Unpublished Correspondence of Lavater

Presentation.

— Preamble.

— First Letter: On the state of the soul after death.

— 2nd Letter.

— Commentary.

— Communication from Paul I.

— 3rd Letter.

— 4th Letter.

— Letter from a deceased man to his friend on Earth on the state of disincarnate Spirits.

— 5th Letter.

— Letter from a Blessed Spirit to his friend on Earth on the first vision of the Lord.

— 6th Letter.

— Letter from a deceased man to his friend on the relations existing between Spirits and those whom they loved on Earth.

— Commentary: On the importance of these letters of Lavater.

— Lavater's present opinion on Spiritism.

[May Review.]

SIXTH LETTER.

(Continuation and end. See the issue of April 1868.)

Most venerated Empress, I enclose yet another letter come from the invisible world! May it, like the preceding ones, be appreciated by you and produce upon you a salutary effect!

We aspire without ceasing to a more intimate communication with Love, the purest that has manifested itself in man and glorified itself in Jesus, the Nazarene!

Most venerated Empress, our future happiness is within our power, since the grace is granted to us to understand that love alone can give us supreme happiness, and that faith in divine love alone causes to spring up in our hearts the sentiment that makes us eternally happy, the faith that develops, purifies, and completes our aptitude for loving.

Many subjects still remain for me to communicate to you. I shall endeavor to hasten the continuation of what I have begun to set forth to you, and I would consider myself very happy if I could hope to have been able to occupy agreeably and usefully a few moments of your precious life.

John Gaspar Lavater.

Zurich, December 16, 1798.

LETTER FROM A DECEASED MAN TO HIS FRIEND.

On the relations existing between Spirits and those whom they loved on Earth.

My beloved, before all else I must warn you that, of the thousand things you wish to learn from me and that I would have so greatly desired to be able to tell you, I dare communicate to you only one, for I do not depend absolutely upon myself. As I have already told you, my will depends upon the will of Him who is supreme wisdom. My relations with you are based on nothing but your love. This wisdom, this love personified, often impel us, myself and my thousand times a thousand companions, toward a happiness that becomes continually more elevated and more intoxicating for men who are still mortal, and they cause us to enter with them into relations certainly agreeable to us, though often clouded and not always pure and holy enough. Receive from me some notions concerning these relations. I do not know how I shall manage to make you understand this great truth which, probably, will surprise you greatly, despite its reality: it is that our own happiness often depends, relatively, of course, upon the moral state of those whom we have left on Earth and with whom we enter into direct relations. Their religious sentiment attracts us; their impiety repels us.

We rejoice in their pure and noble joys, that is, in their disinterested spiritual joys. Their love contributes to our happiness; for this reason we feel, if not a sentiment similar to suffering, at least a diminution of pleasure, when they allow themselves to be covered with shadows by their sensuality, their egoism, their animal passions, or by the impurity of their desires.

My friend, pause, I beg you, before this expression: to be covered with shadows.

Every divine thought produces a ray of light, which gushes forth from the loving man, and which is neither seen nor understood except by loving and radiant natures. Every kind of love has its ray of light, which is peculiar to it. That ray, joining itself to the halo that surrounds the saints, renders it still more resplendent and more agreeable to behold. Upon the degree of this brightness and this pleasantness depends, often, the degree of our own happiness, or of the happiness we feel from our existence. With the disappearance of love, that light fades away, and with it the element of happiness of those whom we love. A man who becomes a stranger to love covers himself with shadows, in the most literal and most positive sense of the word; he becomes more material, consequently more elementary, more earthly, and the darkness of night covers him with its veil. Life, or what for us is the same thing — man's love — produces the degree of his light, his luminous purity, his identity with light, the magnificence of his nature. Only these last qualities render possible and intimate our relations with him. Light attracts light. It is impossible for us to act upon dark souls. All unloving natures appear dark to us. The life of every mortal, his true life, is like his love; his light resembles his love; from his light proceeds our communication with him and his with us. Our element is light, whose secret is understood by no mortal. We attract and are attracted by it. That garment, that organ, that vehicle, that element, in which resides the primitive force that produces all things, light in a word, forms for us the characteristic trait of all natures. We shine in the measure of our love; we are recognized by this brightness, and we are attracted by all loving and radiant natures like ourselves. By the effect of an imperceptible movement, giving a certain direction to our rays, we can cause to arise in natures that are sympathetic more humane ideas, awaken nobler and more elevated actions and sentiments; but we do not have the power to force or to dominate anyone, nor to impose our will upon men whose will is absolutely independent of ours. Man's free will is sacred to us. It is impossible for us to communicate a single ray of our pure light to a man who lacks sensibility. He possesses no sense, no organ by which to be able to receive from us the least thing. Upon the degree of sensibility a man possesses depends — oh! allow me to repeat it to you in each of my letters — his aptitude for receiving light, his sympathy with all luminous natures and with his primordial prototype. From the absence of light is born the incapacity to draw near to the sources of light, whereas thousands of luminous natures can be attracted by a single similar nature. The Man-Jesus, resplendent with light and love, was the luminous point that ceaselessly attracted to himself legions of angels. Dark, egoistic natures attract to themselves dark Spirits, gross, deprived of light, malevolent, and, moreover, are poisoned by them, whereas loving souls become still purer and more loving through their contact with good and loving Spirits.

