Lumen

— This is not a book, but an article that could constitute an interesting and, above all, instructive book, because its data are furnished by positive science and treated with the clarity and the elegance that the young scholar displays in all his writings. Mr. Camille Flammarion is known to all our readers for his excellent work on the plurality of inhabited worlds and for the scientific articles that he publishes in the Siècle.

The one of which we are going to give an account was published in the Revue du XIXe Siècle - Google Books, of February 1st, 1867. n The author imagines a dialogue between a living individual named Sitiens, and the Spirit of one of his friends, named Lumen, who describes to him his last earthly thoughts, the first sensations of spiritual life and those that accompany the phenomenon of separation. This picture is in perfect conformity with what the Spirits have taught us in this regard; it is the most genuine Spiritism, minus the word, which is not pronounced. One will be able to judge it by the following citations:

— “The first sensation of identity that one experiences after death resembles that which one feels on awakening during life, when, gradually recovering consciousness in the morning, one is still traversed by the visions of the night. Solicited by the future and by the past, the Spirit seeks at the same time to retake full possession of itself and to capture the fleeting impressions of the dream that it had just had, which still persist with their procession of pictures and events. At times, absorbed by this retrospection of a captivating dream, it feels in the eyelids that close the current of the vision being reestablished, and the spectacle continuing; it falls at the same time into the dream and into a kind of half-sleep. Thus our thinking faculty balances itself on leaving this life, between a reality that it does not yet comprehend and a dream that has not completely disappeared.” Observation. – In this situation of the Spirit, there is nothing surprising that some do not judge themselves to be dead.

“Death does not exist. The fact that you designate under that name, the separation between the body and the soul, properly speaking is not effected under a material form comparable to the chemical separations of dissociated elements, observed in the physical world. This definitive separation is hardly perceived, which seems to us so cruel, but which the newborn does not perceive at birth; we were conceived for the future life, as we are born for the earthly life. Only the soul, no longer being enveloped in the bodily garments that clothed it here, acquires more promptly the notion of its state and of its personality. However, this faculty of perception varies essentially from one soul to another. There are some which, during the life of the body, never rose toward heaven and never felt anxious to penetrate the laws of creation. These, still dominated by the bodily appetites, remain for a long time in a state of unconscious perturbation. Fortunately there are others which, from this life on, take flight in these winged aspirations toward the summits of eternal beauty; these see the instant of separation arrive with calm and serenity; they know that progress is the law of existence and that they will enter, in the beyond, into a life superior to that of here; they follow step by step the lethargy that rises into their heart, and when the last beat, slow and imperceptible, stops it in its course, they are already above the body, whose slumber they observe and, freeing themselves from the magnetic bonds, they feel themselves rapidly transported, by an unknown force, to the point of creation where their aspirations, their sentiments, their hopes attract them.

— “Years, days and hours are constituted by the movements of the Earth. Outside of those movements earthly time no longer exists in space; it is, therefore, absolutely impossible to have a notion of that time.”

Observation. – This is rigorously certain. Thus, when the Spirits want to specify a duration intelligible to us, they are obliged to identify themselves anew with earthly habits, to make themselves men again so to speak, in order to make use of the same points of comparison. Soon after the Liberation, the Spirit Lumen is transported with the rapidity of thought to the group of worlds that compose the system of the star designated in astronomy under the name of Capella or Goat. n The theory that he gives of the vision of the soul is remarkable.

“The vision of my soul had a power incomparably superior to that of the eyes of the earthly organism, which I had just left; and, a surprising observation, its power seemed to me submitted to the will. It suffices that I make you sense that, instead of simply seeing the stars in the sky, as you see them on Earth, I distinctly perceived the worlds that gravitate around them; when I wished to no longer see the star, in order not to be hindered by the examination of those worlds, it disappeared from my vision and left me in excellent conditions to observe one of those worlds. Moreover, when my sight concentrated on a particular world, I came to distinguish the details of its surface, the continents and the seas, the clouds and the rivers. By a particular intensity of concentration in the vision of my soul, I succeeded in seeing the object upon which it concentrated, for example, a city, a field, the buildings, the streets, the houses, the trees, the paths; I even recognized the inhabitants and followed the persons in the streets and in the dwellings. For this it sufficed to limit my thought to the block, to the house or to the individual that I wished to observe. In the world in the vicinity of which I had just arrived, the beings, not incarnate in a coarse envelope as on Earth, but free and endowed with faculties of perception elevated to an eminent degree of power, can perceive distinctly details that, at that distance, would absolutely escape the eyes of the earthly organizations. Sitiens — For this do they make use of instruments superior to our telescopes?

