THE ROLE OF MEDIUMS IN SPIRITIST COMMUNICATIONS.

Influence of the medium's personal spirit. — System of inert mediums. — Aptitude of certain mediums for things of which they know nothing: languages, music, drawing, etc. — Dissertation by a Spirit on the role of mediums.

Influence of the medium's personal spirit.

— 1st At the moment when the medium exercises his faculty, is he in a perfectly normal state?

“He is, at times, in a more or less pronounced state of crisis.

That is what fatigues him, and that is why he needs rest.

But, ordinarily, his state does not differ appreciably from the normal state, especially in writing mediums.”

2nd Can written or verbal communications also emanate from the very Spirit incarnated in the medium?

“The soul of the medium can communicate, like that of any other.

If it enjoys a certain degree of freedom, it recovers its qualities as a Spirit.

You have proof of this in the visits paid to you by the souls of living persons, who often communicate with you in writing, without your calling them.

For, be it known, among the Spirits you evoke, there are some who are incarnated on Earth. They then speak to you as Spirits and not as men.

Why should it not be the same with the medium?” a — Does it not seem that this explanation confirms the opinion of those who hold that all communications come from the Spirit of the medium and not from a foreign Spirit?

“Those who think thus err only in giving an absolute character to the opinion they maintain, since it is beyond doubt that the Spirit of the medium can act by itself. That, however, is no reason why others should not act equally through his agency.”

3rd How can one distinguish whether the Spirit that responds is that of the medium, or another?

“By the nature of the communications.

Study the circumstances and the language and you will distinguish.

It is in the state of somnambulism, or of ecstasy, above all, that the Spirit of the medium manifests itself, because it is then more free. In the normal state it is more difficult.

Moreover, there are answers that cannot be attributed to it in any way. That is why I tell you: study and observe.”

NOTE. When a person speaks to us, we easily distinguish what comes from that person from that of which he is only the echo. The same is verified with mediums.

4th Since the Spirit of the medium may, in previous existences, have acquired knowledge that it forgot beneath the bodily covering, but that it remembers as a Spirit, could it not draw from the depths of its own self the ideas that seem beyond the reach of its instruction?

“This happens frequently, in the state of somnambulic or ecstatic crisis; but, once again I repeat, there are circumstances that permit no doubt.

Study at length and meditate.”

5th Are the communications that come from the Spirit of the medium always inferior to those that may be given by other Spirits?

“Not always; for a Spirit other than that of the medium may be of an order inferior to the latter and, in that case, speak less sensibly.

This is seen in somnambulism. There, most often, the one who manifests is the Spirit of the somnambulist, who not infrequently says very good things.”

6th Does the Spirit that communicates through a medium transmit its thought directly, or does it have as intermediary the Spirit incarnated in the medium?

“The Spirit of the medium is the interpreter, because it is linked to the body that serves for speaking, and because a chain is necessary between you and the Spirits who communicate, just as an electric wire is needed to communicate news over a great distance, and, at the end of the wire, an intelligent person to receive it and transmit it.”

7th Does the Spirit incarnated in the medium exercise any influence over the communications it is to transmit, coming from other Spirits?

“It does, 2 for, if these are not congenial to it, it may alter their answers and assimilate them to its own ideas and its own inclinations; 3 it does not, however, influence the Spirits themselves, the authors of the answers; 4 it constitutes itself merely a bad interpreter.”

8th Would this be the cause of the preference of the Spirits for certain mediums?

“There is no other.

The Spirits seek the interpreter most in sympathy with them and who expresses their thoughts to them with the most exactness.

When there is no sympathy between them, the Spirit of the medium is an antagonist that offers a certain resistance and becomes an interpreter of poor quality and often unfaithful.

It is what happens among you, when the opinion of a learned man is transmitted through a scatterbrain, or a person of bad faith.” 9th It is understandable that it should be so in the case of intuitive mediums, but not as regards mechanical mediums.

“That is because you have not yet well perceived the role that the medium plays.

There is here a law that you have not yet grasped. Remember that, to produce the movement of an inert body, the Spirit must make use of a portion of animalized fluid, which it takes from the medium, to animate the table momentarily, so that it may obey its will. Well then: understand likewise that, for an intelligent communication, it needs an intelligent intermediary, and that this intermediary is the Spirit of the medium.” a — This seems to have no application to what are called — talking tables, since, when inert objects, such as tables, planchettes, and baskets, give intelligent answers, the Spirit of the medium, as it appears to us, takes no part in the fact.

