Sensations of Spirits.

— Do Spirits suffer? What sensations do they experience? Such questions are naturally addressed to us, and we shall try to resolve them. First we must say that, to do so, we are not content with the answers of the Spirits. In a certain way, through numerous observations, we had to consider the sensation alongside the fact.

At one of our meetings, shortly after Saint Louis transmitted to us the beautiful dissertation on avarice, the beautiful dissertation on avarice, inserted in our number of the month of February, one of our associates related the following fact, with regard to that same dissertation.

“We were occupied with evocations in a small gathering of friends when, unexpectedly and without our having called him, there presented himself the Spirit of a man whom we had known very well and who, when alive, could have served as a model for the portrait of the miser drawn by Saint Louis: one of those men who live miserably in the midst of fortune and who deprived himself, not for the sake of others, but to accumulate without profit to anyone. It was winter, and we were near the fire; suddenly that Spirit reminded us of his name, of which we were absolutely not thinking, asking our permission to come, for three days, to warm himself at our hearth, for he suffered horribly from the cold that he had voluntarily endured during life and that, through his avarice, he had also made others endure. It would be a relief that he would experience, he added, should we agree to the request.”

That Spirit, then, experienced a painful sensation of cold; but how did he experience it? Therein lies the difficulty.

— In this regard we put to Saint Louis the following questions:

— Would you consent to tell us how that Spirit of a miser, who no longer had the material body, could feel cold and ask to warm himself?

Answer. – You can represent the sufferings of the Spirit by moral sufferings.

— We conceive of moral sufferings, such as regrets, remorse, shame; but heat and cold, physical pain, are not moral effects; would Spirits experience such sensations?

Answer. – Does your soul feel cold? No; but it is conscious of the sensation that acts upon the body.

— From this it seems to follow that that Spirit of a miser did not feel a real cold, but the memory of the sensation of cold that he had endured, and this memory, taken by him for reality, became a torment.

Answer. – That is more or less it. Be it well understood that there is a distinction, which you understand perfectly, between physical pain and moral pain; the effect must not be confused with the cause.

— If we have understood well, we could, it seems to us, explain things in the following manner:

The body is the instrument of pain. If it is not the first cause of it, it is at least the immediate cause. The soul has the perception of pain: this perception is the effect. The memory that the soul retains of the 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 or 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 limbs have been amputated are wont to feel pain in the limb they lack. Certainly the seat, or even the point of departure, of the pain is not there. The only thing is that the brain has retained this impression. It will therefore be permissible to admit that something analogous occurs in the sufferings of the Spirit after death. Are these reflections correct?

Answer. – Yes; but later you will understand even better. Wait for new facts to provide you with grounds for observation; from them you will draw more complete consequences.

— This took place at the beginning of 1858; since then, indeed, a more thorough study of the perispirit, which plays so important a role in all Spiritist phenomena, and of which there was not yet any knowledge; the vaporous or tangible apparitions; the state of the Spirit at the moment of death; the idea, so frequent in the Spirit, that it is still alive; the so striking picture of suicides, of those put to torture, of persons who let themselves be absorbed by material pleasures, and so many other facts besides, came to cast new light on this question and gave occasion to explanations, the summary of which we shall make here.