Jacob asleep, full of pious sentiments, sees the angels of the Lord come to him in multitude, and the dark soul of Judas Iscariot gives to the chief of the dark Spirits the right, I will even say the power, to penetrate into the dark atmosphere of his hateful nature. Radiant Spirits are abundant where an Elisha is found; legions of dark Spirits swarm among dark souls.

My beloved, meditate well upon what I have just told you. You will find numerous applications of this in the biblical books, which contain truths still intact, as well as instructions of the highest importance concerning the relations that exist between mortals and immortals, between the material world and the world of Spirits.

It depends upon you alone to find yourself under the beneficent influence of loving Spirits or to drive them away from you; you can keep them near you, or force them to leave you. It depends upon you to render me more or less happy.

Now you must understand that every loving being becomes happier when it meets a being as loving as itself; that the happiest and purest of beings becomes less happy when it encounters a diminution of love in the one it loves; that love opens the heart to love, and that the absence of this sentiment renders more difficult, sometimes even impossible, the access of all intimate communication.

If you wish that I might already enjoy supreme happiness, that I might become still happier, make yourself better still. By this you will render me more radiant and will be able to sympathize more with all radiant and immortal natures. They will hasten to come near you; their light will join itself to yours and yours to theirs; their presence will render you purer, more radiant, more lively and, what will seem difficult for you to believe, but is no less positive for that, they themselves, by the effect of your light, the light that will radiate from you, they will become more luminous, more lively, happier in their existence and, by the effect of your love, more loving still. My beloved, there exist imperishable relations between what you call the visible and invisible worlds, a ceaseless communion between the inhabitants of the Earth and those of Heaven who know how to love, a reciprocal beneficent action of each of these worlds upon the other.

By meditating and analyzing this idea with care, you will recognize more and more its truth, its urgency, and its holiness.

Do not forget, brother of the Earth: you live visibly in a world that is still invisible to you!

Do not forget it! in the world of loving Spirits, they will rejoice at your growth in pure and disinterested love. We find ourselves near you when you judge us to be very far away. Never is a loving being alone and isolated.

The light of love breaks the darkness of the material world, to enter into a less material world.

Loving and luminous Spirits are always found in the vicinity of love and light.

These words of Christ are literally true: “Where two or three persons are gathered together in my name, there I shall be with them.”

It is also indubitably certain that we can grieve the Spirit of God by our egoism, and gladden it by our true love, according to the profound sense of these words: “Whatsoever you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven; whatsoever you shall loose on Earth shall also be loosed in Heaven.” You loose by egoism, you bind by charity, that is, by love. You draw near to us and you withdraw from us. Nothing is more clearly understood in Heaven than the love of those who love on Earth.

Nothing is more attractive to the blessed Spirits belonging to all degrees of perfection than the love of the children of the Earth.

You, who are still called mortals, by love you can make Heaven descend upon the Earth.

You could enter with us, the blessed, into a communion infinitely more intimate than you can suppose, if your souls would open to our influence through the impulses of the heart.

Often I am near you, my beloved! I love to find myself within your sphere of light.

Allow me to address to you yet a few words of confidence.

When you grow vexed, the light that radiates from you, at the moment you think of those whom you love or of those who suffer, grows dark and, then, I am forced to withdraw from you, for no loving Spirit can endure the darkness of anger. Quite recently I had to leave you. I, so to speak, lost sight of you and directed myself toward another friend, or rather, the light of his love attracted me to him. He was praying, shedding tears for a beneficent family, momentarily fallen into the greatest misery and which he was not in a condition to succor. Oh! how his earthly body already appeared luminous to me; it was as if a dazzling brightness flooded it. Our Lord drew near to him and a ray of his spirit fell into that light. What happiness for me to be able to plunge into this halo and, retempered by this light, to be in a state to inspire in his soul the hope of a near succor! I seemed to hear a voice from the depths of his soul say to him: “Fear nothing! Believe! you will enjoy the joy of being able to relieve those for whom you have just prayed to God.” He rose flooded with joy after the prayer. At that same instant, I was attracted toward another radiant being, also in prayer… It was the noble soul of a maiden, who prayed and said: “Lord! teach me to do good according to your will.” I was able and dared to inspire in her the following idea: “Shall I not do good by sending to that charitable man whom I know a little money, that he may employ it this very day for the benefit of some poor family?” She clung to this idea with a childlike joy; she received it as she would have received an angel descended from heaven. That pious and charitable soul gathered a considerable sum; then she wrote a very affectionate little letter, addressed to him for whom she had just prayed, and who received it, together with the money, only an hour after his prayer, shedding tears of joy and full of a profound gratitude to God!