“That is an error; 2 the Spirit can give to the inert body a momentary factitious life, but it cannot give it intelligence. Never has an inert body been intelligent.

It is, then, the Spirit of the medium that receives, against its will, the thought and transmits it, successively, with the aid of various intermediaries.”

10th From these explanations it results, it seems, that the Spirit of the medium is never completely passive?

“It is passive when it does not mix its own ideas with those of the Spirit that communicates, but it is never entirely null.

Its concurrence is always indispensable, as that of an intermediary, even though it be a question of those you call mechanical mediums.”

11th Is there not greater guarantee of independence in the mechanical medium than in the intuitive medium?

“Without any doubt, and, for certain communications, a mechanical medium is preferable; 2 but, when one knows the faculties of an intuitive medium, it becomes indifferent, according to circumstances.

I mean to say that there are communications that require less precision.”

[System of inert mediums.]

12th Among the different systems that have been conceived to explain Spiritist phenomena, there is one that proclaims that true mediumship lies in a completely inert body, in the basket, or in the pasteboard, for example, that serves as instrument; that the manifesting Spirit identifies itself with that object and renders it, besides living, intelligent, whence the name inert mediums given to these objects. What do you think of this system? “There is little to say on the subject, and that is that, if the Spirit transmitted intelligence to the pasteboard, at the same time as life, the latter would write by itself, without the concurrence of the medium.

It would be singular for the intelligent man to be changed into a machine and for an inert object to become intelligent.

This is one of the many systems arising from preconceived ideas, and which fall, like so many others, before experience and observation.” 13th A well-known phenomenon might support the opinion that in animated inert bodies there is more than life: that of tables, baskets, etc., which, by their movements, express anger, or affection?

“When a man angrily brandishes a stick, it is not the stick that is gripped by anger, nor even the hand that holds it, but the thought that directs the hand.

Tables and baskets are no more intelligent than the stick; they present no intelligent sentiment; they merely obey an intelligence. In a word, the Spirit does not transform itself into a basket, nor does it take up residence in it.” 14th Since it is not rational to attribute intelligence to these objects, may they be considered as a category of mediums, giving them the name of inert mediums?

“It is a question of words, which matters little to us, provided you understand one another. You are free to give to a puppet the name of man.”

[Aptitude of certain mediums for things of which they know nothing: languages, music, drawing, etc.]

15th The Spirits have only the language of thought; they do not dispose of articulated language, wherefore there is for them only one language. This being so, could a Spirit express itself, by mediumistic means, in a language it never spoke when alive? And, in that case, whence does it take the words it uses?

“You have yourself just answered the question you formulated, by saying that the Spirits have only one language, which is that of thought. That language all understand, both men and Spirits.

The wandering Spirit, when it addresses the incarnated Spirit of the medium, speaks to it neither French nor English, but the universal language, which is that of thought. To express its ideas in an articulated, transmissible language, it takes the words from the vocabulary of the medium.” 16th If it is so, it should be possible for the Spirit to express itself only in the language of the medium. Yet it is known that it writes in idioms unknown to the medium. Is there not here a contradiction?

“Note, first, that not all mediums are apt for this kind of exercise and, next, that the Spirits lend themselves to it only accidentally, when they judge that it may have some utility.

For ordinary communications and those of a certain length, they prefer to make use of a language familiar to the medium, because it presents to them fewer material difficulties to overcome.” 17th Might the aptitude of certain mediums to write in a language foreign to them not come from the circumstance of that language having been familiar to them in another existence and of their having retained the intuition of it?

“It is certain that this can occur, but it does not constitute a rule.

With some effort, the Spirit can momentarily overcome the material resistance it encounters. This is what happens when the medium writes, in the language proper to it, words it does not know.”

18th Could an illiterate person write as a medium?

“Yes, but it is easy to understand that it will have to overcome great mechanical difficulty, because the hand lacks the habit of the movement necessary to form letters.

The same happens with drawing mediums who do not know how to draw.”

19th Could a medium of very little intelligence transmit communications of an elevated order?

“Yes, for the same reason that a medium can write in a language unknown to it.

Mediumship properly so called is independent of intelligence, as well as of moral qualities.