Lumen — If, being less rebellious to the admission of this marvelous faculty, it is easier for you to conceive them furnished with instruments, theoretically you may. But I must warn you that those kinds of instruments are not exterior to those beings, and that they belong to the very organism of their sight. It is clear that this optical construction and this power of vision are natural in those worlds and not supernatural. Think a little of the insects that enjoy the property of contracting or of elongating the eyes, like the tubes of a spyglass, of inflating or flattening the crystalline lens to make of it a lens of different degrees, or still of concentrating in the same focus a portion of eyes aimed like so many microscopes, to capture the infinitely small, and you will more legitimately be able to admit the faculty of those extraterrestrial beings.” The world where Lumen finds himself is at such a distance from the Earth that light does not reach from one to the other except at the end of seventy-two years. Now, born in 1793 and dead in 1864, upon his arrival in Capella, from where he casts his gaze upon Paris, Lumen no longer knows the Paris that he has just left. The luminous rays departed from the Earth, only reaching Capella after seventy-two years, would bring to him the image of what was happening there in 1793.

— Here is the truly scientific part of the account. All the difficulties are resolved there in the most logical manner. The data, admitted in theory by Science, are demonstrated there by experience; but this experience not being able to be made directly by men, the author supposes a Spirit who gives an account of his sensations, and placed in conditions of being able to establish a comparison between the Earth and the world that he inhabits.

The idea is ingenious and new. It is the first time that true and serious Spiritism, although anonymous, is associated with positive science, and this by a man capable of appreciating the one and the other, and of capturing the line of union that one day must link them. This work, to which we recognize, without restriction, a capital importance, seems to us to be one of those that the Spirits announced to us as having to mark the present year. We will analyze this second part in a forthcoming article.

[May issue.]

LUMEN.

By Camille Flammarion.

(2nd article. – See the March issue.)

We left Lumen in Capella, occupied in considering the Earth, which he had just left. This world being situated at trillions and 392 billion leagues from the Earth, and light traveling 70,000 leagues per second, the latter cannot reach from one to the other except in 71 years, 8 months and 24 days, that is, about 72 years. From this it results that the luminous ray that carries the image of the Earth only reaches the inhabitants of Capella at the end of 72 years. Lumen having died in 1864, and casting his gaze upon Paris, he saw it just as it was 72 years before, that is, in 1793, the year of his birth. At first he was very surprised to find everything different from what he had seen, to see narrow streets, convents, gardens, fields, in place of avenues, new boulevards, railway stations, etc. He saw the Place de la Concorde occupied by an immense multitude and was an eyewitness of the advent of January 21st. n The theory of light gave him the key to this strange phenomenon. Here is the solution to some difficulties that he raises. n Sitiens — But, then, if the past can be confounded with the present; if reality and vision are wed in the same manner; if persons long dead can still be seen performing on the scene; if the new constructions and the metamorphoses of a city like Paris can disappear and let be seen in their place the city of old; in short, if the present can be effaced for the resurrection of the past, upon what certainty, from now on, can we rely? What becomes of Science and observation? What becomes of deductions and theories? Upon what are founded our knowledge, which seems to us the most solid? And if these things are true, must we not, henceforth, doubt everything or believe everything? Lumen — These considerations and many others, my friend, absorbed and tormented me, but did not prevent it from being the reality that I was observing. When I had the certainty that we had present before our eyes the year 1793, I thought immediately that Science itself, instead of combating this reality – because two truths cannot oppose each other – ought to give me its explanation. So I interrogated physics and awaited its response. (There follows the scientific demonstration of the phenomenon.)

Sitiens — Thus, the luminous ray is like a courier, who brings us news of the state of the country that sends it, and which, if it takes 72 years to reach us, gives us the state of that country at the moment of its departure, that is, about 72 years before the moment when it reaches us.

Lumen — You have guessed the mystery. To speak still more exactly, the luminous ray would be a courier who brought us, not written news, but the photograph, or more rigorously still, the very aspect of the country from which it departed. When, then, we examine through the telescope the surface of a heavenly body, we still do not see this surface just as it is at the very moment when we observe it, but just as it was at the moment when the light that reaches us was emitted by that surface.

Sitiens — So that if a star whose light takes, let us suppose, ten years to reach us, were suddenly annihilated today, we would still see it during ten years, for its last ray would only reach us in ten years.