The perispirit is the bond that binds the Spirit to the matter of the body, which the Spirit draws from the surrounding environment, from the universal fluid. It partakes at once of electricity, of the magnetic fluid, and, to a certain point, of inert matter. One might 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, moreover, the agent of the exterior sensations. In the body, the organs, serving them as conduits, localize these sensations. Once the body is destroyed, they become general. Hence the Spirit does not say that it suffers more in the head than in the feet, or vice versa. But let not the sensations of the perispirit, which has become independent, be confused with those of the body. The latter we can take only by way of comparison and not by analogy. An excess of heat or cold may disorganize the tissues of the body, but it cannot cause any harm to the perispirit. Freed from the body, the Spirit can suffer, but this suffering is not corporeal, although it is not exclusively moral, like remorse, since it complains of cold and heat. Neither 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 understand 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 that, as we shall see. Experience teaches us that, on the occasion 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 it is not dead, because it feels alive; it sees the body beside it, knows that it belongs to it, but does not understand that it is separated from it. This situation lasts as long as there is any link between the body and the perispirit. Let us refer to the evocation of the suicide of the baths of the Samaritaine, which we related in our number of the month of June. Like all the others, he said: “No, I am not dead.” And he added: “Yet I feel the worms gnawing at me.” Now, undoubtedly, the worms were not gnawing at his perispirit, and still less at the Spirit; they were gnawing only at his body. But since the separation of the body and the perispirit was not complete, a sort 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 induce the supposition of a very material effect. It was rather the vision of what was happening to the body, to which the perispirit still kept it bound, that caused it the illusion, which it took for reality. Thus, then, there would not be in the case a reminiscence, since in life he had not been gnawed by worms: there was the feeling of a present fact. This shows what deductions can be drawn from facts, when attentively observed. During life, the body receives exterior impressions and transmits them to the Spirit by means of the perispirit, which constitutes, probably, what is called the nervous fluid. Once the body is dead, it no longer feels anything, since there is no longer Spirit or perispirit in it. The latter, detached from the body, experiences the sensation, but, since it no longer reaches it by a limited conduit, it becomes general to it. Now, the perispirit being really nothing more than a simple agent of transmission, since it is in the Spirit that consciousness lies, it will be logical to deduce that, if a perispirit could exist without a Spirit, it would feel nothing, exactly like a body that has died. In the same way, if the Spirit had no perispirit, it would be inaccessible to any and every painful sensation. This is what occurs with 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, as well as the disagreeable ones, are transmitted to the Spirit, the pure Spirit being inaccessible to the ones, it must equally be so to the others. So it is, in fact, with respect to those that proceed solely from the influence of the matter that we know. The sound of our instruments, the perfume of our flowers, cause it 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 those blind from birth before the light. We know that this is real; but by what means is it produced? Our science does not go 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 nothing about it, our language being inadequate to express ideas that we do not possess, just as in a population of the blind there would be no terms to express the effects of light; the same occurs with respect to the language of savages, to render ideas relating to our arts, sciences, and philosophical doctrines. In saying that Spirits are inaccessible to the impression of the matter that we know, we refer to the very elevated Spirits, whose ethereal envelope finds no analogy in this world. It is otherwise with those of denser perispirit, who perceive our sounds and odors, not, however, by only a limited part of their individualities, as happened to them when alive. One may say that, in them, the molecular vibrations make themselves felt throughout the whole being and thus reach the sensorium commune, which is the Spirit itself, although in a different manner and perhaps, also, giving a different impression, which modifies the perception. They hear the sound of our voice, yet they understand us without the aid of the word, 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 darkness does not exist. It is, however, more extensive, more penetrating in the more purified. The soul, or the Spirit, has, then, in itself, the faculty of all perceptions. These, in corporeal life, are obliterated by the grossness of the body's organs; in extracorporeal life, they grow clearer, in proportion as the semimaterial envelope is etherealized. Drawn from the surrounding environment, this envelope varies according to the nature of the worlds. In passing from one world to another, Spirits change their envelope, as we change our clothing when we pass from winter to summer, or from the pole to the equator. When they come to visit us, the most elevated clothe themselves in the terrestrial perispirit, and then their perceptions are produced as in ordinary Spirits. All of them, however, both the inferior and the superior, neither hear nor feel anything but what they wish to hear or feel. Not possessing sensory organs, they can freely render their perceptions active or null. One single thing they are obliged to hear – the counsels of the good Spirits. Sight is always active; but they can make themselves invisible to one another. According to the category they occupy, they can conceal 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 up as the Spirit detaches itself, and can attain the sharpness it had during terrestrial life, independently of the possibility of penetrating through bodies that are opaque to us. As to its extension through infinite space, in the past and in the future, this will depend on the degree of purity and elevation of the Spirit.