For lack of a better instrument, the Spirit can make use of the one it has at hand. But it is natural that, for communications of a certain order, it should prefer the medium that offers it fewer material obstacles.

Add another consideration: the idiot is often such only through the imperfection of his organs, his Spirit being able, nevertheless, to be more advanced than is supposed. You have proof of this in certain evocations of idiots, dead or alive.”

NOTE. This is a fact that experience confirms. Many times living idiots have been evoked who have given patent proofs of identity and answered with much good sense and even in a superior manner.

This state is a punishment for the Spirit, who suffers from the constraint in which it finds itself.

An idiot medium can, therefore, offer to the Spirit that wishes to manifest itself more resources than was supposed. (See: Spiritist Review, July 1860, article on Phrenology and Physiognomy.)

20th Whence comes the aptitude of some mediums to write in verse?

“Poetry is a language. They can write in verse, as they can write in a language unknown to them.

Then, it is possible that they were poets in another existence and, as we have already told you, the knowledge acquired is never lost by the Spirit, which must reach perfection in all things: In that case, what they have known gives them a facility they do not possess in the ordinary state.” 21st Does the same occur with those who have a special aptitude for drawing and music?

“Yes; drawing and music are also ways of expressing thoughts. The Spirits make use of the instruments that offer them the most facility.”

22nd Does the expression of thought through poetry, through drawing, or through music depend solely on the special aptitude of the medium, or also on that of the Spirit that communicates?

“Sometimes on the medium; sometimes on the Spirit.

The superior Spirits possess all aptitudes. The inferior Spirits dispose only of limited knowledge.”

23rd Why is it that a man of extraordinary talent in one existence no longer has it in the following existence?

“It is not always so, for often he perfects, in one existence, what he began in the preceding one. But it may happen that an extraordinary faculty lies dormant for a certain time, to let another develop. It is a latent germ, which will be found again later and of which some traces, or, at least, a vague intuition, always remain.”

The Spirit that wishes to communicate understands, without doubt, all languages, for languages are the expression of thought, and it is through thought that the Spirit has the comprehension of everything; but, to express that thought, an instrument becomes necessary to it, and this is the medium.

The soul of the medium, which receives the communication of a third party, cannot transmit it except through the organs of its body. Now, those organs cannot have, for a language unknown to the medium, the flexibility they present for the one that is familiar to it.

A medium who knows only French could, accidentally, give an answer in English, for example, if it pleases the Spirit to do so; but the Spirits, who already find human language very slow, compared with the rapidity of thought—so much so that they abbreviate it as much as they can—grow impatient with the mechanical resistance they encounter; hence, they do not always do it.

This is also the reason why a novice medium, who writes painfully and slowly, even in his own language, generally obtains no more than brief answers without development.

For this reason, the Spirits recommend that, with such a medium, only simple questions be addressed to them. For those of great scope, a developed medium is needed, who offers no mechanical difficulty to the Spirit.

No one would take for his reader a student who was learning to spell. A good workman does not like to make use of bad instruments.

Let us add another consideration of much gravity concerning foreign languages. Trials of this kind are always made out of curiosity and for experiment. Now, nothing is more disagreeable to the Spirits than the tests one tries to subject them to. The superior Spirits never lend themselves to them, withdrawing as soon as one tries to enter upon that path. As much as they take pleasure in useful and serious things, so much does it repel them to occupy themselves with futile things without purpose.

It is, the incredulous will say, in order to convince us, and that end is useful, because it may win adepts for the cause of the Spirits. To this the Spirits reply: “Our cause does not need those who have enough pride to suppose themselves indispensable. We call to us whom we wish, and these are almost always the smallest and the most humble.

Did Jesus perform the miracles the scribes asked of him? And of what men did he make use to revolutionize the world? If you wish to convince yourselves, you dispose of other means than force; begin by submitting yourselves; it is not regular for the disciple to impose his will upon the master.”

Hence it follows that, save for some exceptions, the medium expresses the thought of the Spirits by the mechanical means at its disposal, and also that the expression of that thought can, and indeed must, most often, suffer from the imperfection of such means.

Thus, the uneducated man, the peasant, may say the most beautiful things, express the most elevated and most philosophical ideas, speaking as a peasant, since, as is known, for the Spirits thought surpasses everything.

