SPIRIT LIFE.

Wandering spirits.

— 2. Transitional worlds. — 3. Perceptions, sensations and sufferings of the Spirits. — 4. Theoretical essay on sensation in the Spirits. — 5. Choice of trials. — 6. Relations beyond the grave. — 7. Relations of sympathy and antipathy among the Spirits. Eternal halves.

— 8. Recollection of corporeal existence. — 9. Commemoration of the dead. Funerals.

Wandering spirits.

Does the soul reincarnate immediately after having separated from the body?

“Sometimes it reincarnates immediately, but ordinarily it does so only after intervals of greater or lesser length.

In the higher worlds, reincarnation is almost always immediate.

As the corporeal matter there is less gross, the Spirit, when incarnated in those worlds, enjoys almost all of its faculties as a Spirit, its normal state being that of lucid somnambulists among you.”

What is the soul in the interval between incarnations?

“A wandering spirit, which aspires to a new destiny, which waits.”

a — How long can these intervals last?

“From a few hours to several thousand centuries.

Properly speaking, there is no extreme limit established for the state of erraticity, which may be prolonged exceedingly, but which is never perpetual. Sooner or later, the Spirit will have to return to an existence suited to purifying it of the stains of its preceding existences.” b — Does this duration depend on the will of the Spirit, or can it be imposed upon it as an expiation?

“It is a consequence of free will. The Spirits know perfectly well what they are doing.

But also, for some, it constitutes a punishment that God inflicts upon them.

Others ask that it be prolonged, in order to continue studies that can only be carried out with profit in the condition of a free Spirit.”

Is erraticity, in itself, a sign of inferiority in the Spirits?

“No, for there are wandering spirits of all degrees.

Incarnation is a transitory state, as we have already said. The Spirit finds itself in its normal state when freed from matter.”

Could one say that all Spirits who are not incarnated are wandering?

“Yes, with respect to those who must reincarnate. The pure Spirits, however, those who have attained perfection, are not wandering. These are in their definitive state.”

As regards their intimate qualities, the Spirits are of different orders, or degrees, through which they pass successively, as they purify themselves.

With respect to the state in which they find themselves, they may be: incarnate, that is, bound to a body; wandering, that is, without a material body and awaiting a new incarnation in order to improve themselves; pure Spirits, that is, perfect, no longer needing incarnation.

In what way do wandering spirits instruct themselves? Surely they do not do so in the same way as we others?

“They study and seek the means of raising themselves. They see, they observe what occurs in the places to which they go; they hear the discourses of learned men and the counsels of more elevated Spirits, and all this instills in them ideas they did not have before.”

Do the Spirits retain some of their human passions?

“With the material envelope, the elevated Spirits leave their evil passions and keep only that for good. As for the inferior Spirits, these retain them, for otherwise they would belong to the first order.”

Why, on leaving the Earth, do the Spirits not leave there all their evil passions, since they recognize their drawbacks?

“You see in that world excessively envious persons. Do you imagine that, as soon as they leave it, they lose that defect?

There accompanies those who depart from the Earth, especially those who nourished well-marked passions, a kind of atmosphere that envelops them, preserving for them what they have of evil, because the Spirit is not entirely detached from matter.

Only at moments does it glimpse the truth, which thus appears to it as if to show it the good path.”

In erraticity, does the Spirit progress?

“It can improve itself greatly, according to the will and the desire it may have to achieve it. Yet it is in corporeal existence that it puts into practice the ideas it has acquired.”

Are the wandering spirits happy or unhappy?

“More or less, according to their merits. They suffer through the effect of the passions whose essence they have retained, or they are happy, in conformity with the degree of dematerialization they have reached.

In erraticity, the Spirit perceives what it lacks in order to be happier and, from then on, seeks the means of attaining it.

But it is not always permitted to reincarnate as it would like, this representing, for it, a punishment.”

Can the wandering spirits go to all the worlds?

“That depends. By the simple fact of having left the body, the Spirit is not completely detached from matter and continues to belong to the world where it has just lived, or to another of the same degree, unless, during life, it has raised itself, which, moreover, constitutes the object toward which its efforts should tend, for otherwise it would never perfect itself.

It can, however, go to certain higher worlds, but in the capacity of a stranger. Strictly speaking, it succeeds only in glimpsing them, whence is born in it the desire to improve itself, in order to be worthy of the happiness enjoyed by those who inhabit them, in order also to be worthy of inhabiting them later.”

Do the already purified Spirits descend to the inferior worlds?

“They do so frequently, with the aim of aiding their progress. Were it not so, those worlds would be left to themselves, without guides to direct them.”

Transitional worlds.

Are there, in fact, as has already been said, worlds that serve as way-stations or resting points for the wandering spirits?

“Yes, there are worlds particularly destined for the wandering beings, worlds that can serve them as a temporary dwelling, kinds of bivouacs, of camps where they may rest from a too long erraticity, a state that is always somewhat painful.

They are, among the other worlds, intermediate positions, graded according to the nature of the Spirits who may have access to them and where they enjoy greater or lesser well-being.” a — Can the Spirits who inhabit these worlds leave them freely?

“Yes, the Spirits who are in these worlds can leave them, in order to go where they must go. Picture them as flocks of birds that alight on an island, to await there the restoring of their strength, in order to continue on their way.”

While they remain in the transitional worlds, do the Spirits progress?

“Certainly. Those who go to such worlds carry the aim of instructing themselves and of being able more easily to obtain permission to pass to other, better places and to reach the perfection that the elect attain.”

By their special nature, do the transitional worlds remain perpetually destined for the wandering spirits?

“No, their condition is merely temporary.”

a — Are these worlds at the same time inhabited by corporeal beings?

“No; their surface is barren. Those who inhabit them have need of nothing.”

b — Is this barrenness permanent, and does it arise from the special nature they present?

“No; they are barren transitorily.”

c — Do the worlds of this category, then, lack natural beauties?

“Nature reflects the beauties of immensity, which are no less admirable than what you call natural beauties.”

d — Since the state of such worlds is transitory, will the Earth someday belong to their number?

“It has already belonged to it.”

e — At what epoch?

“During its formation.”

Nothing is useless in Nature; everything has an end, a destination. Nowhere is there a void; everything is inhabited, there is life everywhere.

Thus, during the long succession of centuries that passed before the appearance of man on the Earth, during the slow periods of transition attested by the geological strata, even before the formation of the first organic beings, in that formless mass, in that arid chaos where the elements were in confusion, there was no absence of life. Beings exempt from our needs, from our physical sensations, found refuge there. God willed that, even thus, still imperfect, the Earth should serve for something.

Who would dare to affirm that, among the thousands of worlds that revolve in immensity, a single one, one of the smallest, lost in the bosom of the infinite multitude of them, enjoys the exclusive privilege of being peopled? What, then, is the use of the rest? Would God have made them solely to give recreation to our sight? An absurd supposition, incompatible with the wisdom that shines forth in all His works, and inadmissible the moment we consider the existence of all those we cannot perceive.

No one will contest that, in this idea of the existence of worlds still unsuited for material life and, nevertheless, already peopled with living beings appropriate to such a medium, there is something great and sublime, in which perhaps may be found the solution of more than one problem. Perceptions, sensations and sufferings of the Spirits.

