beautiful, which she appreciated even in the smallest things.

She wished to live less for herself than for her children, gauging the loss she would be to them, and it was this that bound her to life.

She knew Spiritism without having studied it thoroughly; she was interested in it, but could never fix her ideas about the future; this was for her a reality, but it left no profound impression on her spirit.

What she practiced of good was the result of a natural, spontaneous impulse, without any idea of future rewards or penalties.

For a long time her condition had been hopeless and the dissolution imminent, a circumstance of which she herself was not unaware. One day, her husband being absent, she felt herself growing faint and understood that the hour had come; her sight dimming, the disturbance was invading her, and she felt all the anguish of separation.

Yet death before her husband’s return was hard for her to bear. Making a supreme effort over herself, she murmured: “No, I do not want to die!” Then she felt life reborn in her and recovered the full use of her faculties.

When her husband arrived, she said to him: “I was about to die, but I wished to await your coming, for I had some recommendations to make to you.”

Thus the struggle between life and death was prolonged for three more months, a time that was nothing but a painful agony.

— Evocation on the day after death. — My good friends, thank you for the interest you take in me; besides, you were to me like good kindred. Well then, rejoice, for I am happy. Comfort my poor husband and watch over my children. I went straight to be near them, after I disincarnated.

We may suppose that your disturbance was not long, since you answer us with lucidity.

A. Ah! my friends, I suffered so much… and you well know that I suffered with resignation. Well then! my trial is concluded.

I will not say that I am completely freed, no; but it is certain that I no longer suffer, and that for me is a great relief!

This time I am radically cured; yet I still need the aid of your prayers in order to come later to collaborate with you.

What could be the cause of your long sufferings?

A. A terrible past, my friend.

— Can you reveal that past to us?

A. Oh! let me forget it a little… I paid for it so dearly…

— One month after death. — 1. Now that you must be completely released and that you recognize us better, we would greatly value having with you a more explicit conversation. Could you, for example, tell us the cause of your prolonged agony? You were for three months between life and death.

A. Thank you, my friends, for your remembrance as for your prayers!

How salutary these were to me, and how they contributed to my liberation!

I still have need of being comforted; continue to pray for me. You understand the value of prayer.

The prayers you say are by no means banal formulas, like those murmured by so many others who do not measure their reach, the fruit of a good prayer.

“I suffered much, but my sufferings were amply compensated, it being permitted me to be often near my dear children, whom I left with such sorrow!

“I myself prolonged those sufferings; the ardent desire to live, for love of my children, made me cling somehow to matter, and, contrary to others, I did not want to abandon the helpless body with which I had to break, even though it was for me the instrument of so many tortures. There is the reason for my long agony.

As for the illness and the sufferings arising from it, they were an expiation of the past—one more debt, which I paid.

Ah! my good friends, had I listened to you, what a change in my present life! What relief I would have experienced in my last moments, and how easy the separation would have been; if, instead of resisting it, I had abandoned myself confidently to the will of God, to the current that was carrying me away! But, instead of turning my eyes to the future that awaited me, I saw only the present I was about to leave!

“When I am to return to Earth, I shall be a Spiritist, I assure you of it.

What a sublime science! I constantly attend your meetings and the counsels that are transmitted to you. If I, when on Earth, had been able to understand them, my sufferings would have been mitigated. The occasion had not come.

Today I understand the goodness and the justice of God, although I do not find myself sufficiently advanced to free myself from concern with the things of life; my children above all attract me, no longer to pamper them, but to watch over them, instilling in them the path that Spiritism traces at this moment. Yes, my good friends, I still have grave concerns, among which stands out that on which the future of my children depends.”

Can you furnish us any information about the past you lament?

A. Ah! my good friends, I am ready to confess myself. I had disdained the suffering of others, looking with indifference on the sufferings of my mother, whom I called an imaginary invalid. Because I did not see her bedridden, I supposed that she was not suffering, and I mocked her complaints. See how God chastises.

— Six months after death. — Q. Now that a sufficiently long time has passed since you left the material envelope, have the kindness to describe to us your position and occupations in the spiritual world.

A. In terrestrial life, I was what is commonly called a good person; before all else, however, I prized my own well-being; compassionate by nature, I was perhaps not capable of a painful sacrifice to lessen a misfortune.

Today, everything has changed, and although I am always the same, the self of old has been modified.

I gained by the modification and I see that there are neither categories nor conditions apart from personal merit, in the world of the invisibles, where a poor man who is charitable and good rises above the rich man who humiliated with his alms.

I watch especially over those who are afflicted with family torments, with the loss of relatives or of fortune. My mission is to revive and console them, and with this I feel happy. Anna.

— An important question arises from the facts mentioned above. Here it is:

Can a person, by an effort of their own will, delay the moment of the separation of the soul from the body?

Answer of the Spirit Saint Louis. — Resolved affirmatively, without restrictions, this question could give rise to false consequences.

Certainly, under given conditions, an incarnated Spirit can prolong the corporeal existence in order to finish indispensable instructions, or, at least, those judged as such by him—it is a concession that may be made to him, as in the present case, besides many other examples.

This extension of life cannot, however, fail to be brief, since it is forbidden to man to invert the order of natural laws, as well as to return of his own accord to life, once it has reached its term; 4 it is merely a momentary suspension.

It is necessary, nevertheless, that from the possibility of the fact one not conclude its generality, nor that it depend on each one to prolong their existence in this way.

As a trial for the Spirit or in the interest of a mission to be concluded, the depleted organs may receive a supplement of vital fluid that allows them to prolong by a few instants the material manifestation of thought; these cases are exceptional and do not make a rule.

Nor should one see in this fact a derogation by God from the immutability of His laws, but only a consequence of the free will of the soul which, at the extreme moment, has consciousness of its mission and wishes, in spite of death, to conclude what it had been unable to until then.

Sometimes it may also be a kind of punishment inflicted upon the Spirit doubtful of the future, this prolongation of vitality with which it must necessarily suffer. Saint Louis.

— One might still wonder at the relative rapidity with which this Spirit released itself, given its attachment to corporeal life; it must, however, be considered that such attachment had nothing material or sensual about it, possessing rather even its moral side, motivated as it was by the needs of children still tender.

In short, it was a Spirit advanced in intelligence and morality. By one degree more, and it could be considered one of the happiest of Spirits.

There was not, therefore, in the perispiritic bonds, the tenacity resulting from material identification; it may be said that life, weakened by long illness, was held only by tenuous threads, which she wished to prevent from breaking.

Nevertheless, her resistance was punished with the extension of the sufferings pertaining to the illness itself and not with the difficulty of release. Thus, this release accomplished, here is why the disturbance was brief.

Another fact equally important arises from this, as from the greater part of the evocations made at diverse periods, more or less distant from death: it is the gradual transformation of the ideas of the Spirit, whose progress is translated, not by better sentiments, but by a more just appreciation of things.

The progress of the soul in spiritual life is, therefore, a fact demonstrated by experience. Corporeal life is the pilotage of that progress, the demonstration of its resolutions, the crucible in which it is purified.

Since the soul progresses after death, its lot cannot be irrevocably fixed, for the definitive fixing of the lot is, as we have already said, the negation of progress. And since the two things cannot coexist simultaneously, there remains the one that has in its favor the sanction of facts and of reason.