— It will be objected, perhaps: this whole theory has nothing reassuring about it. We thought that, once free of our gross envelope, the instrument of our pains, we would no longer suffer, and now 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 continue to suffer, and greatly, and for a long time, but also that we cease to suffer, even from the 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 will. Let each go back to the origin of them and he will see that the greater part of such sufferings are effects of causes that it would have been possible for him 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 with sobriety, who abused nothing, who was always simple in his tastes and modest in his desires, would spare himself many tribulations. The same occurs with the Spirit. The sufferings it goes through are always the consequence of the manner in which it lived on Earth. Certainly it will no longer suffer from gout, nor from rheumatism; nevertheless, it will experience other sufferings that owe nothing to those. We have seen that its suffering results from the bonds that still bind it to matter; that the freer it is from the influence of the latter, or rather, the more dematerialized it finds itself, the less painful the sensations it will experience. Now, it is in its own hands to free itself from such influence from the present life. It has free will, it has, consequently, the faculty of choice between doing and not doing. Let it tame its animal passions; let it nourish neither hatred, nor envy, nor jealousy, nor pride; let it not allow itself to be dominated by egoism; 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 deserve; and then, although clothed in the corporeal envelope, it will already be purified, will already be freed from the yoke of matter, and, when it leaves that envelope, it will no longer suffer the influence of it. No painful recollection will come to it from the physical sufferings it may have 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 Earth belonged to all classes of society, occupied all social positions; we have studied them in all the periods of spiritual life, from the moment in which they abandoned the body; we have accompanied them step by step in the life beyond the tomb, to observe the changes that operated within them, in their ideas, in their sentiments, and, under this aspect, those who here were found among the most vulgar of men were not the ones who provided us with the least precious elements of study. Now, we always noted that the sufferings bore relation to the conduct they had had and whose consequences they experienced; that the other life is a source of ineffable bliss 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 this world or in the other.

Certain critics ridiculed some of our evocations, for example, that of the murderer Lemaire, finding it singular that we should occupy ourselves with beings so ignoble, when we have so many superior Spirits at our disposal. They forget that it is precisely for that reason that, in some measure, we apprehend the nature of the fact, or, better said, in their ignorance of the Spiritist science they see in these dialogues nothing but an amusing conversation, the import of which they do not understand. We read somewhere that a philosopher said, after conversing with a peasant: “I learned much more from this simple man than from all the learned.” It was because he was capable of perceiving something beyond the surface. For the observer nothing is lost, finding teachings even in the cryptogam that grows in the manure. Does the physician refuse to touch a horrible wound, when it is a matter of probing the cause of the ill?

Let us add yet a word on the subject. The sufferings beyond the tomb have a term; we know that to the most inferior of Spirits is given the opportunity to elevate and purify itself through new trials; this may be slow, very slow, but it depends on each one to shorten this painful time, since God always listens to it, provided that it submits to His will. The more dematerialized the Spirit is, the more vast and lucid are its perceptions; the more it is under the dominion of matter, which depends entirely on its kind of terrestrial life, the more they will be limited and veiled; the more the moral vision of one extends toward the infinite, the more restricted is that of the other. The inferior Spirits have only a vague, confused, incomplete, and often null notion of the future; as they do not glimpse the term of their sufferings, they believe that they will always suffer, which, for them, is yet another punishment. If the position of some is afflicting, terrible even, it is not, for that reason, hopeless; that of the others is eminently consoling. It falls, then, to us to choose: this is of the most elevated morality. The skeptics doubt the fate that awaits us after death; we show them what there is, believing that we have rendered them a service. Thus, we have seen more than one of them retreat from his error or, at least, reflect upon that which he had previously censured. There is nothing like realizing the possibility of things. If it had always been thus, there would not be so many unbelievers, and religion and morality would only have to gain. Among many, religious doubt proceeds only from the difficulty they have in understanding certain things; they are positive Spirits, not organized for blind faith, who admit only that which, for them, has a reason for being. Make things accessible to their intelligence and they will accept them, because, at bottom, they ask no more than that in order to believe, and because doubt is for them a more painful situation than we imagine and than they would like to admit. Of all that has been said there is absolutely no system, nor personal ideas; nor even was it some privileged Spirits who dictated this theory to us: it is a matter of the result of studies made upon the individualities, corroborated and confirmed by the Spirits, whose language can leave no doubt about their superiority. We judge them by their words, and not by the name they bear or that they may attribute to themselves.

[1] Translator's Note: See The Spirits' Book – Book II – Chapter VI – item 257: Theoretical essay on the sensation of Spirits.