Once returned to the world of the Spirits, does the soul retain the perceptions it had when on the Earth?

“Yes, besides others it did not have there, because the body, like a veil cast over them, obscured them.

Intelligence is an attribute that manifests itself in the Spirit the more freely the fewer hindrances it has to overcome.”

Are the perceptions and the knowledge of the Spirits unlimited? In a word: do they know everything?

“The nearer they approach perfection, the more they know.

If they are superior Spirits, they know much.

The inferior Spirits are more or less ignorant of everything.”

Do the Spirits know the principle of things?

“According to the elevation and the purity they have attained.

Those of inferior order know no more than men.”

Do the Spirits comprehend duration as we do?

“No, and thence it comes that you do not always understand us when it is a matter of determining dates or epochs.”

The Spirits live outside time as we comprehend it. Duration, for them, so to speak, ceases to exist. The centuries, so long for us, are, in their eyes, but instants that move in eternity, just as the reliefs of the ground are effaced and disappear for one who rises into space.

Do the Spirits form a more precise and exact idea of the present than we do?

“In the same way that one who sees well forms a more exact idea of things than the blind man.

The Spirits see what you do not see. They appraise everything, then, in a manner different from how you do it. But this too depends on their elevation.”

How is it that the Spirits have knowledge of the past? And is this knowledge unlimited for them?

“The past, when we occupy ourselves with it, is present.

There occurs, then, precisely what happens with you when you recall something that impressed you in the course of your exile. Only, since no material veil any longer clouds our intelligence, we remember even that which has been effaced from your memory.

But the Spirits do not know everything, beginning with their own creation.”

And the future, do the Spirits know it?

“This too depends on the elevation they have won. Often they only glimpse it, but it is not always permitted them to reveal it.

When they see it, it seems to them present.

As it approaches God, the more clearly the Spirit discerns the future.

After death, the soul sees and grasps in a single glance its past migrations, but it cannot see what God holds in reserve for it. For that to happen, it is necessary that, at the end of multiple existences, it should have become integrated into Him.” a — Do the Spirits who have attained absolute perfection have complete knowledge of the future?

“Complete one cannot say, for the reason that God alone is sovereign Lord and no one can equal Him.”

Do the Spirits see God?

“Only the superior Spirits see and comprehend Him. The inferior ones feel and divine Him.”

a — When an inferior Spirit says that God forbids or permits it something, how does it know that this comes to it from Him?

“It does not see God, but it feels His sovereignty and, when something is not to be done or a word not to be said, it perceives, as if by intuition, the prohibition against doing or saying it. Do you not yourselves have presentiments, which appear to you as secret warnings, to do, or not to do, this or that? The same happens to us, though in a higher degree, for you comprehend that, the essence of the Spirits being more subtle than yours, they can better receive the divine admonitions.” b — Does God transmit the order directly to the Spirit, or through the intermediary of other Spirits?

“It does not come to it directly from God.

In order to communicate with God, it is necessary for it to be worthy of it.

God transmits His orders to it through the intermediary of the Spirits immediately superior in perfection and instruction.”

Does the Spirit have circumscribed vision like corporeal beings?

“No, it resides in the whole of it.”

Do they need light in order to see?

“They see by themselves, without needing exterior light.

For the Spirits there is no darkness, save that in which they may find themselves by expiation.”

In order to see what occurs at two different points, do they need to transport themselves to those points? Can they, for example, see simultaneously in the two hemispheres of the globe?

“As the Spirit transports itself wherever it wishes, with the rapidity of thought, one can say that it sees everywhere at the same time.

Its thought is susceptible of radiating, directing itself at one time toward many different points, but this faculty depends on its purity.

The less pure the Spirit, the more limited its vision.

Only the superior Spirits can embrace a whole with their sight.”

In the Spirit, the faculty of seeing is a property inherent in its nature and which resides in its whole being, as light resides in all the parts of a luminous body.

It is a kind of universal lucidity that extends to everything, that embraces simultaneously space, times, and things, a lucidity for which there is no darkness, nor material obstacles. One understands that it must be so.

In man, vision takes place through the functioning of an organ that light impresses.

It follows from this that, there being no light, man remains in obscurity. In the Spirit, as the faculty of seeing constitutes an attribute of its own, independent of any exterior agent, vision is independent of light. (See, Ubiquity, no. 92.)

Does the Spirit see things as distinctly as we do?

“More distinctly, for its sight penetrates where yours cannot penetrate. Nothing obscures it.”

Does it perceive sounds?

“Yes, it perceives even sounds imperceptible to your obtuse senses.”

a — In the Spirit, is the faculty of hearing in the whole of it, as that of seeing?

“All the perceptions constitute attributes of the Spirit and are inherent in its being.

When a material body clothes it, they reach it only through the conduit of the organs. They cease, however, to be localized, once it is in the condition of a free Spirit.”

Since they constitute attributes proper to the Spirit, will it be possible for it to escape the perceptions?

“The Spirit sees and hears only what it wishes. We say this from a general point of view and, in particular, with reference to the elevated Spirits, 2 for the imperfect ones often hear and see, against their will, what may be useful to them for their perfecting.”

Are the Spirits sensitive to music?

“Are you alluding to earthly music? What is it compared to celestial music? to that harmony of which nothing on the Earth can give you an idea? The one is to the other as the chant of the savage to a sweet melody. Nevertheless, common Spirits can experience a certain pleasure in hearing your music, because it is not yet given them to comprehend another more sublime.

Music possesses infinite charms for the Spirits, because they have their sensitive qualities much developed. I refer to celestial music, which is all that is most beautiful and delicate that the spiritual imagination can conceive.”

Are the Spirits sensitive to the magnificences of Nature?

“So different are the natural beauties of the worlds that we are far from knowing them. Yes, the Spirits are sensitive to these beauties, according to the aptitudes they may have to appreciate and comprehend them. For the elevated Spirits, there are beauties of the whole that, so to speak, efface those of the particulars.”

Do the Spirits experience our needs and physical sufferings?

“They know them, because they have suffered them; they do not, however, experience them materially, as you others do: they are Spirits.”

And fatigue, the need of rest, do they experience them?

“They cannot feel fatigue, as you understand it; consequently, they do not need corporeal rest, as you do, for they do not possess organs whose forces must be repaired.

The Spirit, nonetheless, rests, in the sense of not being in constant activity.

It does not act materially. Its action is wholly intellectual and its rest entirely moral.

This means that there are moments in which its thought ceases to be as active as ordinarily and does not fix itself on any determined object. It is a true rest, but in no way comparable to that of the body.

The kind of fatigue that the Spirits are susceptible of feeling bears relation to their inferiority. The more elevated they are, the less they will need to rest.”

When a Spirit says that it suffers, of what nature is its suffering?

“Moral anguishes, which torture it more painfully than all the physical sufferings.”

How is it, then, that some Spirits have complained of suffering cold or heat?

“It is a reminiscence of what they endured during life, a reminiscence not infrequently as afflicting as the reality.

Often, in what they thus say there is only a comparison by means of which, for want of something better, they seek to express the situation in which they find themselves.