This answers certain criticisms regarding the incorrectnesses of style and orthography that are imputed to the Spirits, but that may come as much from them as from the medium. To attach oneself to such things is nothing but futility.

It is no less puerile to insist on reproducing these incorrectnesses with minute exactness, as we have sometimes seen done.

It is permissible, therefore, to correct them, without the least scruple, unless they characterize the Spirit that communicates, in which case it is good to preserve them, as proof of identity.

Thus it is, for example, that we have seen a Spirit constantly write Jule (without the s), speaking of his grandson, because, when alive, he wrote in that manner, even though the grandson, who served him as medium, knew perfectly well how to write his own name. [Dissertation by a Spirit on the role of mediums.]

The dissertation that follows, given spontaneously by a superior Spirit, who revealed himself through communications of a very elevated order, summarizes, in a clear and complete manner, the question of the role of the medium:

“Whatever the nature of the writing mediums, whether mechanical or semi-mechanical, or simply intuitive, our processes of communication with them do not essentially vary.

In fact, we communicate with the incarnated Spirits of the mediums in the same way as with the Spirits properly so called, solely by the irradiation of our thought.

“Our thoughts do not need the vesture of the word in order to be understood by the Spirits, and all Spirits perceive the thoughts we wish to transmit to them, it being sufficient that we direct those thoughts to them, and this in proportion to their intellectual faculties.

That is to say that such and such Spirits can understand a given thought, by virtue of their advancement, whereas, to such others, since they awaken no remembrance, no knowledge dormant in the depths of their heart or of their brain, those same thoughts are not perceptible to them.

In this case, the incarnated Spirit that serves us as medium is more apt to express our thought to other incarnated beings, even though it does not understand it, than a disincarnated but little-advanced Spirit, if we were forced to make use of the latter, since the earthly being puts its body, as an instrument, at our disposal, which the wandering Spirit cannot do.

“Thus, when we find in a medium the brain peopled with knowledge acquired in its present life, and its Spirit rich in latent knowledge, obtained in previous lives, of a nature to facilitate communications for us, we make use of it by preference, because with it the phenomenon of communication becomes much easier for us than with a medium of limited intelligence and of scant knowledge previously acquired. We are going to make ourselves comprehensible by means of some clear and precise explanations.

“With a medium whose present or previous intelligence is developed, our thought communicates instantaneously from Spirit to Spirit, by a faculty peculiar to the very essence of the Spirit.

In that case, we find in the brain of the medium the elements proper to give to our thought the vesture of the word that corresponds to it, and this whether the medium be intuitive, semi-mechanical, or entirely mechanical.

This is the reason why, whatever the diversity of the Spirits that communicate with a medium, the dictations it obtains, although proceeding from different Spirits, bear, as to form and coloring, the stamp that is personal to it.

Indeed, even though the thought is wholly foreign to it, even though the subject is outside the sphere in which it habitually moves, even though what we wish to say does not come from it, the medium does not for that cease to exercise influence, with respect to form, by the qualities and properties inherent to its individuality.

It is exactly as when you observe diverse panoramas, with tinted lenses, green, white, or blue; although the panoramas, or objects observed, are entirely opposite and absolutely independent of one another, they do not for that cease to take on a tonality that comes from the colors of the lenses.

Or, better: let us compare the mediums to those flasks full of colored and transparent liquids that are seen in the display windows of pharmaceutical laboratories. Well then, we are like lights that illuminate certain moral, philosophical, and internal panoramas, through the mediums, blue, green, or red, in such a way that our luminous rays, obliged to pass through glass more or less well faceted, more or less transparent, that is, through mediums more or less intelligent, reach the objects we wish to illuminate only by taking on the coloring, or, better, the manner of speaking proper and particular to those mediums.

Finally, to conclude with a last comparison: we Spirits are like composers of music, who have composed, or wish to improvise, an air, and who have at hand only either a piano, a violin, a flute, a bassoon, or a ten-cent harmonica. It is incontestable that, with the piano, the violin, or the flute, we shall execute our composition in a manner quite comprehensible to the listeners. Although the sounds produced by the piano, the bassoon, or the clarinet are very different from one another, the air will not for that cease to be identical on any of these instruments, abstraction made of the nuances of sound. But, if we have at our disposal only a ten-cent harmonica, there for us lies the difficulty.

