Pitfalls of mediums.

— Mediumship is a multiform faculty that presents an infinite variety of nuances in its means and in its effects. Whoever is apt to receive or transmit the communications of the Spirits is, for that very reason, a medium, whatever the mode employed or the degree of development of the faculty, from mere hidden influence to the production of the most unusual phenomena. Usually, however, this word has a more restricted acceptation and generally refers to persons endowed with a very great mediating power, whether to produce physical effects or to transmit the thought of the Spirits through writing or through speech.

Although this faculty is not an exclusive privilege, it is certain that it meets with refractory subjects, at least in the sense attributed to it; it is also certain that it is not a faculty that presents no pitfalls to those who possess it; that it can become altered, even lost, and frequently be a source of grave disillusionment. It is on this point that we judge it useful to draw the attention of all those who occupy themselves with spiritist communications, whether directly or through an intermediary. We say through an intermediary because it also matters to those who make use of mediums to be able to appreciate the worth and the confidence that their communications merit.

The gift of mediumship is connected to causes not yet perfectly known, in which the physical seems to play a great part. At first sight, it might seem that a gift so precious should be shared only by choice souls. Now, experience proves the contrary, since one finds powerful mediums among persons whose morality leaves much to be desired, while others, estimable in every respect, do not possess this gift. He who fails, despite his desire, his efforts, and his perseverance, should not draw conclusions unfavorable to himself nor judge himself unworthy of the benevolence of the good Spirits; if this favor has not been granted to him, there are no doubt others that can offer him ample compensation. For the same reason, he who enjoys it could not pride himself on it, for this gift is no sign of personal merit. The merit, therefore, lies not in the possession of the mediating faculty, which can be given to all, but in the use one can make of it. Here is a capital distinction that must never be lost sight of; the good quality of the medium lies not in the ease of the communications, but solely in his aptitude for receiving only the good ones. Now, it is here that the moral conditions in which he finds himself are all-powerful, and it is here too that he encounters the greatest pitfalls.

— To perceive this state of things and to understand what we are going to say, it is necessary to refer to this fundamental principle: that among the Spirits there are those of every degree in good and in evil, in knowledge and in ignorance; that the Spirits swarm around us and, when we imagine ourselves to be alone, we are incessantly surrounded by beings who jostle us, some with indifference, like strangers, others who observe us with more or less benevolent intentions, according to their nature.

The proverb “Birds of a feather flock together” has its application among the Spirits, as among us and, possibly, even more among them, because they are not, like us, subject to the influence of social conventions. Nevertheless, if among us these conventions sometimes mingle men of very different habits and tastes, in a certain way the mingling is only material and transitory. The similarity and the divergence of thoughts will always be the cause of attractions and repulsions.

Our soul, which after all is nothing more than an incarnate Spirit, is no less a Spirit for that. If it is momentarily clothed in a material envelope, its relations with the incorporeal world, though less easy than in the state of liberty, are not interrupted in an absolute manner. Thought is the bond that unites us to the Spirits, and through thought we attract those who sympathize with our ideas and inclinations. Let us therefore represent the mass of Spirits that surround us as the crowd we meet in the world; everywhere we prefer to go, we will find creatures attracted by the same tastes and the same desires. To gatherings that have a serious aim go serious men; to frivolous ones, frivolous men come. Everywhere are found men attracted by the dominant thought. If we cast our gaze upon the moral state of Humanity in general, we will understand without difficulty that, in this hidden multitude, the elevated Spirits cannot constitute the majority; it is one of the consequences of the state of inferiority of our globe.

— The Spirits that surround us are not passive; it is an essentially restless population that thinks and acts without cease, that influences us in spite of ourselves, that excites us or dissuades us, that impels us toward good or toward evil, which does not take away our free will any more than the good or bad counsels we receive from our fellow men. Nevertheless, when imperfect Spirits instigate someone to do an evil thing, they know very well to whom to address themselves and do not go to waste their time where they see they will be ill received. They excite us according to our inclinations or according to the germs they see in us and in accordance with our disposition to listen to them. This is why the man firm in the principles of good gives them no opportunity.