When they remember the body they wore, they have an impression similar to that of a person who, having taken off the cloak that enveloped them, believes, after some time has passed, that they still carry it on their shoulders.” Theoretical essay on sensation in the Spirits.

The body is the instrument of pain. If it is not the primary cause of it, it is, at least, the immediate cause. The soul has the perception of pain: that perception is the effect.

The remembrance that the soul retains of pain may be very painful, but it cannot have physical action. In fact, neither cold nor heat is capable of disorganizing the tissues of the soul, which is not susceptible of freezing, nor of burning.

Do we not see every day the recollection or the apprehension of a physical ill produce the effect of that ill, as if it were real? Do we not even see them cause death? Everyone knows that those whose limb has been amputated are wont to feel pain in the limb they lack. Certainly the seat, or even the starting point, of the pain is not there. What there is, merely, is that the brain retained the impression of it. It is permissible, therefore, to admit that something analogous occurs in the sufferings of the Spirit after death.

A thorough study of the perispirit, which plays so important a role in all the spiritist phenomena; in the vaporous or tangible apparitions; in the state in which the Spirit comes to find itself at the time of death; in the idea, which it so frequently manifests, that it is still alive; in the situations, so moving, that those of suicides, of the executed, of those who let themselves be absorbed by material enjoyments, reveal to us; and innumerable other facts, have thrown much light on this question, giving rise to explanations which we now proceed to summarize.

The perispirit is the bond that binds the Spirit to the matter of the body, which it draws from the surrounding medium, from the universal fluid. It partakes at once of electricity, of the magnetic fluid and, to a certain point, of inert matter. One could say that it is the quintessence of matter.

It is the principle of organic life, but not that of intellectual life, which resides in the Spirit.

It is, besides, the agent of the exterior sensations. In the body, the organs, serving them as conduits, localize these sensations. The body destroyed, they become general. Hence the Spirit does not say that it suffers more in the head than in the feet, or vice versa.

Let us not, however, confuse the sensations of the perispirit, which has become independent, with those of the body. The latter we can take only as a term of comparison and not by analogy. Freed from the body, the Spirit can suffer, but this suffering is not corporeal, though it is not exclusively moral, like remorse, for it complains of cold and heat. Nor does it suffer more in winter than in summer: we have seen them pass through flames without experiencing any pain. The temperature, consequently, causes them no impression.

The pain they feel is not, then, a physical pain properly speaking: it is a vague intimate feeling, which the Spirit itself does not always comprehend well, precisely because the pain is not localized and because it is not produced by exterior agents; it is more a reminiscence than a reality, a reminiscence, however, equally painful. Sometimes, nevertheless, there is more than this, as we shall see.

Experience teaches us that, at the time of death, the perispirit detaches itself more or less slowly from the body; that, during the first minutes after disincarnation, the Spirit finds no explanation for the situation in which it finds itself. It believes itself not dead, for it feels itself alive; it sees the body to one side, knows that it belongs to it, but does not comprehend that it is separated from it. This situation lasts as long as there exists any connection between the body and the perispirit.

A suicide once said to us: “No, I am not dead.” And he added: “And yet, I feel the worms gnawing me.” Now, undoubtedly, the worms were not gnawing his perispirit and still less the Spirit; they were gnawing only his body. But, as the separation of the body and the perispirit was not complete, a kind of moral repercussion was produced, transmitting to the Spirit what was occurring in the body. Repercussion is perhaps not the proper term, because it may lead to the supposition of a very material effect. It was rather the vision of what was happening with the body, to which the perispirit still kept it bound, that caused it an illusion, which it took for reality. Thus, then, there would not in this case be a reminiscence, for he had not, in life, been gnawed by the worms: there was the feeling of a present fact. This shows what deductions can be drawn from facts, when they are attentively observed.

During life, the body receives exterior impressions and transmits them to the Spirit through the intermediary of the perispirit, which constitutes, probably, what is called the nervous fluid.

Once dead, the body feels nothing more, since there is no longer in it either Spirit or perispirit. The latter, detached from the body, experiences sensation, but, as it no longer reaches it through a limited conduit, it becomes general for it.

Now, the perispirit not being, really, more than a simple agent of transmission, since it is in the Spirit that consciousness resides, it will be logical to deduce that, if a perispirit could exist without a Spirit, the former would feel nothing, exactly like a body that has died. Likewise, if the Spirit had no perispirit, it would be inaccessible to any and every painful sensation.

This is what happens with the completely purified Spirits. We know that the more they purify themselves, the more ethereal the essence of the perispirit becomes, whence it follows that the material influence diminishes as the Spirit progresses, that is, as the perispirit itself becomes less gross.

But, it will be said, since it is through the perispirit that the agreeable sensations, in the same way as the disagreeable ones, are transmitted to the Spirit, the pure Spirit being inaccessible to the ones, it must be equally so to the others. Such is, in fact, the case with respect to those that proceed solely from the influence of the matter we know. The sound of our instruments, the perfume of our flowers cause them no impression. Nevertheless, it experiences intimate sensations, of an indefinable charm, of which we can form no idea, because, in this regard, we are like persons blind from birth in the presence of light.

We know that this is real; but by what means is it produced? Our science does not reach that far. We know that in the Spirit there is perception, sensation, hearing, vision; that these faculties are attributes of the whole being and not, as in man, of only a part of the being; but in what manner does it have them? We are ignorant of it. The Spirits themselves can inform us of nothing on this point, because our language is inadequate to express ideas we do not possess, exactly as is, for want of proper terms, that of savages, to render ideas relating to our arts, sciences and philosophical doctrines.

In saying that the Spirits are inaccessible to the impressions of the matter we know, we are referring to the very elevated Spirits, whose ethereal envelope finds no analogy in this world. It is not so with those of denser perispirit, who perceive our sounds and odors, not, however, merely through a limited part of their individualities, as happened to them when alive.

One can say that in them, the molecular vibrations make themselves felt in the whole being and thus reach the sensorium commune, which is the Spirit itself, though in a different manner and perhaps, too, giving a different impression, which modifies the perception. They hear the sound of our voice, yet they understand us without the aid of speech, solely by the transmission of thought. In support of what we say there is the fact that this penetration is the easier, the more dematerialized the Spirit is.

As regards sight, this, for the Spirit, is independent of light, such as we have it. The faculty of seeing is an essential attribute of the soul, for which obscurity does not exist. It is, however, more extensive, more penetrating in the more purified ones.

The soul, or the Spirit, has, then, in itself, the faculty of all the perceptions. These, in corporeal life, are obliterated by the grossness of the organs of the body; in extracorporeal life, they grow clearer, in proportion as the semi-material envelope etherealizes.

Drawn from the surrounding medium, this envelope varies according to the nature of the worlds. On passing from one world to another, the Spirits change envelope, as we change clothes when we pass from winter to summer, or from the pole to the equator. When they come to visit us, the more elevated ones clothe themselves with the terrestrial perispirit, and then their perceptions are produced as in common Spirits.

All of them, however, the inferior as well as the superior, neither hear nor feel anything except what they wish to hear or feel. Not possessing sensitive organs, they can freely make their perceptions active or null. One single thing they are obliged to hear — the counsels of the good Spirits.

