On the communion of thoughts.

NOTICE. – This issue contains a supplement. It has 52 pages, instead of 32, including the general index.

— On November 2, 1864, the Spiritist Society of Paris met for the first time with a view to offering a pious remembrance to its colleagues and Spiritist brothers and sisters who had already passed away. On that occasion, Mr. Allan Kardec discoursed on the principle of the communion of thoughts, as may be seen in the following address:

Dear Spiritist brothers and sisters, We are gathered together, on this day consecrated by custom to the commemoration of the dead, to give to those brothers of ours who have left the Earth a particular testimony of sympathy, to continue the relations of affection and of fraternity that existed between them and us when they were alive, and to invoke upon them the goodness of the Almighty. But why do we gather together? Why do we turn aside from our occupations? Cannot we do in private what each of us proposes to do in common? Do we not do it individually for our own? Can we not do it every day and at every hour? What, then, is the use of thus assembling on an appointed day? It is upon this point, gentlemen, that I propose to offer a few considerations. The benevolence with which the idea of this meeting was received is a first answer to these various questions; it is the sign of the need we feel to be together in a communion of thoughts.

— Communion of thoughts! Do we well understand the full scope of this expression? It is permissible to doubt it, at least as regards the greater number. Spiritism, which explains so many things to us by the laws it reveals, comes also to explain the cause and the force of this state of the spirit.

Communion of thought means common thought, unity of intention, of will, of desire, of aspiration. No one can fail to recognize that thought is a force; but a force purely moral and abstract? No: otherwise certain effects of thought could not be explained, and still less the communion of thought. To understand it, one must know the properties and the action of the elements that constitute our spiritual essence, and it is Spiritism that teaches them to us.

Thought is the characteristic attribute of the spiritual being; it is thought that distinguishes the spirit from matter; without thought the spirit would not be spirit. The will is not a special attribute of the spirit; it is thought arrived at a certain degree of energy; it is thought transformed into a motive force. It is by the will that the spirit imparts to the limbs and to the body movements in a determined direction. But if it has the force to act upon the material organs, how much greater must this force be upon the fluidic elements that surround us! Thought acts upon the surrounding fluids, as sound acts upon the air; these fluids bring us thought, as the air brings us sound. It may therefore be said in all truth that there are in these fluids waves and rays of thoughts that cross one another without becoming confused, just as there are in the air waves and rays of sound. An assembly is a focus from which diverse thoughts radiate; it is like an orchestra, a choir of thoughts, in which each one produces its note. From this results an immensity of fluidic currents and effluvia, of which each one receives the impression through the spiritual sense, as in a musical choir each one receives the impression of the sounds through the sense of hearing.

But, just as there are sound rays that are harmonious or discordant, so too there are thoughts that are harmonious or discordant. If the whole is harmonious, the impression is agreeable; if discordant, the impression will be painful. Now, for this it is not necessary that the thought be formulated in words; the fluidic radiation does not cease to exist, whether or not it is expressed. If all are beneficent, those present will experience a true well-being and will feel at ease; but if some evil thoughts mingle therein, they will produce the effect of a current of icy air in a warm atmosphere.

Such is the cause of the feeling of satisfaction that one experiences in a sympathetic gathering; there reigns there a sort of wholesome moral atmosphere, in which one breathes at ease; one comes away from it comforted, because one is impregnated there with salutary fluidic effluvia. Thus too are explained the anxiety and the indefinable malaise that one feels in an uncongenial environment, where malevolent thoughts provoke, so to speak, unhealthy fluidic currents.

The communion of thoughts therefore produces a sort of physical effect that reacts upon the moral; only Spiritism could make this understood. Man feels it instinctively, since he seeks out the gatherings where he knows he will find this communion. In these homogeneous and sympathetic gatherings he draws new moral strength; one might say that there he recovers the fluidic losses lost daily through the radiation of thought, as he recovers through food the losses of the material body.