“Effectively, when we are obliged to make use of little-advanced mediums, our work becomes much longer and more painful, because we find ourselves forced to resort to incomplete forms, which is for us a complication, since we are constrained to decompose our thoughts and to dictate word by word, letter by letter, this constituting a fatigue and a vexation, as well as a real hindrance to the swiftness and development of our manifestations.

“That is why we like to find well-trained mediums, well-equipped, furnished with materials ready to be used, in a word: good instruments, because then our perispirit, acting upon that of the one whom we mediumize, has nothing more to do than to impel the hand that serves us as pencil, or pen, whereas, with insufficient mediums, we are obliged to a work analogous to that which we have when we communicate by means of raps, that is, forming, letter by letter, word by word, each of the phrases that translate the thoughts we wish to transmit to you.

“It is for these reasons that we address ourselves by preference, for the dissemination of Spiritism and for the development of the writing mediumistic faculties, to the cultivated and instructed classes, although it is in those classes that are found the most incredulous, most rebellious, and most immoral individuals.

It is that, just as we today leave, to the jesting and little-advanced Spirits, the exercise of tangible communications, of raps and transports, so also do men of little seriousness prefer the spectacle of the phenomena that affect their eyes or their ears to the purely spiritual, purely psychological phenomena.

“When we wish to transmit spontaneous dictations, we act upon the brain, upon the archives of the medium, and we prepare our materials with the elements it furnishes us, and this without its knowledge.

It is as if we took from its purse the sums it may have there and placed the coins that compose them in the order that seemed most convenient to us.

“But, when it is the medium itself that wishes to question us, it is well that it reflect on this seriously, in order to put its questions to us methodically, thus facilitating for us the work of answering them.

For, as we have already told you in a previous instruction, your brain is frequently in inextricable disorder, and it becomes for us not only difficult but also painful to move about in the labyrinth of your thoughts.

When it is a third party who is to question us, it is good and proper that the series of questions be communicated beforehand to the medium, so that it may identify itself with the Spirit of the evoker and, so to speak, become impregnated with it, because, then, we others will have more facility to answer, by effect of the affinity existing between our perispirit and that of the medium who serves us as interpreter.

“Without doubt, we can speak of mathematics, making use of a medium to whom these are absolutely foreign; but, almost always, the Spirit of that medium possesses, in a latent state, knowledge of the subject, that is, knowledge peculiar to the fluidic being and not to the incarnated being, its present body being an instrument rebellious to, or contrary to, that knowledge.

The same occurs with astronomy, with poetry, with medicine, with the various languages, as well as with all the other knowledge peculiar to the human species.

“Finally, we still have as a painful means of elaboration, to be used with mediums completely foreign to the subject in question, that of gathering the letters and the words, one by one, as in typography.

“As we said above, the Spirits do not need to clothe their thoughts; they perceive them and transmit them, reciprocally, by the mere fact that the thoughts exist in them.

Corporeal beings, on the contrary, can perceive thoughts only when these are clothed. Whereas the letter, the word, the noun, the verb, the sentence, in short, are necessary to you in order to perceive, even mentally, ideas, no visible or tangible form is necessary to us.” Erastus and Timothy.

NOTE. This analysis of the role of mediums and of the processes by which the Spirits communicate is as clear as it is logical.

From it follows, as a principle, that the Spirit draws, not its ideas, but the materials it needs to express them, from the brain of the medium, and that, the richer in materials that brain is, the easier the communication will be.

When the Spirit expresses itself in an idiom familiar to the medium, it finds in the latter, entirely formed, the words necessary for the clothing of the idea; if it does so in a language foreign to the medium, it finds in the latter not the words, but only the letters. That is why the Spirit finds itself obliged to dictate, so to speak, letter by letter, just as one who wished to make a person write German who did not know a single word of that idiom.

If the medium is illiterate, it does not even furnish the letters to the Spirit. It becomes necessary for the latter to guide its hand, as is done with a child beginning to learn. The Spirit there encounters a still greater difficulty to overcome.

These phenomena, then, are possible, and there are numerous examples of them; it is understood, nevertheless, that such a manner of proceeding shows itself little suited to extensive and rapid communications, and that the Spirits will prefer the instruments of easier handling, or, as they say, the mediums well equipped from their point of view.

If those who clamor for these phenomena, as a means of convincing themselves, would study the theory beforehand, they would know under what exceptional conditions they are produced.