Spiritual atmosphere.

Spiritism teaches us that the Spirits constitute the invisible population of the globe, that they are in space and among us, seeing us and jostling us incessantly, in such a way that when we believe ourselves alone, we constantly have secret witnesses of our actions and our thoughts. This may seem disturbing to certain persons, but since it is so, one cannot prevent it from being so. It is up to each one to do as the sage, who would not be afraid if his house were of glass. Without any doubt it is to this cause that one must attribute the revelation of so many shameful deeds and infractions that were thought to be buried in the shadows.

Moreover, we know that, in a gathering, besides the corporeal attendees, there are always invisible listeners; that, permeability being one of the properties of the organism of the Spirits, these can find themselves in unlimited numbers in a given space. It has often been told to us that in certain sessions they were in innumerable quantities. In the explanation given to Mr. Bertrand, concerning the collective communications he obtained, it was said that the number of Spirits present was so great that the atmosphere was, so to speak, saturated with their fluids. This is not new for Spiritists, but perhaps not all the consequences have been deduced.

It is known that the fluids that emanate from the Spirits are more or less salutary, according to the degree of their purification; their healing power in certain cases is known, and also their morbid effects from individual to individual. Now, since the air can be saturated with these fluids, is it not evident that, according to the nature of the Spirits that abound in a given place, the surrounding air may find itself charged with salutary or harmful elements, which must exert an influence upon physical health as much as upon moral health? When one thinks of the energy of the action that a single Spirit can exert upon a man, is one to wonder at that which must result from the agglomeration of hundreds or of thousands of Spirits? This action will be good or bad according as the Spirits pour into a given milieu a beneficial or maleficent fluid, acting in the manner of fortifying emanations or of deleterious miasmas, which spread through the air. Thus may be explained certain collective effects produced upon masses of individuals, the feeling of well-being or of malaise that one experiences in certain milieus, and which have no known apparent cause, the collective sweeping toward good or toward evil, generous impulses, enthusiasm or discouragement, at times the kind of vertigo that takes hold of an entire assembly, of an entire city, even of an entire people. Each individual, by reason of his degree of sensitivity, suffers the influence of this vitiated or vivifying atmosphere. By this fact, which seems beyond doubt and which confirms, at the same time, theory and experience, we find in the relations of the spiritual world with the corporeal world a new principle of hygiene which, no doubt, one day Science will take into consideration. Can we, then, withdraw ourselves from these influences that emanate from a source inaccessible to material means? Without a shadow of a doubt, for, just as we sanitize unhealthy places by destroying the source of the pestilent miasmas, we can sanitize the moral atmosphere that surrounds us, withdrawing ourselves from the pernicious influences of the unwholesome spiritual fluids, and this more easily than we can escape the marshy exhalations, since it depends solely upon our will; and therein will lie not the least of the benefits of Spiritism, when it is universally understood and, above all, practiced.

A principle perfectly verified by every Spiritist is that the qualities of the perispiritual fluid are in direct ratio to the qualities of the Spirit, incarnate or disincarnate; the more elevated and detached from the influences of matter the sentiments are, the more purified will be its fluid. According to the thoughts that dominate him, the incarnate one radiates fluids, impregnated with these same thoughts, which vitiate them or sanitize them, fluids really material, although impalpable, invisible to the eyes of the body, but perceptible by the perispiritual senses and visible by the eyes of the soul, for they make a physical impression and take on very different appearances for those who are endowed with spiritual vision. By the mere fact of the presence of the incarnate ones in an assembly, the surrounding fluids will be good or bad. Whoever brings with him thoughts of hatred, of envy, of jealousy, of pride, of egoism, of animosity, of cupidity, of falsehood, of hypocrisy, of slander, of malevolence — in a word, thoughts drawn from the source of the evil passions — spreads around himself sickly fluidic effluvia, which react upon those who surround him. On the contrary, in an assembly in which each one brought only sentiments of goodness, of charity, of humility, of disinterested devotedness, of benevolence and of love of neighbor, the air is impregnated with salubrious emanations, in the midst of which one feels he lives more at ease. If one now considers that thoughts attract thoughts of the same nature, that fluids attract similar fluids, one understands that each individual brings with him a retinue of sympathetic Spirits, good or bad, and that, thus, the air is saturated with fluids in keeping with the thoughts that predominate. If the bad thoughts are in the minority, they will not prevent the good influences from being produced, for these paralyze them. If they dominate, they will weaken the fluidic radiation of the good Spirits, or even, at times, will prevent the good fluids from penetrating into that milieu, as the fog weakens or stops the rays of the sun.

What, then, is the means of withdrawing oneself from the influence of the bad fluids? This means stands out from the very cause that produces the evil. What does one do when one recognizes that a food is harmful to health? It is rejected and replaced by another more wholesome one. Since it is the bad thoughts that engender the bad fluids and attract them, one must make efforts to have only good ones, to repel all that is evil, as one repels a food that can make us ill; in a word, to work for one’s moral improvement and, to make use of a comparison from the Gospel, “not only to clean the vessel on the outside, but, above all, to clean it on the inside.”

By improving itself, Humanity will see the fluidic atmosphere in the midst of which it lives become purified, because it will send into it only good fluids, and these will oppose a barrier to the invasion of the bad ones. If one day the Earth comes to be peopled only by men who, among themselves, practice the divine laws of love and of charity, no one doubts that they will find themselves in conditions of physical and moral hygiene completely different from those existing today.

No doubt that time is still far off, but, while it is awaited, these conditions can exist partially, it being incumbent upon the Spiritist assemblies to set the example. Those who have possessed the light will be more reprehensible, because they will have had in their hands the means of enlightening themselves; they will incur the responsibility for the delays that their example and their ill will have brought to the general improvement.

Is this a utopia, a vain discourse? No; it is a logical deduction from the very facts that Spiritism reveals daily. Indeed, Spiritism proves to us that the spiritual element, which until the present has been considered as the antithesis of the material element, has with this latter an intimate connection, whence results a host of phenomena unobserved or not understood. When Science has assimilated the elements furnished by Spiritism, it will gather there new and important elements for the material improvement of Humanity. Thus, each day we see the circle of the applications of the doctrine widen, which, as some still think, is far from being restricted to the puerile phenomenon of the turning tables and other effects of mere curiosity. In reality Spiritism took on its momentum only at the moment when it entered upon the philosophical path; it is less amusing for a certain kind of people, who sought in it merely a distraction, but it is better appreciated by serious persons, and it will be so still more, as it becomes better understood in its consequences.