Practical Instruction on Spiritist Manifestations · Allan Kardec
Chapter 9 of 15
SUBJECTS OF STUDY.
When we evoke our relatives, our friends, and some celebrated personages, in order to compare their opinions from beyond the grave with those they held in life, we are often embarrassed to keep up the conversation without falling into banalities and trivialities. In such a case, it is useful to indicate sources that allow us to gather subjects of observation that are, so to speak, unlimited.
As has been seen, the spirit world presents as many varieties, from the intellectual and moral point of view, as does Humanity; we must even say far more, for, whatever the distance that separates men on Earth, from the first to the last rung, there are spirits below and above these limits.
To know a people, one must see it from base to summit, study it in all the phases of life, probe its thought, investigate its intimate habits, in a word, perform upon it, so to speak, a moral dissection. Only by multiplying the observations can one grasp the analogies and the anomalies, and form a judgment by comparison. Who could count the volumes written on ethnography, anthropology, and the study of the human heart? And yet we are still far from having said everything. What has been done for man can be done for the spirits; it is the only means of learning to know that world, which concerns us as much as death, to which we are all subject. We are led to it by the very force of things.
Now, that world reveals itself to us through the intelligent manifestations of the spirits. We can therefore question its inhabitants of every class, not only on generalities, but also on the particulars of their existence beyond the grave, and thereby judge what awaits us, according to our conduct here on Earth. For us, the lot that was reserved for us until recently was no more than the object of a simple theoretical teaching; the spirit manifestations lay this destiny bare, make us touch it with our finger and behold it with our eyes, through the most striking examples, whose reality cannot be called into doubt by whoever directs upon them a searching gaze. By the direction we are going to give these studies, we wish to offer the means of verifying their reality.
If the evocation of illustrious men and of superior spirits is eminently useful for the teaching they impart to us, that of common spirits is no less so, although the latter are incapable of resolving questions of lofty scope. In their inferiority, they describe themselves, and the smaller the distance that separates them from us, the greater the connections we shall find with our own situation. It is therefore of the highest interest, from the twofold psychological and moral point of view, to study the position of those who were our contemporaries, who followed alongside us the paths of life, whose character, aptitudes, virtues, and vices we know, even though they were the most obscure of men. We understand them better because they are at our level. Often they offer us characteristic traits of the highest interest, and we shall add that it is in this circle, in a sense intimate, that the identity of the spirits reveals itself in an incontestable manner. As we see, it is an inexhaustible mine of observations, even if we take into consideration only men whose life presents some particularity, for example: manner of death, age, good or bad qualities, happy or wretched position on Earth, habits, mental state, etc. With elevated spirits the scope of this study expands. Besides the psychological questions, which have a limit, we can put to them a multitude of moral problems, which extend to infinity, on all the questions of life, the best conduct to be followed in this or that circumstance, our reciprocal duties, etc. The value of the instruction received on any subject whatsoever, moral, historical, philosophical, or scientific, depends entirely on the state of the spirit being questioned. It is for us to judge.
Besides the questions properly so called, we can request, on the part of the Superior Spirits, dissertations on subjects proposed or chosen by them from a series we present to them. In this way one may take as a theme the qualities, the vices, and the imperfections of society, such as avarice, pride, sloth, jealousy, hatred, anger, charity, modesty, etc. Spirits a little less elevated, but intelligent, can deal aptly with less serious subjects, which are nonetheless interesting; others, finally, can, according to their aptitude and the faculty of execution that the medium presents to them, dictate works of great breadth.
The manner of putting the questions and of coordinating them is, as we have just seen, an essential matter. On this subject, there are numerous applications in the articles published in the Spiritist Review, under the title “Familiar Conversations from Beyond the Grave.” They may be taken as a model in the relations we may wish to establish with the spirits.