These considerations, gentlemen and dear brothers, seem to draw us away from the principal object of our gathering, and yet they lead us directly to it. The gatherings whose object is the commemoration of the dead rest upon the communion of thoughts. To understand their usefulness, it was necessary to define clearly the nature and the effects of this communion.

— For the explanation of spiritual things, I sometimes make use of very material comparisons, and perhaps even somewhat forced ones, which must not always be taken literally. But it is by proceeding by analogy, from the known to the unknown, that we come to perceive, at least approximately, what escapes our senses; it is to these comparisons that the Spiritist Doctrine owes, in great part, having been so easily understood, even by the most common intelligences, whereas had I remained in the abstractions of metaphysical philosophy, it would still today have been shared only by a few select intelligences. Now, from the beginning it was important that it be accepted by the masses, because the opinion of these exerts a pressure that ends by making law and triumphing over the most tenacious oppositions. This is why I strove to simplify it and make it clear, in order to put it within the reach of all, even at the risk of certain people contesting its title of philosophy, because it is not sufficiently abstract and because it came out of the fog of classical metaphysics.

— To the effects I have just described, relating to the communion of thoughts, there is added another, which is its natural consequence, and which it is important not to lose sight of: it is the force that thought or will acquires through the combination of thoughts or wills united together. The will being an active force, this force is multiplied by the number of identical wills, as muscular force is multiplied by the number of arms.

This point being established, it is conceivable that in the relations that are established between men and Spirits there may be, in a gathering where a perfect communion of thoughts reigns, an attractive or repulsive force that the isolated individual does not always possess. If, up to the present, very numerous gatherings are less favorable, it is because of the difficulty of obtaining a perfect harmony of thoughts, resulting from human imperfection on the Earth. The more numerous the gatherings, the more heterogeneous elements mingle there, which paralyze the action of the good elements and which are like grains of sand in a mechanism. Such is not the case in the more advanced worlds, and this state of things will change on our planet as men become better. For Spiritists, the communion of thoughts has a still more special result. We have seen the effect of this communion from man to man; Spiritism proves to us that it is no less so from men to Spirits, and reciprocally. Indeed, if collective thought acquires force through number, a combination of identical thoughts, having good as their object, will have more force to neutralize the action of evil Spirits; we also see that the tactic of the latter is to lead to division and isolation. Alone, a man may succumb, whereas if his will is corroborated by other wills he will be able to resist, according to the axiom: Union makes strength, an axiom that is true both from the moral point of view and from the physical. On the other hand, if the action of malevolent Spirits can be paralyzed by a common thought, it is evident that that of the good Spirits will be seconded; their salutary influence will encounter no obstacles; their fluidic effluvia, not being checked by contrary currents, will spread over all those present, precisely because all will have attracted them by thought, not each one for personal profit, but for the benefit of all, according to the law of charity. They will descend upon them like tongues of fire, to make use of an admirable image from the Gospel.

Thus, through the communion of thoughts men assist one another and, at the same time, assist the Spirits and are assisted by them. The relations between the visible and invisible worlds are no longer individual, but collective and, for this very reason, more powerful for the benefit of the masses and of individuals. In a word, they establish solidarity, which is the basis of fraternity. Each one works for all, and not only for himself; and in working for all, each one finds his share therein. This is what egoism does not understand.

— All religious gatherings, whatever the worship to which they belong, are founded on the communion of thoughts; indeed, it is there that they can and must exercise their force, because the object must be the liberation of thought from the bonds of matter. Unfortunately, the majority depart from this principle as religion becomes a matter of form. From this it results that each one, making his duty consist in the carrying out of the form, deems himself quits with God and with men, once he has performed a formula. It results further that each one goes to the places of religious gatherings with a personal thought, on his own account and, most often, without any feeling of fellowship toward the others present; he remains isolated in the midst of the multitude and thinks of heaven only for himself. It was certainly not thus that Jesus understood it when he said: When two or more persons are gathered together in my name, there shall I be among them. Gathered together in my name, that is to say, with a common thought; but one cannot be gathered together in the name of Jesus without assimilating his principles, his doctrine. Now, what is the fundamental principle of the doctrine of Jesus? Charity in thoughts, words, and actions. The egoists and the proud lie when they say they are gathered together in the name of Jesus, because Jesus does not acknowledge them as his disciples.

