God is everywhere.

— How is it that God, so great, so powerful, so superior to everything, can involve Himself in the most trifling details, concern Himself with the least acts and the least thoughts of each individual? Such is the question that is often asked.

In their present state of inferiority, men can only with difficulty comprehend the infinite God, because they themselves are finite, limited, which is why they imagine Him finite and limited like themselves; representing Him as a circumscribed being, they make of Him an image in their own likeness. By depicting Him with human features, our pictures contribute in no small measure to nourish this error in the mind of the masses, who in Him adore the form more than the thought. To the greater number He is a powerful sovereign, upon an inaccessible throne, lost in the immensity of the heavens, and because their faculties and perceptions are restricted they do not understand that God can, or would see fit to, intervene directly in the smallest things. In the incapacity in which man finds himself to comprehend the very essence of the Divinity, he can form of it only an approximate idea, aided by comparisons necessarily very imperfect, but which can at least show him the possibility of that which, at first sight, seems to him impossible.

Let us suppose a fluid subtle enough to penetrate all bodies. It is evident that each molecule of that fluid will produce upon each molecule of the matter with which it is in contact an action identical to that which the totality of the fluid would produce. This is what Chemistry shows us at every step.

Being unintelligent, that fluid acts mechanically, only through material forces. But if we suppose that fluid endowed with intelligence, with perceptive and sensitive faculties, it will act, no longer blindly, but with discernment, with will and freedom; it will see, hear, and feel.

The properties of the perispiritual fluid can give us an idea of this. It is not intelligent in itself, since it is matter, but it is the vehicle of the thought, the sensations, and the perceptions of the Spirit. It is in consequence of the subtlety of that fluid that Spirits penetrate everywhere, scrutinize our thoughts, see and act at a distance; it is to that fluid, having reached a certain degree of purification, that the superior Spirits owe the gift of ubiquity; a ray of their thought directed toward various points suffices for them to be able to manifest their presence there simultaneously. The extent of that faculty is subordinate to the degree of elevation and of purification of the Spirit. But as Spirits, however elevated they may be, are creatures limited in their faculties, their power and the extent of their perceptions could not, in this respect, approach those of God. Nevertheless, they can serve us as a point of comparison. What the Spirit can accomplish only within a restricted limit, God, who is infinite, accomplishes in infinite proportions. There is, moreover, this difference: the action of the Spirit is momentary and subordinate to circumstances, whereas that of God is permanent; the thought of the Spirit embraces only a circumscribed time and space, whereas that of God embraces the Universe and eternity. In a word, between the Spirits and God there is the distance from the finite to the infinite. The perispiritual fluid is not the thought of the Spirit, but the agent and intermediary of that thought. As it is the fluid that transmits the thought, it is, in a certain manner, impregnated with it; and in the impossibility in which we find ourselves of isolating the thought, it seems to make but one with the fluid, just as sound seems to be one with the air, so that we may, so to speak, materialize it. In the same way that we say that the air becomes sonorous, we could, taking the effect for the cause, say that the fluid becomes intelligent.

Whether or not the thought of God is thus, that is, whether He acts directly or through the intermediary of a fluid, in order to facilitate our comprehension let us represent this thought under the concrete form of an intelligent fluid, filling the infinite Universe, penetrating all the parts of creation: the whole of Nature is plunged into the divine fluid; everything is submitted to its intelligent action, to its providence, to its solicitude; there is no being, however trifling it may be, that is not, in a certain manner, saturated with it.

Thus, we are constantly in the presence of the Divinity. There is not a single one of our actions that we can withdraw from His gaze; our thought is in contact with His thought, and it is with reason that it is said that God reads in the deepest recesses of our heart; we are in Him as He is in us, following the word of the Christ. To attend to His solicitude over the smallest creatures, He has no need to plunge His gaze down from the immensity, nor to leave His abode of glory, for that abode is everywhere. To be heard by Him, our prayers do not need to traverse space, nor to be uttered with a resounding voice, because, incessantly penetrated by Him, our thoughts reverberate in Him. The image of a universal intelligent fluid is evidently only a comparison, more apt to give a juster idea of God than the pictures that represent Him under the figure of an old man with a long beard, wrapped in a mantle. We can take our points of comparison only from the things that we know; this is why we say daily: the eye of God, the hand of God, the voice of God, the breath of God, the face of God. In the infancy of Humanity man takes these comparisons literally; later his spirit, more apt to grasp abstractions, spiritualizes the material ideas. That of a universal intelligent fluid, penetrating everything, as the luminous fluid, the caloric fluid, the electric fluid, or any others would be if they were intelligent, has the aim of making us comprehend the possibility, for God, of being everywhere, of occupying Himself with everything, of watching over the blade of grass as over the worlds. Between Him and us the distance has been suppressed; we comprehend His presence, and this thought, when we address ourselves to Him, increases our confidence, because we can no longer say that God is too far away and too great to occupy Himself with us. But this thought, so consoling for the humble, for the man of good, is terrible for the wicked and the hardened proud, who hoped to withdraw themselves from Him by favor of the distance, and who, henceforth, will feel themselves under the dominion of His power. For the principle of the sovereign intelligence, nothing prevents admitting a center of action, a principal focus radiating without cease, flooding the Universe with its effluvia, as the Sun does with its light. But where is that focus? It is probable that it is no more fixed at a determined point than its action is. If simple Spirits have the gift of ubiquity, in God this faculty must have no limits. God filling the Universe, one could admit, by way of hypothesis, that that focus has no need to transport itself, and that it forms at all the points where His sovereign will judges it fitting to be produced, whence one could say that it is everywhere and nowhere. Before these unfathomable problems, our reason must humble itself. God exists: it is indubitable; He is infinitely just and good: it is His essence; His solicitude extends to everything: we comprehend it now; incessantly in contact with Him, we can pray to Him with the certainty of being heard; He can will nothing but our good, which is why we must trust in Him. This is the essential; for the rest, let us hope that we may be worthy of comprehending it.