I followed him, enjoying myself a supreme happiness and rejoicing in his light. He arrived at the door of the poor family. “Will God have pity on us?” the pious wife asked her pious husband. — “Yes, he will have pity on us, as we have had pity on others.” — Hearing this answer from the husband, the one who had prayed was filled with joy; he opened the door and, choked by his tenderness, could scarcely pronounce these words: “Yes, he will have pity on you, as you yourselves have had pity on the poor; here is a proof of God's mercy. The Lord sees the just and hears their supplications.”

With what vivid light all present shone, when, after having read the little letter, we raised our eyes and arms toward heaven! Masses of Spirits hastened to arrive from all sides. How we rejoiced! how we embraced one another! How we all praised God and blessed him! how we all became more perfect, more loving!

You, before long, will shine again; I was able and dared to come near you; you had done three things that conferred upon me the right to draw near to you and to gladden you. You had shed tears of shame for your anger; you had reflected, becoming seriously moved by the means of being able to master yourself; you had asked sincere pardon of him whom your exaltation had offended, and you sought in what manner you might be able to make it up to him, affording him some satisfaction. That concern restored calm to your heart, joy to your eyes, light to your body.

You may judge, by this example, whether we are always well informed of what the friends do whom we have left on Earth, and how greatly we take an interest in their moral state. Now you must also understand the solidarity that exists between the visible world and the invisible world, and that it depends upon you to afford us joys or afflictions.

Oh! my beloved, if you could become imbued with this great truth, that a noble and pure love finds in itself its most beautiful reward; that the purest delights, the delight of God, are nothing but the product of a more purified sentiment, you would hasten to purify yourself of all that is egoism.

Henceforth, I shall never be able to write to you without returning to this subject. Nothing has worth without love. It alone possesses the clear, just, penetrating glance, to distinguish what deserves to be studied, what is eminently true, divine, imperishable. In every mortal and immortal being, animated by a pure love, we see, with an inexpressible feeling of pleasure, God himself reflected, as you see the Sun shine in each drop of pure water. All those who love, on Earth as in Heaven, make but one through sentiment. It is upon the degree of love that depends the degree of our perfection and of our interior and exterior happiness. It is your love that regulates your relations with the Spirits who have left the Earth, your communication with them, the influence they can exert upon you, and their intimate bond with your Spirit. In writing this to you, a feeling of foresight, which never deceives, teaches me that at this moment you find yourself in an excellent moral disposition, for you are meditating a work of charity. Each of your actions, of your thoughts, bears a particular stamp, instantly understood and appreciated by all disincarnate Spirits. May God come to your aid!

I wrote this to you on December 16, 1798.

[COMMENTARY.]

— It would be superfluous to point out the importance of these letters of Lavater which, everywhere, have excited the most lively interest. They attest, on his part, not only knowledge of the fundamental principles of Spiritism, but a just appreciation of its moral consequences. Only on a few points does he seem to have had ideas somewhat different from what we know today, but the cause of these divergences which, moreover, pertain more to the form than to the substance, is explained in the following communication, given by him at the Society of Paris. We shall not raise them, because everyone will have understood them; the essential thing was to establish that, long before the official appearance of Spiritism, men, whose high intelligence could not be called into doubt, had the intuition of it. If they did not employ the word, it is because the word did not exist. Nevertheless, we shall call attention to one point, which might seem strange: it is the theory according to which the happiness of Spirits would be subordinated to the purity of the sentiments of the incarnate, and would find itself altered by the slightest imperfection of these. If it were so, considering what men are, there would be no truly happy Spirits, and true happiness would not exist in the other world, as it does not exist on Earth. Spirits must suffer the less from the imperfections of men, the more they know them to be perfectible. For them imperfect men are like children, whose education is not yet done, and on which they have the mission to work, they who likewise passed through the ranks of imperfection. But if one sets aside what the principle developed in this letter may have that is too absolute, one cannot fail to recognize a very profound meaning, an admirable penetration of the laws that govern the relations of the visible world and the invisible world, and the nuances that characterize the degree of advancement of incarnate or disincarnate Spirits.