Shocked by these abuses and deviations, there are persons who deny the usefulness of religious assemblies and, in consequence, that of the edifices consecrated to such assemblies. In their radicalism, they think it would be better to build asylums than temples, since the temple of God is everywhere and everywhere He can be adored; that each one can pray in his house and at any hour, while the poor, the sick, and the infirm have need of a place of refuge.

But, because abuses have been committed, because men have strayed from the straight path, should we conclude that there is no straight path and that everything of which there is abuse is evil? No, certainly not. To speak thus is to disregard the source and the benefits of the communion of thoughts, which must be the essence of religious assemblies; it is to be ignorant of the causes that bring it about. It is conceivable that materialists should profess such ideas, since in all things they make abstraction of the spiritual life; but on the part of spiritualists and, better still, of Spiritists, it would be a contradiction. Religious isolation, like social isolation, leads to egoism. That some men may be strong enough in themselves, sufficiently endowed by heart, so that their faith and charity have no need to be reinvigorated in a common focus, is possible; but it is not so with the masses, since they lack a stimulant, without which they might let themselves be carried away by indifference. Moreover, what man can call himself sufficiently enlightened to have nothing to learn regarding his future interests? sufficiently perfect to do without the counsels of the present life? Will he always be capable of instructing himself by himself? No; the majority need direct teaching in matters of religion and of morals, as in matters of science. Incontestably, such teachings can be given everywhere, under the vault of heaven as under that of a temple; but why should men not have special places for celestial questions, as they have for earthly ones? Why should they not have religious assemblies, as they have political, scientific, and industrial assemblies? This does not prevent edifices for the benefit of the unfortunate. We say, moreover, that there will be fewer people in the asylums when men understand better their interests of heaven. If religious assemblies – I speak in general, without alluding to any worship – have often departed from their primitive principal object, which is the fraternal communion of thought; if the teaching administered there has not always followed the progressive movement of Humanity, it is because men do not all progress at the same time. What they do not do in one period, they do in another; in proportion as they become enlightened, they see the gaps existing in their institutions, and they fill them; they understand that what was good in one epoch, in relation to the degree of civilization, becomes insufficient at a more advanced stage, and they restore the level. We know that Spiritism is the great lever of progress in all things; it marks an era of renewal. Let us therefore know how to wait, not demanding of an epoch more than it can give. Like plants, ideas must ripen, so that their fruits may be gathered. Let us, moreover, know how to make the necessary concessions to the epochs of transition, because in Nature nothing operates in an abrupt and instantaneous manner.

— In view of the reason that gathers us today, gentlemen and dear brothers, I judged it opportune to take advantage of the circumstance to develop the principle of the communion of thoughts, from the point of view of Spiritism. Our object being to unite ourselves in intention in order to offer, in common, a particular testimony of sympathy to our departed brothers, it might be useful to call our attention to the advantages of the gathering. Thanks to Spiritism, we understand the force and the effects of collective thought; we better explain the feeling of well-being that we experience in a homogeneous and sympathetic environment; but we likewise know that it is the same with the Spirits, because they too receive the effluvia of all the benevolent thoughts that, as in a cloud of perfume, rise up toward them. Those who are happy experience the greatest joy in this harmonious concert; those who suffer feel themselves more relieved; each one of us in particular prays, by preference, for those who interest him or whom he most esteems. Let us bring it about that here all may have their share in the prayers that we address to God.