Retrospective view of the Spirit's existences

One of our correspondents from Lyon writes us the following:

“I was surprised that the Spirit of Doctor Cailleux was placed in a magnetic state in order to see the picture of his past existences unfold before him (Review of June 1866). This seems to indicate that the Spirit in question did not know them; for I read in The Spirits' Book that ‘After death, the soul sees and grasps at a glance its past migrations.’ (Chap. VI, no. 243). Does this fact not seem to imply a contradiction?”

There is no contradiction here at all, for, on the contrary, the fact comes to confirm the possibility, for the Spirit, of knowing its past existences. The Spirits' Book is not a complete treatise on Spiritism; it merely sets forth the bases and the fundamental points, which are to be successively developed through study and observation. It states, in principle, that after death the soul sees its past migrations, but it says neither when nor how this takes place; these are details of application, which are subordinate to circumstances. It is known that in backward Spirits the vision is limited to the present, or little more, as on Earth; it develops with intelligence and as they acquire knowledge of their situation. Moreover, one should not believe, even in the more advanced Spirits, like Mr. Cailleux, for example, that as soon as they enter the spiritual world all things appear to them suddenly, as in a change of scenery in plain sight, nor that they constantly have before their eyes the panorama of time and space. As for their previous existences, they see them in memory, as we see, in thought, what we were and did in former years, the scenes of our childhood, the social positions we occupied. This memory is more precise or confused, sometimes nonexistent, according to the nature of the Spirit and according as Providence deems it fitting to erase or revive it, as reward, punishment, or instruction. It is a great error to believe that the aptitudes, the faculties, and the perceptions are the same in all Spirits. As in incarnation, they have moral perceptions and those that may be called material, which vary according to the individuals. If Doctor Cailleux had said that Spirits cannot have knowledge of their past existences, there would be the contradiction, because it would be the denial of an admitted principle. Far from this, he affirms the fact; only, things happened in his case in a manner different from that in others, no doubt for reasons of usefulness to him; for us it is a motive of instruction, for it shows us one of the sides of the spiritual world. Mr. Cailleux had been dead for only a short time; his past existences, therefore, might not yet be clearly portrayed in his memory. Let us note, moreover, that here it was not a simple memory; it was the very sight of the individualities he had animated, the image of his former perispiritual forms, which presented themselves to him. Now, the magnetic state in which he found himself was probably necessary to the production of the phenomenon.

The Spirits' Book was written at the beginning of Spiritism, at a time when one was far from having made all the practical studies that were made afterward. The later observations came to develop and complete the principles whose germ it had cast, and it is even worthy of note that, to this day, they have only confirmed them, without ever contradicting them on the fundamental points.