Sight, that is always active; but they can make themselves invisible to one another. According to the category they occupy, they can hide themselves from those who are inferior to them, but not from those who are superior to them.

In the first moments that follow death, the vision of the Spirit is always troubled and confused. It clears, as it detaches itself, and can attain the clearness it had during terrestrial life, independently of the possibility of penetrating through the bodies that are opaque to us. As regards its extension through indefinite space, through the future and the past, it depends on the degree of purity and of elevation of the Spirit.

It will perhaps be objected: this whole theory has nothing reassuring about it. We thought that, once free of our gross envelope, the instrument of our pains, we should suffer no more, and behold you inform us that we shall still suffer. In one form or another, it will always be suffering. Ah! yes, it may be that we shall continue to suffer, and much, and for a long time, but also that we shall cease to suffer, even from the very instant in which our corporeal life ends.

The sufferings of this world are independent, sometimes, of us; much more often, however, they are due to our own will. Let each one trace back to their origin and they will see that the greater part of such sufferings are effects of causes it would have been possible to avoid.

How many ills, how many infirmities does man not owe to his excesses, to his ambition, in a word: to his passions? He who always lived soberly, who never abused anything, who was always simple in his tastes and modest in his desires, would spare himself many tribulations.

The same happens with the Spirit. The sufferings through which it passes are always the consequence of the manner in which it lived on the Earth. Certainly it will no longer suffer from gout, nor from rheumatism; nevertheless, it will experience other sufferings that in no way fall short of those.

We have seen that its suffering results from the bonds that still bind it to matter; that the more free it is from the influence of the latter, or, in other words, the more dematerialized it is, the less painful sensations it will experience. Now, it is in its hands to free itself from such influence from the present life onward.

It has free will, it has, consequently, the faculty of choice between doing and not doing. Let it master its animal passions; let it nourish neither hatred, nor envy, nor jealousy, nor pride; let it not allow itself to be dominated by selfishness; let it purify itself, nourishing good sentiments; let it practice good; let it not attach to the things of this world an importance they do not merit; and then, although clothed in the corporeal envelope, it will already be purified, it will already be freed from the yoke of matter and, when it leaves that envelope, it will no longer suffer its influence.

No painful recollection will come to it from the physical sufferings it has endured; no disagreeable impression will they leave it, because they will have reached only the body and not the soul. It will feel happy at having freed itself from them, and the peace of its conscience will exempt it from any moral suffering.

We have interrogated, by the thousands, Spirits who on the Earth belonged to all classes of society, occupied all social positions; we have studied them in all the periods of spirit life, beginning from the moment in which they abandoned the body; we have accompanied them step by step in the life beyond the grave, in order to observe the changes that operated in them, in their ideas, in their sentiments and, under this aspect, those who here were counted among the most common of men were not the ones who furnished us the least precious elements of study.

Now, we have always noted that the sufferings bore relation to the conduct they had had and whose consequences they were experiencing; that the other life is a source of ineffable felicity for those who followed the good path. It is deduced from this that, for those who suffer, this happens because they willed it; that, therefore, they have only themselves to complain of, whether in the other world or in this one. Choice of trials.

While in erraticity, before beginning a new corporeal existence, does the Spirit have consciousness and foresight of what will befall it in the course of terrestrial life?

“It itself chooses the kind of trials through which it is to pass, and in this consists its free will.”

a — Is it not God, then, who imposes upon it the tribulations of life, as a chastisement?

“Nothing occurs without the permission of God, for it was God who established all the laws that govern the Universe. Go now and ask why He decreed this law and not that.

In giving the Spirit the liberty of choosing, God leaves to it the entire responsibility for its acts and for the consequences they may have.

Nothing obstructs its future; there are open to it, thus, the path of good as well as that of evil. If it should come to succumb, there will remain to it the consolation that not everything is ended for it and that divine goodness grants it the liberty to begin again what was ill done.

Moreover, one must distinguish what is the work of the will of God from what is that of man. If a danger threatens you, it was not you who created it but God. Yours, however, was the desire to expose yourself to it, because you saw in this a means of progressing, and God permitted it.”

From the fact that the choice of the kind of trials it is to suffer belongs to the Spirit, will it follow that all the tribulations we experience in life we foresaw and sought?

“Not all, because you did not choose and foresee everything that befalls you in the world, down to the smallest things.

You chose only the kind of trials.

The particulars are on account of the position in which you find yourselves; they are, often, consequences of your own actions.

Choosing, for example, to be born among evildoers, the Spirit knew to what enticements it was exposing itself; it was ignorant, however, of which acts it would come to commit. These acts result from the exercise of its will, or of its free will.

The Spirit knows that, choosing such a path, it will have to sustain struggles of a determined kind; it knows, therefore, of what nature will be the vicissitudes that will present themselves to it, but it is ignorant whether this or that outcome will occur.

The secondary events originate from the circumstances and from the very force of things.

Only the principal facts, those that influence destiny, are foreseen.

If you take a road full of deep ruts, you know that you will have to walk cautiously, because there are many probabilities of your falling; you are ignorant, however, at what point you will fall, and it may well happen that you do not fall, if you are sufficiently prudent.

If, while traversing a street, a tile falls on your head, do not believe that it was written, as is commonly said.”

How can the Spirit desire to be born among people of evil life?

“It is necessary that it be placed in a medium where it can suffer the trial it asked for. Well, then! It is necessary that there be analogy. To struggle against the instinct of theft, it is necessary that it find itself in contact with people given to the practice of stealing.”

a — Thus, if there were on the Earth no people of bad habits, the Spirit would not find there a medium appropriate to the suffering of certain trials?

“And would that be a thing to lament? It is what occurs in the higher worlds, where evil does not penetrate. That is why, in those worlds, there are only good Spirits. Bring it about that soon the same be the case on the Earth.”

In the trials through which it must pass in order to attain perfection, does the Spirit have to suffer temptations of all natures? Does it have to find itself in all the circumstances that may excite in it pride, envy, avarice, sensuality, etc.?

“Certainly not, for you well know there are Spirits who from the beginning take a path that exempts them from many trials.

He, however, who lets himself be dragged onto the evil path runs all the dangers that beset it.

A Spirit may, for example, ask for riches and have them granted to it. Then, according to its character, it may become avaricious or prodigal, selfish or generous, or else cast itself into all the enjoyments of sensuality. It does not follow from this, however, that it must necessarily pass through all these tendencies.”

How can the Spirit, which, in its origin, is simple, ignorant and lacking in experience, choose an existence with knowledge of cause and be responsible for that choice?

“God supplies its inexperience, tracing for it the path it should follow, as you do with the little child. He leaves it, however, little by little, as its free will develops, master of proceeding to the choice 2 and only then is it that often it happens to it to go astray, taking the evil path, by disregarding the counsels of the good Spirits. This is what can be called the fall of man.” a — When the Spirit enjoys free will, will the choice of the corporeal existence always depend exclusively on its will, or can that existence be imposed upon it, as an expiation, by the will of God?

“God knows how to wait, He does not hasten the expiation.

