The Spirit on one side, the body on the other.

Our distinguished colleague, Mr. Count de R…. C…., addressed to us the following letter, dated November 23 last:

“Mr. President, “I have heard it said that physicians, enthusiasts of their art and desirous of contributing to the progress of Science, making themselves useful to Humanity, bequeathed, by will, their bodies to the scalpel of the anatomy rooms. The experiment I witnessed, of the evocation of a living person (Session of the Society of October 14, 1859), did not seem to me very instructive, since it concerned a very personal matter: putting a living father in communication with his dead daughter. I thought that what the physicians did for the body, a member of the Society could do for the soul, while still alive, placing himself at your disposal for a trial of this kind. Perhaps you could, by preparing the questions in advance, which this time would have nothing personal about them, obtain new light upon the fact of the isolation of the soul and the body. Taking advantage of an indisposition that keeps me at home, I come to offer myself as a patient for study, if you are in agreement. Therefore, should there be no counterorder, next Friday I shall go to bed at nine o’clock, and I think that at half past nine you will be able to call me, etc. ….” We took advantage of the offer of Mr. Count de R…. C…. with all the more interest because, in placing himself at our disposal, we thought that his Spirit would willingly lend itself to our researches. On the other hand, his learning, the superiority of his intelligence (which, opening a parenthesis, does not prevent him from being an excellent Spiritist), and the experience he had acquired in his voyages around the world, as a captain of the imperial navy, made us expect from him a more accurate appraisal of his state. In fact we were not mistaken. As a consequence we had with him the two conversations that follow, the first on November 25 and the second on December 2, 1859. (Society, November 25, 1859.)

Evocation.

Answer. – I am here.

At this moment do you have consciousness of the desire you expressed, of being evoked?

Answer. – Perfectly.

In what place do you find yourself here?

Answer. – Between you and the medium.

Do you see us as clearly as when you personally attend our sessions?

Answer. – More or less, though a little veiled. I am not yet sleeping well.

How do you have consciousness of your individuality here present, while your body is in the bed?

Answer. – At this moment my body is to me but an accessory. It is I who am here.

Remark. – It is I who am here is a truly remarkable answer. For him, the body is not the essential part of his being: this part is the Spirit, which constitutes the I; his I and his body are two distinct things.

Can you transport yourself instantly, and at will, from here to your house and vice versa?

Answer. – Yes.

Going and coming from here to your house, do you have consciousness of the route you take? Do you see the objects that are along the way? Answer. – I could, but I neglect to do so; they do not interest me.

Is the state in which you find yourself similar to that of a somnambulist?

Answer. – Not entirely. My body sleeps, that is to say, it is more or less inert; the somnambulist does not sleep: his faculties are modified, but not annihilated.

Could the evoked Spirit of a living person indicate remedies, like a somnambulist?

Answer. – If it knows them, or if it finds itself in contact with a Spirit that knows them, yes; otherwise, no.

Is the remembrance of your corporeal existence clearly present in your memory?

Answer. – Very clear.

Could you cite some of your most notable occupations of the day?

Answer. – I could, but I will not do it, and I regret having proposed this question (He had asked that a question of this kind be addressed to him as proof).

Is it as a Spirit that you regret having proposed this question?

Answer. – As a Spirit.

Why do you regret it?

Answer. – Because I understand better how just it is that, in most cases, one is forbidden to do so.

Could you describe your bedroom?

Answer. – Certainly; and the porter’s too.

Well then! Describe, then, one of them.

Answer. – I said that I could, but to be able is not to be willing.

What is the illness that keeps you at home?

Answer. – Gout.

Is there a remedy for gout? If you know it, could you indicate it, for you would render a great service?

Answer. – I could, but I shall refrain from doing so: the remedy would be worse than the ill.

Worse or not, will you indicate it, even if you should not make use of it yourself?

Answer. – There are several, among which the green lily (colchicum; fr. colchique).

[see question 70.]

Remark. – Upon awakening, Mr. de R…. acknowledged having never heard the use of this plant spoken of as a specific against gout.

In your present state, would you see a danger that a friend might run, and could you come to his aid?

Answer. – I could. I would inspire him; if he heard my inspiration and, with still more profit, if he were a medium.

Since we evoke you by your own will, and since you place yourself at our disposal for studies, have the kindness to describe, as best you can, the state in which you find yourself now. Answer. – I am in the happiest and most satisfying state that one can experience. Have you never had a dream in which the warmth of the bed makes you believe that you are gently rocked in the air, or on the crest of tepid waves, without any concern for movements, without the slightest consciousness of heavy and cumbersome limbs, moving or dragging themselves, in a word, without needs to satisfy? Not feeling the goad of hunger nor that of thirst? I find myself in this state beside you. And I have still given you only a small idea of what I experience.

Does the present state of your body undergo any physiological modification, by reason of the absence of the Spirit?

Answer. – Not in the least. I am in the state you call first sleep; heavy and deep sleep that we all experience and during which we withdraw from the body. Remark. – Sleep, which was not complete at the beginning of the evocation, established itself little by little, in consequence of the very detachment of the Spirit, which leaves the body in the greatest repose.