These considerations lead us naturally to the question of mediums. The latter are, like everyone else, subject to the hidden influence of good and bad Spirits; they attract or repel them according to the sympathies of their own Spirit, the bad Spirits taking advantage of every flaw, as of a gap in the armor, to introduce themselves to them and to meddle, in spite of them, in all the acts of their private life. Moreover, these Spirits, finding in the medium a means of expressing their thought in an intelligible manner and of attesting their presence, interfere in the communications and provoke them, because they hope to have more influence by this means and end up making themselves masters of him. They see themselves as though they were in their own house, driving away the Spirits that might create obstacles for them and, as the need arises, taking their names and even their language, in order to deceive the medium. But they cannot play this role for long: they are soon unmasked by the experienced and forewarned observer. If the medium lets himself be dominated by this influence, the good Spirits withdraw, or do not come at all when called, or come only with reluctance, because they see that the Spirit that is identified with the medium, in whose house it has established residence, can alter their instructions. If we had to choose an interpreter, a secretary, an agent of any kind, it is evident that we would choose not only a capable man but also one worthy of our esteem, just as we do not entrust a delicate mission and our own interests to an unbalanced man or to one who frequents suspect society. The same holds with the Spirits. To transmit serious instructions, the superior Spirits will not choose a medium who consorts with frivolous Spirits, unless there is need and they do not find, at the moment, other mediums at their disposal; unless, further, they wish to give a lesson to the medium himself, which sometimes happens; but then they make use of him only accidentally, abandoning him as soon as they find a better one and leaving him surrendered to his sympathies, should he remain bound to them. The perfect medium would be, then, one who permitted no access to the bad Spirits through any flaw whatsoever. This condition is very difficult to fulfill. However, if absolute perfection is not given to man, it is always possible for him to approach it by his efforts; and the Spirits take into account above all the efforts, the will, and the perseverance. Thus, the perfect medium would give only perfect communications, of truth and of morality. Perfection not being possible, the best medium would be the one who obtained the best communications: it is by their works that they may be judged. Communications constantly good and elevated, in which no index of inferiority was evidenced, would be incontestably a proof of the moral superiority of the medium, because they would attest to fortunate sympathies. By the very fact that the medium is not perfect, frivolous, deceitful, and lying Spirits can interfere in his communications, alter their purity, and lead the medium and those who address themselves to him into error. Here is the greatest pitfall of Spiritism, and we do not dissimulate its gravity. Can we avoid it? We say proudly: yes, we can. The means is not difficult, requiring only discernment.

— Good intentions, the very morality of the medium, are not always sufficient to preserve him from the interference of frivolous, lying, or pseudo-learned Spirits in the communications. Besides the defects of his own Spirit, he may give them entry through other causes, of which the principal is weakness of character and an excessive confidence in the invariable superiority of the Spirits that communicate with him. This blind confidence is connected to a cause that we will explain hereafter. If we do not wish to be victims of frivolous Spirits, we must know how to judge them; for this we have an infallible criterion: good sense and reason. We know the qualities of language that among us characterize men truly good and superior, and these qualities are the same for the Spirits; we must judge them by their language. It would never be superfluous to repeat what characterizes that of the superior Spirits: it is constantly dignified, noble, without bragging or contradiction, free of triviality, and marked by unalterable benevolence. The good Spirits counsel, they do not command; they do not impose themselves; they remain silent on what they do not know. The frivolous Spirits speak with the same assurance of what they know and of what they do not know, answering everything without concerning themselves with the truth. We have seen some, in a supposedly serious message, with imperturbable audacity, place Caesar in the time of Alexander; others, affirming that it is not the Earth that turns around the Sun. In short, every coarse or simply improper expression, every mark of pride and presumption, every maxim contrary to sound morality, every notorious scientific heresy, in Spirits as in men, is an incontestable sign of an evil nature, of ignorance or, at the least, of frivolity, whence it is concluded that it is necessary to weigh all that they say and to submit all things to the sieve of logic and good sense. Here is a recommendation that the good Spirits incessantly make to us: “God,” they say, “did not give you reasoning without purpose; make use of it to know what you are doing.” The bad Spirits fear examination and say: “Accept our words and do not judge them.” If they had the consciousness of being with the truth, they would not fear the light. The habit of scrutinizing the least words of the Spirits, of weighing their worth — from the point of view of the content and not of the grammatical form, with which they concern themselves little — necessarily drives away the ill-intentioned Spirits, who then will not come to waste their time uselessly, since we reject all that is bad or of suspect origin. But when we accept blindly all that they say, when, so to speak, we kneel before their pretended wisdom, they do what men would do, deceiving us.