Lumen — It is exactly that. There is, then, in this, a surprising transformation of the past into present. For the observed heavenly body it is the past, already disappeared; for the observer it is the present, the current. The past of the heavenly body is rigorously and positively the present of the observer.

— Later Lumen sees himself, a boy, of six years, playing and arguing with a group of other boys in the Place du Panthéon.

Sitiens — I confess that it seems impossible to me that one could thus see oneself. You cannot be two persons. Since you were 72 years old when you died, your state of childhood had passed, disappeared long ago. You cannot see a thing that no longer exists. One cannot see in duplicate, boy and old man.

Lumen — You do not reflect enough, my friend. You understood very well the general fact in order to admit it; but you did not observe sufficiently that this last particular fact enters absolutely into the first. You admit that the aspect of the Earth takes 72 years to come to me, do you not? that the events do not reach me except with this interval of time after their actuality? In a word, that I see the world just as it was at that epoch. Equally you admit that, seeing the streets of that epoch, I see, at the same time, the boys who were running in those streets? Well then! since I see this group of children, of which I was part, why do you want that I not see myself as well as I see the others? Sitiens — But you are no longer in that group.

Lumen — Once again, this group itself no longer exists now, but I see it just as it existed at the instant when the luminous ray departed that reaches me today and, since I distinguish the fifteen or eighteen boys who composed it, there is no reason for the boy that I was to disappear, only because it is I who look at him. Other observers would see him in the company of his comrades.

Why do you want there to be an exception when it is I who look? I see them all, and I see myself with them.

Lumen passes in review the series of the principal political events, occurred from 1793 until 1864, when he himself sees himself on his deathbed.

Sitiens — Did these events pass rapidly before your eyes?

Lumen — I could not appreciate the measure of time. But all that retrospective panorama certainly succeeded in less than a day… perhaps in a few hours.

Sitiens — Then I no longer understand. If 72 earthly years passed before your eyes, they ought to have spent exactly 72 years to appear to you, and not a few hours. If the year 1793 only appeared to you in 1864, in compensation that of 1864 ought not to appear to you except in 1936.

Lumen — Your objection is well founded and proves to me that you understood well the theory of the fact. For this reason, I am going to explain to you why it was not necessary for me to wait 72 new years to see my life again, and how, under the impulse of an unconscious force, I in fact saw it again in less than a day.

Continuing to follow my existence, I reached the last years, notable for the radical transformation that Paris underwent; I saw my last friends and yourself; my family and my circle of relations; finally there arrived the moment when I saw myself lying on my deathbed and where I attended the last scene. That is to tell you that I had returned to the Earth.

Attracted by the contemplation that absorbed it, my soul had rapidly forgotten a heap of old men and Capella. As one feels it sometimes in dreams, it flew toward the object of its gazes. At first I did not notice, so much did the strange vision captivate all my faculties. I cannot tell you either by what law, nor by what force souls can transport themselves so rapidly from one place to another; but the truth is that I had returned to the Earth in less than a day, and that I was penetrating into my room at the exact moment of my burial.

Because, in this return journey, I went ahead of the luminous rays, I incessantly diminished the distance that separated me from the Earth, the light had less and less path to travel and thus abbreviated the succession of events. At the middle of the way, they no longer showed me the Earth of 72 years before, but of 36. At three-quarters of the way, the aspects were delayed only 18 years. At the half of the last quarter, they reached me only after 9 years had passed, and so forth; so that the entire series of my existence found itself condensed into less than a day, due to the rapid return of my soul, going ahead of the luminous rays.

— When Lumen arrived in Capella, he saw a group of old men occupied in considering the Earth, and discoursing upon the event of 1793. One of them said to his companions: [v. 2nd footnote.]

“On your knees! my brothers; let us beg indulgence of the universal God. That world, that nation, that city are stained by a great crime; the head of an innocent king has just fallen.” I approached the old man, says Lumen, and asked him to give me the account of his observations.

“He informed me that, by the intuition with which the Spirits of the degree of those who inhabit this world are endowed, and by the intimate faculty of apperception that they received as their portion, they possess a kind of magnetic relation with the neighboring stars. These stars are twelve or fifteen in number; they are the nearest; outside of that region the apperception becomes confused. Our Sun is one of those neighboring stars. n They know, therefore, vaguely but perceptibly, the state of the humanities that inhabit the planets dependent on that sun and their relative degree of intellectual and moral elevation. “Moreover, when a great perturbation traverses one of those humanities, whether in the physical order, or in the moral order, they suffer a kind of intimate commotion, as one sees a vibrating string make another string situated at a distance enter into vibration.”