If, by reason of an abrupt movement, your body is instantly awakened while your Spirit is here, what would happen?

Answer. – What is abrupt for man is very slow for the Spirit, which always has time to be warned.

Does the happiness you have just described and that you enjoy in your state of liberty bear any relation to the agreeable sensations that one sometimes experiences in the first moments of asphyxia? Mr. S…., who involuntarily had the satisfaction of experiencing them, addresses you this question. Answer. – He is not altogether wrong. In death by asphyxia there is an instant analogous to the one of which he speaks, but only the Spirit loses lucidity, whereas here it is considerably increased.

Is your Spirit still bound by some tie to your body?

Answer. – Yes, and of this I retain perfect consciousness.

To what can you compare this tie?

Answer. – To nothing that you know, save to a phosphorescent light, to give you an idea, if you could see it, but which in me produces no sensation.

Does light affect you in the same way? Has it the same tonality that you see with the eyes?

Answer. – Absolutely, because the eyes serve me, in a manner, as windows of my brain. [see question 47.]

Do you perceive sounds as distinctly?

Answer. – Even more so, since I perceive many others that escape you.

How do you transmit thought to the medium?

Answer. – I act upon his hand to give it a direction, which I facilitate by an action upon the brain.

Do you make use of the words of the vocabulary that he has in his head, or do you indicate the words that he must write?

Answer. – One thing and the other, according to convenience.

a — If you had for a medium someone who did not know your language and whose own was unknown to you, a Chinese, for example, how would you do to dictate to him? Answer. – That would be more difficult; perhaps impossible. In any case, it would only be possible with a flexibility and a docility very rare to find.

— Would a Spirit, whose body was dead [wandering spirit], experience the same difficulty in communicating through a medium completely foreign to the language he spoke in life? Answer. – Perhaps less, but it would always exist. I have just said that, according to the case, the Spirit gives the medium its expressions, or takes his.

Does your presence here fatigue the body?

Answer. – Absolutely not.

— Does your body dream? [see remark below.]

Answer. – No; it is precisely for this reason that it does not tire. The person of whom you speak would experience through her organs impressions that were transmitted to the Spirit; it was this that fatigued her. I experience nothing of the kind. Remark. – He alludes to a person who was being spoken of at the moment [Mrs. Schutz] and who, in a similar situation, had said that her body grew fatigued, and had compared her Spirit to a captive balloon, whose jolts shake the post that holds it. The next day Mr. R…. de C…. told us that he had dreamed he was at the Society, between us and the medium. Evidently it is a remembrance of the evocation. It is probable that at the moment of the question he was not dreaming, since he answered negatively. It is also possible, and more probable, that since the dream is but a remembrance of the activity of the Spirit, it is in truth not the body that dreams, since it does not think. He therefore answered negatively, without knowing whether, once awake, his Spirit would recall. If the body had dreamed while his Spirit was absent, it would be that the Spirit had had a double action. Now, it could not be at the same time at the Society and at his house.

Is your Spirit in the state in which it will find itself when you are dead?

Answer. – More or less the same thing, because of the tie that binds it to the body.

Do you have consciousness of previous existences?

Answer. – Very confusedly. Here is a difference I was forgetting. After the complete detachment that follows death, the remembrances are much more precise. At present they are more complete than during waking life, but not sufficient to be able to specify them in a more intelligible manner.

If, upon awakening, your writings were shown to you, would you have consciousness of the answers you have just given?

Answer. – I could identify some of my thoughts; but many others would find no echo in my thinking when awake.

Could you exercise upon the body an influence so intense as to be capable of awakening it?

Answer. – No.

Could you answer a mental question?

Answer. – Yes.

Do you see us spiritually or physically?

Answer. – In both ways.

Could you go to visit your father’s brother, who is said to be on an island of Oceania, and, as a sailor, could you specify the position of that island? Answer. – I can do none of that.

What do you now think of your interminable work and its object?

Answer. – I think that I must continue it, with the same object. And that is all I can say.

Remark. – He had wished that this question be put to him, relative to an important work he was undertaking concerning the navy.

We would be very pleased if you would address a few words to your colleagues, a kind of little discourse.

Answer. – Since I have the opportunity, I take advantage of it to affirm to you my faith in the future of the soul; that the greatest fault men can commit is to seek proofs and proofs. This is at most pardonable in men who are being initiated into the knowledge of Spiritism. Have you not already been told thousands of times that one must believe, because one understands and loves justice and truth, and that if we gave satisfaction to one of these puerile questions, those who claimed to ask it in order to convince themselves would not fail to ask others the next day, and you would infallibly lose precious time, making the Spirits tell fortunes? I understand it now much better than when awake, and I can give you a wise counsel: when you wish to obtain such results, address yourselves to the rapping spirits and to the talking tables which, having nothing better to say, can occupy themselves with such manifestations. Forgive me the lesson, but I have need of it, and I am not vexed to give it to myself. (Second conversation. – December 2, 1859.)

