Communication with the beings who are dear to us.

Why is it that all the mothers who weep for their children, and who would be happy if they could communicate with them, often cannot do so? Why is the sight of them refused to them, even in dream, notwithstanding their desire and their ardent prayers?

Besides the lack of special aptitude which, as is known, is not given to all, there are sometimes other motives, whose usefulness the wisdom of Providence appreciates better than we do. Such communications could have drawbacks for natures that are too impressionable; certain persons could abuse them and give themselves up to them with an excess harmful to health. Grief, in such a case, is no doubt natural and legitimate; but it is sometimes carried to an unreasonable point. In persons of weak character, such communications often make the grief more keen, instead of calming it, which is why it is not always permitted to them to receive, even through other mediums, until they have become calmer and sufficiently masters of themselves to dominate the emotion. Lack of resignation, in such a case, is almost always a cause of delay. Then it must be said that the impossibility of communicating with the Spirits one loves most, when one can do so with others, is often a trial for faith and perseverance and, in certain cases, a punishment. He to whom this favor is refused must, then, say to himself that he doubtless deserved it; it is for him to seek the cause in himself, and not to attribute it to the indifference or the forgetfulness of the being who is mourned.

Finally, there are temperaments which, notwithstanding moral strength, could suffer from the exercise of mediumship with certain Spirits, even sympathetic ones, according to circumstances.

Let us admire in all things the solicitude of Providence, which watches over the smallest details, and let us know how to submit to its will without murmuring, because it knows better than we do what is useful or harmful to us. It is to us like a good father, who does not always give his child what he desires.

The same reasons are given concerning dreams. Dreams are the recollections of what the soul saw in the state of detachment, during sleep. Now, that recollection can be forbidden. But that which we do not remember is not, for this reason, lost to the soul; the sensations experienced during the excursions it makes in the invisible world leave, upon awakening, vague impressions; and we report thoughts and ideas whose origin we often do not suspect. We may, then, have seen during sleep the beings to whom we are attached, with whom we conversed, and not keep any recollection of it. Then we say that we did not dream. But if the being who is mourned cannot manifest himself in any ostensible manner, he is nonetheless no less beside those who attract him by their sympathetic thought. He sees them, hears their words, and often we divine his presence by a kind of intuition, an intimate sensation, sometimes even by certain physical impressions. The certainty that he is not in nothingness; that he is not lost in the depths of space, nor in the abysses of hell; that he is happier, now exempt from bodily sufferings and the tribulations of life; that we shall see him, after a momentary separation, more beautiful, more resplendent, beneath his imperishable ethereal envelope, and not beneath the heavy carnal shell – such is the immense consolation that those who believe everything ends with life refuse; and it is what Spiritism gives. In truth, one does not understand the charm that one can find in delighting in the idea of nothingness for oneself and for one's own, and the obstinacy of certain persons in repelling even the hope that it may be otherwise, and the means of acquiring proof of it. Say to a dying patient: "Tomorrow you will be cured, you will still live many years, joyful, healthy," and he will accept the augury with joy; is not the thought of spiritual life, indefinite, exempt from the infirmities and preoccupations of life, much more satisfying?

Well then! Spiritism gives not only the hope of it, but the certainty. It is for this reason that Spiritists regard death completely differently from unbelievers.