THE VISION OF GOD. n If God is everywhere, why do we not see Him? Shall we see Him when we leave the Earth? These too are questions that are formulated every day.

The first is easy to answer. As the perceptions of our visual organs are limited, they render those organs unfit for the vision of certain things, even material ones. Some fluids escape our vision entirely, and our instruments of analysis. We see the effects of the plague, but we do not see the fluid that transports it; we see bodies in motion under the influence of the force of gravitation, but we do not see that force.

Our material organs cannot perceive things of a spiritual essence. Only with the spiritual vision can we see Spirits and the things of the immaterial world. Only our soul, therefore, can have the perception of God.

Does it see Him immediately after death? On this subject, only the communications from beyond the tomb can instruct us. Through them we know that the vision of God constitutes the privilege of the most purified souls and that very few, on leaving the terrestrial envelope, find themselves in the degree of dematerialization necessary for such an effect. Some commonplace comparisons will make it easily comprehensible.

A person who finds himself at the bottom of a valley, enveloped by a dense mist, does not see the Sun. Nevertheless, by the diffused light, he perceives that the sun is shining. If he resolves to climb the mountain, as he ascends, the fog will become clearer, the light more and more vivid. Still, he will not yet see the Sun. When he begins to perceive it, it is still veiled, for the lightest vapor suffices to weaken its brilliance. Only after he has risen above the misty layer and reached a point where the air is perfectly limpid will he contemplate it in all its splendor. It is the same with one who had his head wrapped in several veils. At first he sees absolutely nothing; with each veil that is removed, he distinguishes a clearer and clearer glimmer; only when the last veil disappears does he perceive things clearly.

It is likewise the same with a liquor laden with foreign matter; at the start it is turbid; with each distillation its transparency increases until, being completely purified, it acquires perfect limpidity and presents no obstacle to vision.

So it is with the soul. The perispiritual envelope, although it is invisible and impalpable to us, is, with respect to it, true matter, still too coarse for certain perceptions. It, however, spiritualizes itself as the soul rises in morality. The imperfections of the soul are like veils that obscure its vision. Each imperfection of which it rids itself is one veil less; nevertheless, only after it has purified itself completely does it enjoy the plenitude of its faculties.

God being the divine essence par excellence, only the Spirits who have attained the highest degree of dematerialization can perceive Him in all His splendor. From the fact that they do not see Him, it does not follow that the imperfect Spirits are more distant from Him than the others; these Spirits, like the rest, like all the beings of Nature, find themselves plunged into the divine fluid, just as we are plunged into the light; the blind too are plunged into the light and yet do not see it. The imperfections are veils that hide God from the vision of the inferior Spirits. When the fog dissipates, they will see Him shine forth. For this, they need not rise, nor seek Him in the depths of the infinite. The spiritual vision being freed of the moral blemishes that obscured it, they will see Him from every place where they find themselves, even from the Earth, since God is everywhere. The Spirit purifies itself only with time, the various incarnations being the alembic at the bottom of which it leaves each time some impurities. On abandoning their corporeal envelope, Spirits do not instantaneously divest themselves of their imperfections, which is why, after death, they do not see God any more than they saw Him when alive; but, as they purify themselves, they have a clearer intuition of Him. They do not see Him, but they comprehend Him better; the light is less diffused. When, then, some Spirits say that God forbids them to answer a given question, it is not that God appears to them, or addresses His word to them, to order or forbid them this or that, no; they, however, feel it; they receive the effluvia of His thought, as happens to us with respect to the Spirits who envelop us in their fluids, although we do not see them. No man, consequently, can see God with the eyes of the flesh. If this grace were granted to a few, it would be so only in the state of ecstasy, when the soul finds itself so detached from the bonds of matter that it renders the fact possible during the incarnation. Such a privilege, moreover, would belong exclusively to souls of election, incarnated on a mission, not in expiation. But, as the Spirits of the most elevated category shine with a dazzling brilliance, it may happen that less elevated Spirits, incarnated or disincarnated, marveling at the splendor with which the former show themselves surrounded, suppose that they are seeing God Himself. It is like one who sees a minister and takes him for his sovereign. Under what appearance does God present Himself to those who have become worthy of seeing Him? Will it be under some form? Under a human figure, or as a focus of resplendent light? Human language is powerless to say it, because there exists for us no point of comparison capable of affording us an idea of such a thing. We are like those born blind, to whom one would seek in vain to make comprehensible the brilliance of the Sun. Our language is limited by our needs and by the circle of our ideas; that of savages could not describe the marvels of civilization; that of the most civilized peoples is extremely poor for describing the splendors of the heavens, our intelligence too restricted to comprehend them, and our sight, being too weak, would be dazzled. [1] Translator's note: See Genesis, chapter II, items 31 to 37.