Evocation.

Answer. – Here I am.

Do you sleep well?

Answer. – Not much; but I shall.

In the particular case in which you find yourself, do you judge it useful to make the evocation in the name of God, as if it were the Spirit of a dead person? Answer. – Why not? Because I am not dead, do you believe that God is indifferent to me?

Considering that you are here, if your body received a prick, not strong enough to awaken you, but sufficient to make you start, would your Spirit feel it? Answer. – My body would not feel it.

Would your Spirit have consciousness of the fact?

Answer. – None; but note that you speak to me of a slight sensation and one without any consequence, in terms of importance, either for the body or for the Spirit.

Concerning light, you said that it seems to you as if you were awake, considering that your eyes are like windows through which it reaches the brain. We understand this in relation to the light perceived by the body; but at this moment it is not your body that sees. Do you still see by a circumscribed point or by the whole being? Answer. – It is very difficult to make you understand. The Spirit perceives sensations without the intermediary of the organs and has no circumscribed point with which to perceive them. [see question 26.]

I insist again on knowing whether the objects, the space that surrounds you have for you the same color as when you are awake. Answer. – For me, yes, because my organs do not deceive me. But certain Spirits would find great differences in this. You, for example, perceive sounds and colors in a very different manner.

Do you perceive odors?

Answer. – Also better than you.

Do you make a difference between light and darkness?

Answer. – A difference, yes. But for me darkness is not as it is for you: I see perfectly in the dark.

Does your sight penetrate opaque bodies?

Answer. – Yes.

Could you go to another planet?

Answer. – That depends.

On what does it depend?

Answer. – On the planet.

To what planet could you go?

Answer. – To those that are approximately at the same degree as the Earth.

Do you see the other Spirits?

Answer. – Many, and again.

Remark. – A person who knows him intimately, present at the session, said that this expression is very familiar to him, seeing in it, as in the whole form of the language, a proof of identity.

Do you see them here?

Answer. – Yes.

How do you ascertain their presence? By some form?

Answer. – By their own form, that is to say, by their perispirit.

Do you sometimes see your children and can you speak to them?

Answer. – I see them and speak to them frequently.

You said: My body is an accessory; it is I who am here. [see question 5.] Is this I circumscribed, limited, has it some form? In short, how do you see yourself? Answer. – It is always the perispirit.

Then, for you, the perispirit is a body?

Answer. – But, evidently.

Does your perispirit imitate the form of your material body, and does it seem to you that you are here with your body?

Answer. – Yes, as to the first question, and no, as to the second. I have perfect consciousness of being here only with my luminous fluidic body.

Could you give me a punch?

Answer. – Yes, but you would not feel it.

Could you do it in a perceptible manner?

Answer. – That is possible; but I cannot do it here.

If, at the moment when you are here, your body died suddenly, what would you experience?

Answer. – I would be there beforehand.

Would you be freed more promptly than if you died in ordinary circumstances?

Answer. – Very much so. I would only re-enter to close the door, after having gone out.

You said that you suffer from gout. Do you not agree with your physician, here present, who maintains that it is a neuralgic rheumatism? What do you think? Answer. – Since you are so well informed, I think that this ought to suffice.

(The physician) On what do you base yourself to suppose that it is gout?

Answer. – It is my opinion. Perhaps I am mistaken, especially if you are so certain of not being mistaken yourself.

(The physician) A complication of gout and rheumatism would be possible.

Answer. – Then we would both be right; nothing would remain but for us to embrace each other.

(This answer provoked laughter in the assembly)

Does this make you laugh, to see us laughing?

Answer. – But heartily. Do you not understand me, then?

You said that the green lily (colchicum) is an effective remedy against gout [see question 18]. Whence came this idea to you, considering that, awake, you did not know it? Answer. – I made use of it formerly.

It was, therefore, in another existence?

Answer. – Yes, and it did me harm.

If an indiscreet question were put to you, would you find yourself constrained to answer it?

Answer. – Oh! that is too much; try.

Thus, you have perfect free will?

Answer. – More than you.

Remark. – On many occasions experience has proved that the Spirit, isolated from the body, always preserves its will and says only what it wishes. Understanding better the import of things, it is even more prudent and discreet than when awake. When it says a thing, it is because it judges it useful to say it.

Would you have had the liberty not to come when we called you?

Answer. – Yes; free to suffer the consequences.

What would those consequences be?

Answer. – If I refuse to be useful to my fellow beings, principally when I have perfect consciousness of my acts, I am free, but I am punished.

What kind of punishment would you suffer?

Answer. – It would be necessary to unveil to you the code of God, and that would be very long.

If at this moment someone insulted you, saying things that, awake, you would not endure, what feeling would you experience? Answer. – Contempt.

Then you would not seek to avenge yourself?

Answer. – No.

Do you form an idea of the position you will occupy among the Spirits, when you are there completely?

Answer. – No; this is not permitted.

In the present state in which you find yourself, do you believe that the Spirit can foresee the death of the body?

Answer. – Sometimes. However, if I had to die suddenly, I would always have time to return to it.