Nevertheless, He can impose a certain existence on a Spirit, when the latter, by its inferiority or its ill will, does not show itself apt to comprehend what would be most useful to it, and when He sees that such an existence will serve for the purification and the progress of the Spirit, at the same time that it serves it as an expiation.”

Does the Spirit make its choice immediately after death?

“No, many believe in the eternity of the penalties, which, as has already been said to you, is a chastisement.”

What is it that guides the Spirit in the choice of the trials it wishes to suffer?

“It chooses, according to the nature of its faults, those that lead it to the expiation of these and to progress more quickly.

Some, therefore, impose upon themselves a life of miseries and privations, with the aim of bearing them with courage; 3 others prefer to experience the temptations of riches and of power, far more dangerous, by the abuses and the misapplication to which they may give rise, by the inferior passions that the one and the other develop; 4 many, finally, decide to test their strength in the struggles they will have to sustain in contact with vice.”

There being Spirits who, as a trial, choose contact with vice, will there not be others who seek it out of sympathy and out of the desire to live in a medium conformable to their tastes, or in order to be able to give themselves up materially to their material inclinations?

“There are, without doubt, but only among those whose moral sense is still little developed. The trial comes of itself and they suffer it the more lengthily. Sooner or later, they comprehend that the satisfaction of their brutal passions brought them deplorable consequences, which they will suffer during a time that will seem to them eternal. And God will leave them in that persuasion, until they become conscious of the fault into which they fell and ask, by their own impulse, that it be granted them to redeem it, by means of useful trials.”

Does it not seem natural that the least painful trials should be chosen?

“It may seem so to you; to the Spirit, no. As soon as the latter detaches itself from matter, all illusion ceases and its manner of thinking becomes other.”

Under the influence of carnal ideas, man, on the Earth, sees of the trials only the painful side. Such is the reason it seems natural to him that those be chosen which, from his point of view, can coexist with material enjoyments. In spiritual life, however, he compares those fleeting and gross enjoyments with the unalterable happiness it is given him to glimpse, and from then on the passing terrestrial sufferings cause him no further impression.

Thus, then, the Spirit may choose a very harsh trial and, consequently, an anguished existence, in the hope of attaining quickly a better state, as the sick man often chooses the most disagreeable remedy in order to cure himself at once. He who intends to attach his name to the discovery of an unknown country does not seek to tread a flowery road. He knows the dangers to which he exposes himself, but he also knows that glory awaits him, if he meets with good success.

The doctrine of the liberty we have to choose our existences and the trials we are to suffer ceases to appear singular, the moment one considers that the Spirits, once detached from matter, appraise things in a manner different from our way of appraising them. They discern the goal, which is very different for them from the fleeting enjoyments of the world. After each existence, they see the step they took and comprehend what they still lack in purity in order to attain that goal.

Hence their submitting themselves voluntarily to all the vicissitudes of corporeal life, soliciting those that can bring it about that they attain it more swiftly. There is, then, no cause for astonishment in the fact that the Spirit does not prefer the gentler existence. It is not possible for it, in the state of imperfection in which it finds itself, to enjoy a life exempt from bitterness. It perceives this and, precisely in order to come to enjoy it, it is that it sets about improving itself.

Do we not see, moreover, every day, examples of such choices? What does the man do who passes a part of his life working without truce or rest, in order to gather possessions that may assure him well-being, but perform a task he imposed upon himself, with a better future in view? The soldier who offers himself for a perilous mission, the navigator who confronts no lesser perils, for love of Science or in his own interest, what do these too do, but subject themselves to voluntary trials, from which honors and profit will come to them, if they do not succumb?

To what does man not submit or expose himself for his interest or his glory? And are not competitions also all voluntary trials to which the competitors subject themselves, with the aim of advancing in the career they have chosen? No one rises to any position in the sciences, in the arts, in industry, except by passing through the series of inferior positions, which are so many trials.

Human life is, then, a copy of spiritual life; in it are presented to us in small all the vicissitudes of the other. Now, if in terrestrial life we often choose harsh trials, aiming at a more elevated position, why should the Spirit not, which sees farther than the body and for which corporeal life is but an incident of short duration, choose an arduous and laborious existence, provided it leads it to eternal happiness?

Those who say they will ask to be princes or millionaires, since it is to man that the choice of his existence falls, resemble the near-sighted, who see only that which they touch, or greedy children, who, to one who interrogates them about it, answer that they wish to be pastry-cooks or confectioners.

The traveler who crosses a deep valley shadowed by a thick fog cannot grasp with his sight the extent of the road by which he is going, nor its extreme points. On reaching, however, the summit of the mountain, he embraces with his gaze how much of the way he has traversed and how much of it remains for him to traverse. He discerns its end, sees the obstacles he will still have to surmount and then combines the surest means of attaining it.

The incarnate Spirit is like the traveler at the foot of the mountain. Disentangled from the terrestrial bonds, its vision dominates everything, like that of one who has climbed to the crest of the mountain range. For the traveler, at the end of his journey lies rest after fatigue; for the Spirit, lies supreme happiness, after the tribulations and the trials.

All the Spirits say that, in erraticity, they apply themselves to researching, studying, observing, in order to make their choice. In corporeal life is there not offered to us an example of this fact? Do we not often take years to seek out the career on which we finally decide, certain it is the most appropriate to facilitate for us the path of life? If in one our intent fails, we have recourse to another. Each of those we embrace represents a phase, a period of life. Do we not occupy ourselves each day in thinking of what we shall do the next day? Now, what are, for the Spirit, the various corporeal existences, but phases, periods, days of its spirit life, which is, as we know, the normal life, seeing that the other is transitory, passing?

Can the Spirit proceed to the choice of its trials, while incarnate?

“The desire it then nourishes can influence the choice it comes to make, this depending on the intention that animates it. It happens, however, that, as a free Spirit, it almost always sees things in a different manner. The Spirit by itself alone is the one who makes the choice; yet, once more we say it, it is possible for it to make it, even in material life, for there are always moments in which the Spirit becomes independent of the matter that serves it as a dwelling.” a — It is surely not as an expiation, or as a trial, that many people desire greatness and riches. Is it?

“Undoubtedly, no. Matter desires that greatness in order to enjoy it, and the Spirit in order to know its vicissitudes.”

Until it reaches the state of perfect purity, does the Spirit have to pass constantly through trials?

“Yes, but not as you understand it, for you consider only the material tribulations to be trials.

Now, having raised itself to a certain degree, the Spirit, although not yet perfect, no longer has to suffer trials.

It continues, however, subject to duties in no way painful, the fulfillment of which aids its perfecting, even if they consist only in helping others to perfect themselves.”

Can the Spirit deceive itself as to the efficacy of the trial it has chosen?

“It can choose one that is above its strength and succumb.

It can also choose some that profits it nothing, as will happen if it seeks an idle and useless life. But then, returning to the world of the Spirits, it verifies that it gained nothing and asks for another that may enable it to recover the lost time.”

To what are the vocations of certain persons and the will they feel to follow one career in preference to another to be attributed?

“It seems to me that you yourselves can answer this question. For is this not the consequence of all that we have just said about the choice of trials and about the progress effected in a previous existence?”

