Example 7 - AN ATHEIST.

— Mr. J.-B. D… was an educated man, but to the extreme saturated with materialistic ideas, believing neither in God nor in the existence of the soul. At the request of a relative, he was evoked two years after disincarnating, at the Spiritist Society of Paris.

Evocation. — A. I suffer. I am a reprobate.

We have been led to evoke you in the name of relatives who, as such, wish to know of your lot. Could you tell us whether this evocation of ours is painful or agreeable to you? — A. Painful.

Was your death voluntary? — A. Yes.

The Spirit writes with extreme difficulty. The handwriting is thick, irregular, convulsive, and almost unintelligible. Upon finishing the writing he becomes angry, breaks the pencil, and tears the paper.

Be calm, for we shall all pray to God for you. — A. I am forced to believe in this God.

What motive could have led you to suicide? — A. The weariness of a life without hope.

Suicide is conceivable when life is without hope; one then seeks to flee from it at any price. With Spiritism, on the contrary, hope is strengthened because the future unfolds before us. Suicide ceases to be an aim, once it is recognized that one only relieves oneself of an evil in order to confront an evil a hundred times worse. This is why Spiritism has snatched many people from a voluntary death.

Greatly culpable are those who strive to believe, with scientific sophisms and on the pretext of a false reason, in that desperate idea, the source of so many crimes and evils, that everything ends with life. These will be responsible not only for their own errors, but equally for all the evils to which they give cause.

You wished to escape the vicissitudes of life… Did you gain anything by it? Are you now happier? — A. Why is there no nothingness?

Have the goodness to describe to us, in the best way possible, your present situation. — A. I suffer from the constraint in which I find myself of believing in all that I denied. My soul is like a brazier, it is horribly tormented.

Whence came your materialistic ideas of former times? — A. In a previous incarnation I had been wicked, and for that reason I condemned myself in the following one to the torments of uncertainty, and thus it was that I took my own life.

Here is a whole corollary of ideas. We often ask ourselves how there can be materialists when, having passed through the spiritual world, they ought to have the intuition of it; now, it is precisely this intuition that is refused to certain Spirits who, retaining their pride, have not repented of their faults.

For such ones, the trial consists in acquiring, during corporeal life and by their own reasoning, the proof of the existence of God and of the future life which they have, so to speak, incessantly before their eyes. Often, however, the presumption of admitting nothing above themselves grips and absorbs them. Thus, they suffer the penalty until, their pride subdued, they yield to the evidence.

When you drowned yourself, what ideas did you have of the consequences? What reflections did you make at that moment? — A. None, for everything was nothingness to me. It was only afterward that I saw that, having served the whole sentence, I would have to suffer still more.

Are you now well convinced of the existence of God, of the soul, and of the future life? — A. Ah! All of this torments me greatly!

Have you seen your brother again? — A. Oh! no.

And why not? — A. Why confound our despairs? One is exiled in misfortune, and in fortune one is reunited—that is how it is.

Would the presence of your brother, whom we could draw here beside you, disturb you? — A. Do not do it, for I do not deserve it.

Why do you object? — A. Because he too is not happy.

You dread his presence, and yet it could only be beneficial to you. — A. No; later on…

Have you any message for your relatives? — A. That they pray for me.

It seems that within the circle of your acquaintances there are some who share your opinions. Do you wish us to tell them anything in this regard? — A. Oh! the unfortunate ones! May they be able to believe in another existence—that is all I can wish for them. If they could appraise my sad position, they would reflect much.

— (Evocation of a brother of the preceding, who professed the same theories, but who did not take his own life. Although likewise unhappy, this one presents himself more calmly; his handwriting is clear and legible.)

Evocation. — A. May the picture of our sufferings be a useful lesson, persuading you of the reality of another existence, in which the faults arising from incredulity are expiated.

Do you and your brother, whom we have just evoked, see each other mutually? — A. No; he flees from me.

One might ask how it is that Spirits can avoid one another in the spiritual world, since there exist neither material obstacles nor refuges impenetrable to the sight. Everything, however, is relative in that world and in accordance with the fluidic nature of the beings who inhabit it.

Only superior Spirits have indefinite perceptions, which in inferior ones are limited. For the latter, fluidic obstacles are equivalent to material obstacles.

Spirits withdraw themselves from the sight of their fellows by an act of will, which acts upon the perispiritual envelope and the surrounding fluids.

Providence, however, like a mother, watches over all her children, and through them, individually, grants or denies them this faculty, according to their moral dispositions, which constitutes, according to circumstances, a punishment or a reward.

You are calmer than your brother. Could you give us a more precise description of your sufferings? — A. Do you not suffer there on Earth in your pride, in your self-love, when obliged to acknowledge your errors? Does your Spirit not revolt at the idea of humbling yourself before whoever demonstrates your error to you?

Well then! Judge how much the Spirit must suffer who throughout his whole life persuaded himself that nothing existed beyond himself, and that his reason always prevailed over all others. Finding himself suddenly in the presence of imposing truth, that Spirit feels himself annihilated, humiliated.

To this is added also the remorse of having for so long forgotten the existence of a God so good, so indulgent.