“For a year – the year of this world is equal to ten of ours – they had felt themselves attracted by a particular emotion toward the terrestrial planet, and the observers had followed with interest and disquiet the march of this world.”

— We would labor in error if we inferred from what precedes that the inhabitants of the different spheres, from the point of view where they are, cast an investigative gaze upon what happens in the other worlds, and that the events that are realized there pass before their eyes as in the field of a spyglass. Besides, each world has its special preoccupations, which captivate the attention of its inhabitants, according to their own needs, their completely different customs and their degree of advancement. When the Spirits incarnate on a planet have personal motives to interest themselves in what happens on another world, or in some of those who inhabit it, their soul transports itself there, as did that of Lumen, in a state of detachment, and then they become momentarily, properly speaking, spiritual inhabitants of that world, or they incarnate there on a mission. Such, at least, is what results from the teaching of the Spirits. [v. Theoretical summary of somnambulism, of ecstasy and of second sight.] This last part of Lumen's account lacks, therefore, exactitude; but one must not lose sight of the fact that this story is nothing but a hypothesis, destined to render more accessible to the intelligence and, in a certain manner, palpable through the entry into action, the demonstration of a scientific theory, as we caused to be observed in our preceding article. [Item no. 4.]

We call attention to the paragraph above, in which it is said that: “The great physical and moral perturbations of a world produce upon the neighboring worlds a kind of intimate commotion, as a vibrating string makes another string placed at a distance vibrate.” The author, who in matters of science does not speak frivolously, announces there a principle that one day might well be converted into a law. Science already admits, as a result of observation, the reciprocal material action of the heavenly bodies. If, as one begins to suspect, this action, augmented by the fact of certain circumstances, can occasion perturbations and cataclysms, there would be nothing impossible that those same perturbations should have their counterblow. Up to the present Science has considered only the material principle; but, if one takes into account the spiritual principle as an active element of the Universe, and if one thinks that this principle is as general and as essential as the material principle, one will conceive that a great effervescence of this element and the modifications that it undergoes at a given point may have their reaction, by force of the necessary correlation that exists between matter and spirit. There is certainly in this idea the germ of a fecund principle and of a serious study for which Spiritism opens the way. [1] Each issue forms a volume of 160 pages, large in-8. Price: 2 fr. Paris, International Bookshop, 15, boulevard Montmartre, and 18, avenue Montaigne, Palais Pompéien.

[2] Alpha Aurigae known as Capella or 13 Aurigae is the brightest star of the constellation of Auriga and the sixth brightest in the sky. Its name comes from the Latin capella = goat. Capella is a yellow giant with dimensions larger than the Sun and with a spectrum similar to it. It is found at 44.6794 light-years from the Sun.

[3] Translator's note: Flammarion refers to the execution of Louis XVI, which occurred on January 21st, 1793.

[4] According to the calculation, and by reason of the distance of the Sun, which is 38 million and 230 thousand leagues of 4 kilometers, the light of that heavenly body reaches us in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. From this it results that a phenomenon that took place on its surface would only reach us 8 minutes and 13 seconds later, and if such a phenomenon were instantaneous, it would no longer exist when we saw it. The distance of the Moon being only 85,000 leagues, its light reaches us in more or less a second and a quarter; consequently, the perturbations that might happen there would appear to us shortly after the moment when they occurred. If Lumen were on the Moon, he would have seen the Paris of 1864, and not of 1793. If he were on a world twice as far away as Capella, he would have seen the Regency. [5] 170 trillion and 392 billion leagues! By the distance that separates the neighboring stars one can judge the extent occupied by the whole of those which, nevertheless, appear to us to the sight so close to one another, without counting the infinitely greater number of those which are only perceptible with the aid of the telescope and which are not, themselves, anything but an infinitesimal fraction of those which, lost in the depths of the infinite, escape all our means of investigation. If one considers that each star is a sun, center of a planetary whirlwind, one will understand that our own whirlwind is nothing but a point in that immensity. What is, then, our globe of 3,000 leagues in diameter, among those billions of worlds? What are its inhabitants, who for a long time believed that their little world was the central point of the Universe, and themselves believed to be the only living beings of creation, concentrating in themselves alone the preoccupations and the solicitude of the Eternal and believing in good faith that the spectacle of the heavens had been made only to recreate their sight? All that egoistic and petty system, which, during long centuries, constituted the foundation of religious faith, crumbled before the discoveries of Galileo.