If the medium is master of himself, if he does not let himself be dominated by an unreflecting enthusiasm, he will be able to do what we counsel. It happens, however, that the Spirit often subjugates him to the point of fascinating him, leading him to consider the most ridiculous things admirable; then he abandons himself more and more to this pernicious confidence and, believing in their good intentions and in their good sentiments, judges that this is sufficient to drive away the bad Spirits. No, this does not suffice, because these Spirits, taking advantage of his weakness and his credulity, are very satisfied to make him fall into the snare. What to do, then? Report the case to a third, disinterested person who, judging with discernment and without prejudice, can see a mote where the medium did not see a beam.

Spiritist science demands a great experience that, as in all sciences, philosophical or not, is acquired only by an assiduous, long, and persevering study, and by means of numerous observations. It encompasses not only the study of the phenomena properly so called, but also and above all the customs of the hidden world, if we may so express ourselves, from the most inferior to the highest degree of the scale. It would be great presumption to judge oneself sufficiently enlightened and to set up as a master after a few trials. Such a pretension would not come from a serious man, for whoever casts an inquiring glance upon these strange mysteries sees unfolding before him a horizon so vast that a multitude of years would not suffice to encompass it. And to think that certain persons wish to do it in a few days!

— Of all the moral imperfections, the one that offers the greatest vulnerability to the imperfect Spirits is pride. For mediums, pride is a pitfall all the more dangerous the less they confess it. It is pride that gives them this blind belief in the superiority of the Spirits that attach themselves to them, because they feel flattered by certain names that those impose upon them. As soon as a Spirit says to them: “I am so-and-so,” they bow and admit no doubt, because their self-love would suffer if it found, beneath this mask, a Spirit of inferior condition or a despicable wretch. The Spirit, who sees the weak side, takes advantage of it, flatters the alleged protégé, speaks to him of illustrious origins, which fill him with pride and vanity, promises him a brilliant future, honor and fortune, of which it seems to be the dispenser. If need be, it feigns toward him a hypocritical tenderness. How to resist so much generosity? In a word, it makes a fool of the medium, doing with him what it pleases, as is vulgarly said. Its happiness is to have someone under its dependence. We have already interrogated several of them on the motives of their obsession; one answered us this: I want to have a man who does my will; it is my pleasure. When we told it that we were going to do everything to thwart its artifices and to open the eyes of its oppressed one, it said: I will fight against you and you will not succeed, because I will do so many things that he will not believe you. It is, in effect, one of the tactics of these malevolent Spirits; they inspire distrust of and aversion to the persons who can unmask them and give good counsel. On the part of the good Spirits, such a thing never happens. Every Spirit that breathes discord, that excites animosity, that nourishes dissensions, by that very fact reveals its evil nature. One would have to be blind not to understand it and to believe that a good Spirit could stimulate disunion. Often pride develops in the medium as his faculty grows; it gives him importance. He is sought after and he ends by judging himself indispensable; hence, often, a tone of boastfulness and pretension, or airs of self-sufficiency and disdain, incompatible with the influence exercised by a good Spirit. He who falls into such extravagance is lost, for God gave him his faculty for good and not to satisfy vanity or to serve as a springboard for his ambition. He forgets that this power, of which he is proud, can be withdrawn and frequently is given to him only as a trial, just as fortune is to certain persons. If he abuses it, the good Spirits abandon him little by little, and he becomes the plaything of the frivolous Spirits who lull him with their illusions, satisfied at having vanquished one who judged himself strong. It is thus that we have seen the most precious faculties annihilate and lose themselves, faculties that, without this, would have become the most powerful and useful auxiliaries.