Studying, in erraticity, the various conditions in which it may progress, how does the Spirit think to achieve it, being born, for example, among cannibals?

“Among cannibals are not born Spirits already advanced, but Spirits of the nature of cannibals, or even inferior to theirs.”

We know that our anthropophagi are not on the last rung of the spiritual ladder and that there are worlds where brutishness and ferocity have no analogy on the Earth. The Spirits who incarnate there are, therefore, inferior to the lowliest who incarnate in our world. For them, then, to be born among our savages represents a progress, as progress would be, for the terrestrial anthropophagi, to exercise among us a profession that obliged them to make blood flow.

They cannot set their sights higher, because their moral inferiority does not permit them to comprehend a greater progress. The Spirit advances only gradually. It is not given it to cross at a single bound the distance that separates civilization from barbarism, and this is one of the reasons that show us that reincarnation is necessary, which truly corresponds to the justice of God. Otherwise, what would become of those millions of creatures who die every day in the greatest degradation, if they had no means of attaining superiority? Why would God deprive them of the favors granted to other men?

Could it happen that Spirits come from a world inferior to the Earth, or from a very backward people, like the cannibals, for example, are born in the bosom of civilized peoples?

“It can. There are some who go astray, by wanting to rise too high. But, in that case, they remain out of place in the medium in which they were born, because their habits and instincts are in conflict with those of other men.”

Such beings offer us the sad spectacle of ferocity within civilization. Returning to the midst of the cannibals, they do not undergo a degradation; they merely return to the place that is proper to them and by this perhaps even gain.

Will it be possible that a man of a civilized race reincarnate, as an expiation, in a race of savages?

“It is; but it depends on the kind of expiation. A master, who has been of great cruelty to his slaves, may, in his turn, become a slave and suffer the ill treatment he inflicted on his fellow beings. One who at a certain epoch exercised command may, in a new existence, have to obey those who bowed before his will. This will be for him an expiation, that God imposes upon him, if he abused his power.

Also a good Spirit may wish to incarnate in the bosom of those races, occupying an influential position, in order to make them progress. In such a case, it carries out a mission.” Relations beyond the grave.

From the existence of different orders of Spirits, does there result for these some hierarchy of powers? Is there among them subordination and authority?

“Very great. The Spirits have over one another the authority corresponding to the degree of superiority they have attained, an authority they exercise by an irresistible moral ascendancy.”

a — Can the inferior Spirits escape the authority of those who are superior to them?

“I said: irresistible.”

Do the power and the consideration a man enjoyed on the Earth give him supremacy in the world of the Spirits?

“No; for the small shall be raised and the great brought low. Read the psalms.”

a — How should we understand this raising and this bringing low?

“Do you not know that the Spirits are of different orders, according to their merits? Well, then! The greatest of the Earth may belong to the last category among the Spirits, while his servant may be in the first. Do you understand this? Did not Jesus say: he who humbles himself shall be exalted and he who exalts himself shall be humbled?”

Does he who was great on the Earth and who, as a Spirit, comes to find himself among those of inferior order, experience by this some humiliation?

“Sometimes a very great one, especially if he was proud and envious.”

The soldier who after the battle meets with his general, in the world of the Spirits, does he still hold him for his superior?

“The title is worth nothing, real superiority is what has value.”

Are the Spirits of the different orders mingled with one another?

“Yes and no. That is to say: they see one another, but they are distinguished from one another.

They avoid one another or draw near, according to the sympathy or the antipathy that they reciprocally inspire in one another, just as happens among you.

They constitute a world of which yours is a pale reflection.

Those of the same category gather together by a kind of affinity and by the ends they aim at: the good, by the desire to do good; the wicked, by that of doing evil, by the shame of their faults and by the need to find themselves among those who resemble them.”

Like a great city where men of all classes and of all conditions see and meet one another, without mingling; where societies are formed by the analogy of tastes; where virtue and vice rub elbows, without exchanging a word.

Do all the Spirits have reciprocal access to the different groups or societies that they form?

“The good go everywhere and so it must be, in order that they can influence the wicked.

The regions, however, that the good inhabit are forbidden to the imperfect Spirits, in order that they may not disturb them with their inferior passions.”

Of what nature are the relations between the good and the wicked Spirits?

“The good occupy themselves in combating the evil inclinations of the others, in order to help them to rise. It is their mission.”

Why do the inferior Spirits take pleasure in inducing us to evil?

“From the spite caused them by not having merited to be among the good.

The desire that predominates in them is that of preventing, as much as they can, that the still inexperienced Spirits attain the supreme good.

They want others to experience what they themselves experience. Does this not happen also among you others?”

How do the Spirits communicate among themselves?

“They see and comprehend one another.

Speech is material: it is the reflection of the Spirit.

The universal fluid establishes constant communication between them; it is the vehicle of the transmission of their thoughts, as, for you, the air is that of sound.

It is a kind of universal telegraph, which links all the worlds and allows the Spirits to correspond from one world to another.”

Can the Spirits conceal their thoughts from one another? Can they hide from one another?

“No, for them everything is open, especially for the perfect ones.

They can move away from one another, but they always see one another. This, however, does not constitute an absolute rule, for certain Spirits can very well make themselves invisible to other Spirits, if they judge it useful to do so.”

How can the Spirits, having no body, prove their individualities and distinguish themselves from the other spiritual beings that surround them?

“They prove their individualities by the perispirit, which makes them distinguishable from one another, as the body does among men.”

Do the Spirits recognize one another for having cohabited the Earth? Does the son recognize the father, the friend recognize his friend?

“Perfectly and, thus, from generation to generation.”

a — How is it that those who knew one another on the Earth recognize one another in the world of the Spirits?

“We see our past life and read in it as in a book. Seeing that of our friends and of our enemies, we see there their passage from corporeal life to the other.”

On leaving its mortal remains, does the soul see immediately the relatives and friends who preceded it into the world of the Spirits?

“Immediately, even here, is not the proper term. As we have already said, it is necessary for it to have some time in order to recognize itself and to cast off the material veil.”

How is the soul received on its return to the world of the Spirits?

“That of the just one, like a well-beloved brother, long awaited. That of the wicked one, like a contemptible being.”

What sentiment does the arrival among them of another wicked Spirit awaken in the impure Spirits?

“The wicked are satisfied when they see beings who resemble them and deprived, too, of the infinite felicity, like a rogue on the Earth among his equals.”

Do our relatives and friends usually come to meet us when we leave the Earth?

“Yes, the Spirits go to meet the soul to whom they are attached. They congratulate it, as if it were returning from a journey, for having escaped the dangers of the road, and they help it to detach itself from the corporeal bonds.

It is a grace granted to the good Spirits that those who love them come to meet them, while he who finds himself stained remains in isolation, or has only those who resemble him to surround him. It is a punishment.”

Do relatives and friends always reunite after death?

“That depends on their elevation and on the path they follow, seeking to progress.

If one is more advanced and walks more quickly than another, the two cannot keep themselves together. They will see one another from time to time, but they will not be reunited forever, except when they are able to walk side by side, or when they have equaled one another in perfection.