The situation is unbearable; there is neither calm nor repose; one finds not a little tranquility except at the moment when divine grace, that is, the love of God, touches us, for pride takes hold of us in such a way that it wholly dulls us, to the point that much time is still needed for us to divest ourselves completely of that fatal garment; 5 only the prayer of our brothers can help us in such straits.

Do you wish to speak of the incarnate brothers, or of the Spirits? — A. Of the one as of the others.

While we were conversing with your brother, one of the persons present here prayed for him: — was that prayer profitable to him? — A. It will not be lost.

If he now refuses the grace, he will not do so when he is in a condition to have recourse to that divine panacea.

Here we glimpse another kind of punishment, but one which is not the same in all skeptics. For this Spirit, the necessity of acknowledging truths which he had repudiated when incarnate is independent of the suffering.

His present ideas reveal a certain degree of advancement, in comparison with those of other Spirits persisting in the denial of God.

To confess one's own error is already something, because it is the premise of humility. In the subsequent incarnation it is more than probable that incredulity will give way to the innate sentiment of faith.

— Transmitting the result of these two evocations to the person who had requested them of us, we received from her the following reply:

“You cannot imagine, my dear sir, the great benefit derived from the evocation of my father-in-law and my uncle.

We recognized them perfectly. The handwriting of the first, above all, bears a remarkable analogy to the one he had in life, all the more so as, during the last months he spent with us, that handwriting was halting and indecipherable. There one finds the same form of the strokes, of the flourish, and of certain letters.

As for the vocabulary and the style, the resemblance is even more striking; for us, the analogy is complete, only with a greater knowledge of God, of the soul, and of eternity which he so formally denied in former times.

No doubts therefore remain to us regarding his identity. God will be glorified by the greater firmness of our beliefs in Spiritism, and our brothers, incarnate and disincarnate, will become better.

The identity of his brother is also no less evident; in the change from atheist to believer, we recognized his character, his style, the turn of phrase. One word, above all, drew our attention — panacea — his favorite phrase, repeated at every instant.

“I showed these two communications to several persons, who were no less astonished at their veracity, but the incredulous, holding the same opinions as my relatives, would desire still more categorical replies.

They would wish, for example, that Mr. D… would refer to the place where he was buried, where he drowned himself, how he was found, etc.

In order to convince them, would it not be possible for you to make a new evocation, asking where and how he took his own life, how long he was submerged, in what place the corpse was found, where it was interred, in what manner—whether civilly or religiously—he was buried?

“Deign, dear sir, to insist upon a categorical reply to these questions, for they are essential for those who still doubt. I am convinced that in this case they will yield immense results. I make haste so that this may be delivered to you on Friday morning, so that the evocation may be made at the session of the Society on that same day… etc.”

— We reproduce this letter on account of the confirmation of identity, and here we append our reply for the instruction of persons not familiar with communications from beyond the grave.

“…The questions which you asked us to address anew to the Spirit of your father-in-law are, incontestably, dictated by a laudable intention, namely that of convincing the incredulous, seeing that in you there no longer exists any sentiment of doubt or curiosity. Yet, a more thorough knowledge of the spiritist science would make you judge these questions superfluous.

In the first place, by requesting me to obtain a categorical reply, you show that you are unaware of the circumstance that we cannot govern the Spirits at our pleasure. Know that they answer us when and how they will, and also as they can. The liberty of their action is even greater than when incarnate, possessing more efficacious means of withdrawing themselves from the moral constraint which we might perchance wish to exercise upon them.

The best proofs of identity are those which they furnish spontaneously, of themselves, or else those arising from the circumstances themselves. These it is almost always useless to provoke.

According to what you affirm, your relative proved his identity in an incontrovertible manner; consequently, it is more than probable that he will refuse to answer questions which may with reason be considered by him superfluous, aimed at satisfying the curiosity of persons who are indifferent to him.

The reply might well be the one that others have given in similar cases, that is: — “why ask things that you already know?”

To this I will add that the disturbance and sufferings that overwhelm him must be aggravated by investigations of that kind, which correspond perfectly to wishing to compel a sick man, who can barely think and speak, to recount the minutiae of his life, thus failing in the consideration inspired by his very state.

“As for the objective you have alleged, rest assured that all would be negative.

The proofs of identity furnished are far more valuable, precisely because they were spontaneous, and not premeditated beforehand. Now, if these could not satisfy the incredulous, much less would questions already preestablished do so, of whose connivance they might be suspicious.

There are persons whom nothing can convince. These could see your relative, with their own eyes, and would continue to suppose themselves the victims of a hallucination.

“Two more words, regarding the request you made of me to promote this evocation on the very day of the receipt of your letter.

Evocations are not made thus on the spur of the moment; the Spirits do not always respond to our call; it is necessary that they be willing, and not only that, but that they also be able to do it; 13 it is necessary, furthermore, that they find a medium who suits them, with the special aptitudes required, and that this medium be available at a given moment; 14 it is necessary, in short, that the environment be congenial to them, etc.; 15 owing to the concurrence of these circumstances one cannot always respond, and it greatly matters to know them when one wishes to practice with seriousness and security.”