This applies to all kinds of mediums, whether of physical manifestations or of intelligent communications. Unfortunately pride is one of the defects that we are least disposed to confess to ourselves and still less to others, because they would not believe it. Go, then, and tell one of these mediums who lets himself be led like a child, and he will soon turn his back on you, saying that he knows very well how to conduct himself and that you do not see things clearly. You may tell a man that he is a drunkard, a debauchee, lazy, incapable, an imbecile, and he will laugh or agree; tell him that he is proud and he will become angry, evident proof that you will have told the truth. In this case, counsels are all the more difficult as the medium avoids the persons who can give them, fleeing an intimacy that he fears. The Spirits, sensing that counsels are blows struck against their power, impel the medium on the contrary toward those who entertain him in his illusions. Thus are prepared many disappointments, from which the self-love of the medium will have much to suffer. Happy still if nothing more grave results to him.

If we insist at length upon this point, it is because on many occasions experience has demonstrated to us that here is one of the great stumbling stones for the purity and the sincerity of mediumistic communications. It is almost useless, after this, to speak of the other moral imperfections, such as egoism, envy, jealousy, ambition, cupidity [see Self-interested mediums], hardness of heart, ingratitude, sensuality, etc. Each will understand that they are so many doors opened to the imperfect Spirits or, at least, causes of weakness. To repel the latter it is not enough to tell them to go away; it is not even enough to will it, and still less to conjure them: it is necessary to close the door and the ears to them, to prove to them that we are stronger than they, which we incontestably will be one day, through the love of good, through charity, through gentleness, through simplicity, through modesty, and through disinterestedness, qualities that draw to us the benevolence of the good Spirits. It is the support of these that gives us strength and, if they sometimes leave us at the mercy of the bad ones, it is to test our faith and our character.

— Let mediums not be too alarmed by the severity of the conditions we have just spoken of; they will have to agree that they are logical and it would be an error to oppose them. It is true that the bad communications we may obtain are the indication of some weakness, but not always a sign of unworthiness. We can be weak and be good. It is, in any case, a means of recognizing our own imperfections. We have already said in another article [The obsessed and the subjugated]: it is not necessary to be a medium to be under the influence of evil Spirits, who act in the shadow. With the mediumistic faculty the enemy shows himself and betrays himself; we know with whom we are dealing and we can combat him. It is thus that a bad communication can become a useful lesson, if we know how to profit from it. It would be unjust, moreover, to charge all bad communications to the account of the medium. We speak of those that he obtains alone, apart from any other influence, and not of those that are produced in some milieu. Now, everyone knows that the Spirits attracted by that milieu can harm the manifestations, whether by the diversity of characters or by a defect of recollection. It is a general rule that the best communications occur in intimacy and in a concentrated and homogeneous circle. In every communication several influences are at play: that of the medium, that of the environment, and that of the person who interrogates. These influences can react upon one another, neutralize one another, or corroborate one another: it will depend on the end we propose to ourselves and on the dominant thought. We have seen excellent communications obtained in circles that did not gather all the desirable conditions. In that case, the good Spirits came on account of one particular person, because that was useful. We have also seen bad communications obtained by good mediums, solely because the interrogator had no serious intentions and attracted frivolous Spirits who mocked him. All this demands tact and observation, and one easily conceives the preponderance that all these conditions gathered together must have.