It must be added that the privation of seeing relatives and friends is, sometimes, a punishment.” Relations of sympathy and antipathy among the Spirits. Eternal halves.

Besides the general sympathy, arising from the resemblance that exists among them, do the Spirits vow to one another reciprocal particular affections?

“In the same way as men, except that stronger is the bond that binds the Spirits to one another, when lacking a material body, because then that bond is not exposed to the vicissitudes of the passions.”

Do the Spirits nourish hatred among themselves?

“Only among the impure Spirits is there hatred and it is they who breathe into men the enmities and the dissensions.”

Will two beings who were enemies on the Earth keep resentment of one another, in the world of the Spirits?

“No; they will comprehend that the hatred they vowed to one another was stupid and that the motive that inspired it was puerile.

Only the imperfect Spirits keep a kind of animosity, until they purify themselves.

If it was solely a material interest that made them enemies, they will think of it no more, however little dematerialized they may be. There being no antipathy between them and the cause of their disagreements having ceased to exist, they draw near to one another with pleasure.”

It happens as between two schoolboys who, reaching the age of reflection, recognize the puerility of their childish dissensions and cease to bear one another ill will.

Does the remembrance of the evil acts that two men practiced against one another constitute an obstacle to sympathy reigning between them?

“That remembrance induces them to keep away from one another.”

What sentiment animates, after death, those to whom we did harm in this world?

“If they are good, they forgive you, according to your repentance.

If wicked, it is possible that they keep resentment of the harm you did them and pursue you even, not infrequently, in another existence. God may permit it to be so, as a chastisement.”

Are the individual affections of the Spirits susceptible of alteration?

“No, for they are not subject to deceiving themselves. They lack the mask under which hypocrites hide themselves. Hence it comes that, being pure, their affections are unalterable. Supreme felicity comes to them from the love that unites them.”

Does the mutual affection that two beings consecrated to one another on the Earth always continue to exist in the world of the Spirits?

“Without doubt, provided it originated from true sympathy.

If, however, it was born principally from causes of a physical order, it disappears with the cause.

The affections among the Spirits are more solid and durable than on the Earth, because they are not subordinate to the caprices of material interests and of self-love.”

Are the souls that are to unite, from their origins, predestined to that union, and does each of us have, somewhere in the Universe, its half, with which it will fatally one day reunite?

“No; there is no particular and fatal union of two souls.

The union that there is, is that of all the Spirits, but in diverse degrees, according to the category they occupy, that is, according to the perfection they have acquired. The more perfect, the more united.

From discord are born all the ills of humans; from concord results complete happiness.”

In what sense should one understand the word half, which some Spirits use to designate the sympathetic Spirits?

“The expression is inexact. If one Spirit were the half of another, the two being separated, both would be incomplete.”

If two perfectly sympathetic Spirits reunite, will they be united forever and ever, or can they separate and unite with other Spirits?

“All the Spirits are reciprocally united. I speak of those who have attained perfection.

In the inferior Spheres, as soon as a Spirit raises itself, it no longer sympathizes, as before, with those who have remained below it.”

Are two sympathetic Spirits the complement of one another, or is the sympathy existing between them the result of a perfect identity?

“The sympathy that attracts one Spirit to another results from the perfect concordance of their inclinations and instincts. If one had to complete the other, it would lose its individuality.”

Does the identity necessary to the existence of perfect sympathy consist only in the analogy of thoughts and sentiments, or also in the uniformity of acquired knowledge?

“In the equality of the degrees of elevation.”

Can Spirits who at present are not sympathetic become so in the future?

“All will be so.

A Spirit, which today is in an inferior Sphere, will ascend, perfecting itself, to that in which such another Spirit finds itself. And the encounter of the two will occur even more quickly, if the more elevated one, by bearing ill the trials to which it is submitted, remains stationary.”

a — Can two Spirits who are already sympathetic to one another cease to be so?

“Certainly, if one of them is slothful.”

The theory of eternal halves encloses a simple figure, representative of the union of two sympathetic Spirits. It is a matter of an expression used even in common language and which should not be taken literally.

The Spirits who employed it certainly do not belong to an elevated order. Necessarily, the field of their ideas being limited, they expressed their thoughts with the terms they would have used in corporeal life.

One should not, then, accept the idea that, created one for the other, two Spirits must, fatally, reunite one day in eternity, after having been separated for a more or less long time. Recollection of corporeal existence.

Does the Spirit remember its corporeal existence?

“It remembers, that is, having lived many times on the Earth, it recalls what it was as a man and I affirm to you that frequently it laughs, pitying itself.”

Just like the man who has reached maturity and who laughs at the follies of his youth, or at his puerilities in childhood.

Does the remembrance of corporeal existence present itself to the Spirit, complete and unexpectedly, after death?

“No; it comes to it little by little, like an image that gradually emerges from a mist, as it fixes its attention on it.”

Does the Spirit remember, in detail, all the events of its life? Does it grasp the whole of them in a single retrospective glance?

“It remembers things, in conformity with the consequences that resulted from them for the state in which it finds itself as a wandering spirit.

You comprehend well, therefore, that there will be many circumstances of its life to which it will attach no importance whatever and which it will not even seek to recall.” a — But, if it wished, could it remember them?

“It can remember the most minute particulars and incidents, relating both to the facts and even to its thoughts.

It does not do so, however, when it has no use for it.”

b — Does the Spirit glimpse the object of terrestrial life with respect to the future life?

“Certainly it sees and comprehends it much better than during the life of its body.

It comprehends the necessity of its purification in order to reach the infinite and perceives that in each existence it leaves some impurities.”

How is it that the Spirit's past life is sketched in its memory? Will it be by an effort of its own imagination, or like a picture that presents itself to its view?

“In one and the other form.

All the acts it has an interest in remembering are, as it were, present to it. The others remain more or less vague in its mind, or wholly forgotten.

The more dematerialized it is, the less importance it will give to material things.

This is the reason why, often, you evoke a Spirit that has just left the Earth and verify that it does not remember the names of the persons who were dear to it, nor a host of things that seem important to you.

It is that all this, mattering little to it, soon fell into oblivion. It remembers perfectly well only the principal facts that contribute to its improvement.”

Does the Spirit remember all the existences that preceded the one it has just had?

“Its whole past unfolds before its view, like to a traveler the stretches of the road he has traversed.

But, as we have already said, it does not remember, in an absolute manner, all its acts. It remembers them in conformity with the influence they had in the creation of its present state.

As for the first existences, those that can be considered as the infancy of the Spirit, these are lost in the vague and disappear in the night of oblivion.”

How does the Spirit regard the body from which it has just separated?

“Like a useless garment, which encumbered it, feeling itself happy at being free of it.”

a — What sensation does the spectacle of its body in decomposition cause it?

“Almost always it remains indifferent to it, as to a thing that in no way interests it.”

After some time, will the Spirit recognize the bones or other objects that may have belonged to it?

“Sometimes, depending on the more or less elevated point of view from which it regards terrestrial things.”

Does the veneration one may have for the material objects that belonged to the Spirit give it pleasure and draw its attention to those objects?

“It is always pleasing to the Spirit that it be remembered, and the objects that belonged to it bring it to the memory of those it left in the world.

But what attracts it is the thought of these persons and not those objects.”

And the remembrance of the sufferings through which they passed in their last corporeal existence, do the Spirits retain it?

“Frequently it happens so and this remembrance makes them comprehend better the value of the happiness they can enjoy as Spirits.”

Does the man, who in this world was happy, deplore the happiness he lost, on leaving the Earth?

“Only the inferior Spirits can feel longings for enjoyments that bring upon them expiation through suffering.

For the elevated Spirits, eternal happiness is a thousand times preferable to the ephemeral pleasures of the Earth.”

Exactly as happens to the man who, at the age of maturity, attaches no importance to what so delighted him in childhood.

He who began works of great scope with a useful end and who sees them interrupted by death, does he lament, in the other world, having left them unfinished?

“No, because he sees that others are destined to conclude them.

He seeks, on the contrary, to influence other human Spirits, in order that they may complete them.

His object, on the Earth, was the good of Humanity: the same object he continues to have in the world of the Spirits.”

And he who left works of art or of literature, does he keep for his works the love he had for them when alive?

“According to his elevation, he appreciates them from another point of view and it is not rare that he condemns what caused him the greatest admiration.”

In the beyond, does the Spirit take interest in the works that are carried out on the Earth, in the progress of the arts and of the sciences?

“According to its elevation or to the mission it may have to carry out.

Often, what seems magnificent to you is very little for certain Spirits, who, then, admire it, as the learned man admires the work of a student.

They attend only to what proves the elevation of the incarnate ones and their progress.”

After death, do the Spirits keep the love of country?

“The principle is always the same. For the elevated Spirits, the country is the Universe. On the Earth, the country, for them, is where the greatest number of the persons who are sympathetic to them is found.”

The conditions of the Spirits and the manners in which they see things vary to infinity, in conformity with the degrees of moral and intellectual development in which they find themselves.

Generally, the Spirits of elevated order draw near to the Earth only for a brief time. All that is done there is so paltry in comparison with the grandeurs of the infinite, so puerile, in their eyes, are the things to which men attach the most importance, that our world offers almost no attraction to them, unless the purpose of contributing to the progress of Humanity leads them there.

The Spirits of intermediate order are those who most frequently come down to this planet, though they regard things from a higher point of view than when incarnate.

The common Spirits, those are the ones who take the most pleasure there and constitute the mass of the invisible population of the terrestrial globe. They keep almost the same ideas, the same tastes and the same inclinations they had when clothed in the corporeal envelope. They insert themselves into our reunions, business, amusements, in which they take a more or less active part, according to their characters.

Not being able to satisfy their passions, they take enjoyment in the company of those who give themselves up to them and excite them to cultivate them. Among them, nevertheless, there are many, serious ones, who see and observe in order to instruct and perfect themselves.

Do the ideas of the Spirits modify themselves when in erraticity?

“Much; they undergo great modifications, in proportion as the Spirit dematerializes itself.

It can, sometimes, remain for a long time imbued with the ideas it had on the Earth; but, little by little, the influence of matter diminishes and it sees things with greater clarity. It is then that it seeks the means of becoming better.”

The Spirit having already lived spirit life before its incarnation, how is its astonishment explained on reentering the world of the Spirits?

“That occurs only at the first moment, and is an effect of the perturbation that follows the awakening of the Spirit.

Later, it becomes informed of its condition, as the remembrance of the past returns to it and the impression of terrestrial life is effaced from it.” (163 and following)

Commemoration of the dead. Funerals.

Does the remembering of them by those who were dear to them on the Earth move the Spirits?

“Much more than you can suppose.

If they are happy, that fact increases their happiness.

If they are unhappy, it serves them as a balm.”

Is the day of the commemoration of the dead, for the Spirits, more solemn than the other days? Does it please them to go to meet those who go to pray in the cemeteries over their tombs?

“The Spirits come on that day at the call of those who from the Earth direct their thoughts to them, as they do on any other day.”

a — But is the day of the dead, for them, a special day of reunion near their graves?

“On that day, in greater number they gather in the necropolises, because then there is greater also, in such places, the number of the persons who call them by thought.

But each Spirit goes there only for its friends and not for the multitude of the indifferent.”

b — Under what form do they appear there and how would we see them, if they could make themselves visible?

“Under the one they had when incarnate.”

And the forgotten ones, whose tombs no one goes to visit, do they too appear there, nonetheless, and feel some grief at seeing that no friend remembers them?

“What does the Earth matter to them? Only by the heart are we bound to it.

As soon as no one there any longer vows it affection, nothing more binds to that planet the Spirit, which has the entire Universe for itself.”

Does the visit of a person to a tomb cause greater contentment to the Spirit, whose corporeal remains are found there, than the prayer that person may make for it in their home?

“He who visits a tomb merely manifests, by that form, that he thinks of the absent Spirit. The visit is the exterior representation of an intimate fact.

We have already said that it is prayer that sanctifies the act of remembrance. The place matters nothing, provided it be made with the heart.”

Do the Spirits of the persons to whom statues or monuments are erected attend the inauguration of the ones and the others and experience some pleasure in it?

“Many attend such solemnities, when they can; but the homage rendered to them moves them less than the remembrance that men keep of them.”

What is the origin of the desire that certain persons express to be buried rather in one place than in another? Could it be that they will prefer, after they are dead, to come to such a place? And does this importance given to a thing so material constitute an indication of inferiority of the Spirit?

“Particular affection of the Spirit for determined places; moral inferiority.

What does this or that corner of the Earth matter to an elevated Spirit? Does it not know that its soul will reunite with those of the ones who are dear to it, even though their respective bones remain separated?”

a — Should one consider the reuniting of the mortal remains of all the members of a family a frivolity?

“No; it is a pious custom and a testimony of sympathy that those who proceed thus give to those who were their dear ones.

Although devoid of importance for the Spirits, this reuniting is useful to men: their recollections become more concentrated.”

Do the honors rendered to the mortal remains move the soul that returns to spiritual life?

“When it has already ascended to a certain degree of perfection, the Spirit finds itself cleared of terrestrial vanities and comprehends the futility of all these things.

But, know this, there are Spirits who, in the first moments that follow their material death, experience great pleasure with the honors rendered to them, or are vexed at the slight regard paid to their corporeal envelopes. It is that they still keep some of the prejudices of this world.”

Does the Spirit attend its burial?

“Frequently it attends, but, sometimes, if it is still perturbed, it does not perceive what is happening.”

a — Does the attendance of many persons at its burial flatter it?

“More or less, according to the sentiment that animates them.”

Does the Spirit of him who has just died attend the gathering of his heirs?

“Almost always. For its instruction and the chastisement of the guilty, God permits it to be so.

On that occasion, the Spirit judges the value of the protestations they made to it. All the sentiments are laid bare to it and the disappointment caused it by the rapacity of those who share among themselves the goods left by it enlightens it concerning those sentiments.

But the turn will come of those who cause it that disappointment.”

Is the instinctive respect that, in all times and among all peoples, man has consecrated and consecrates to the dead an effect of the intuition he has of the future life?

“It is the natural consequence of that intuition. Were it not so, that respect would have no reason for being.”