LAVATER'S PRESENT OPINION ON SPIRITISM.

VERBAL COMMUNICATION BY MR. MORIN, IN SPONTANEOUS SOMNAMBULISM.

(Society of Paris, March 13, 1868.)

Since divine mercy permitted that I, a humble creature, should receive revelation by means of the messengers of immensity, until this day the years have fallen, one by one, into the abyss of time; and as they flowed away, the knowledge of men also increased and their intellectual horizon widened.

Since some of the pages that have been read to you were given to me, many others have been given throughout the whole world, on the same subject and by the same means. Do not believe that I have the pretension, I, humble among all, of having been the first to have had the signal honor of receiving such a favor. No. Others, before me, had also received revelation; but, like me, oh! they understood certain parts incompletely. For it is necessary, gentlemen, to take into account the time, the degree of moral instruction and, above all, the degree of philosophical emancipation of peoples.

The Spirits, of whom today I feel happy to form a part, also form, they too, peoples, worlds, but they have no races; they study, they see, and their studies can be incontestably greater, vaster than the studies of men; nevertheless, they always set out from the knowledge acquired and from the culminating point of the moral and intellectual progress of the time and of the milieu where they live. If the Spirits, those divine messengers, come daily to give you instructions of a more elevated order, it is because the generality of the beings who receive them are in a condition to understand them. As a consequence of the preparations they have undergone, there are moments in which men do not need to let the eternity of a century pass over them in order to understand. As soon as one sees the moral level rise rapidly, a kind of attraction draws them toward a certain current of ideas, which they must assimilate, and toward the goal to which they must aspire; but these moments are short and it falls to men to take advantage of them. I said that it was necessary to take into account the times and, above all, the degree of philosophical emancipation that the epoch admitted. Grateful to the Divinity, who had permitted me to acquire, by a special favor, more quickly than other men, set out from the same point, certain knowledge, I received communications from the Spirits. But the first education, the narrow teachings, tradition and custom weighed upon me; despite my aspirations to acquire a liberty, an independence of spirit that I desired, a loving one attracted by the Spirits who came to communicate with me, not knowing the science that was revealed to you afterward, I could attract only beings with ideas similar to my own, to my aspirations, and who, with a broader horizon, had, nonetheless, the same limited vision. Hence, I confess, certain errors that you were able to note in what came to you from me; but the substance, the principal body, is it not, gentlemen, in conformity with all that, afterward, was revealed to you by those messengers of whom I spoke a moment ago? An incarnate Spirit, by instinct led toward good; a tumultuous nature seizing upon a thought that led me to the true, as quickly, oh! as those that impelled me toward error, perhaps therein lies the motive that provoked the inaccuracies of my communications, not having, to rectify them, the controls of points of comparison; for, in order that a revelation be perfect, it must be addressed to a perfect man, and this does not exist; it is not, then, except from the whole that one can extract the elements of truth: that is what you were able to do. But, in my time, could one form a whole out of a few particles of truth, of a few exceptional communications? No. I am happy to have been one of the privileged of the past century; I obtained those communications, some directly through my intermediary, and the greater part through a medium, a friend of mine, completely a stranger to the language of the soul and, it must be said, even to that of good. Happy to make these ideas shared by intelligences that I judged to be above my own, a door was opened to me; I took advantage of it with ardor, and all the revelations of the life beyond the grave were brought by me to the knowledge of an empress who, in turn, brought them to the knowledge of her circle, and so on.

Believe it well, Spiritism was not revealed spontaneously; like everything come from the hands of God, it developed progressively, slowly, surely. It was in germ in the first germ of things, and grew with that germ until it was strong enough to subdivide itself to infinity and spread everywhere its fertile and regenerating seed. It is through it that you will be happy, that the happiness of peoples will be assured – what do I say? the happiness of all worlds; for Spiritism, a word that I was unaware of, is called to make great revelations! But, be reassured; those revolutions will never bloody its banner; they are moral, intellectual revolutions; gigantic revolutions, more irresistible than those provoked by arms, by which everything is so called to be transformed, that all you know is but a feeble sketch of what they will produce. Spiritism is a word so vast, so great, by all that it contains, that it seems to me that a man who could understand its entire depth could not pronounce it without respect. Gentlemen, I, a very limited Spirit, despite the great intelligence with which you gratify me, and in relation to those far superior whom it is given to me to contemplate, come to say to you: Do you believe, then, that it is by the effect of chance that this night you were able to hear what Lavater had obtained and written? No, it is not by chance, and surely my spiritual hand directed them to you. But if those few thoughts came to your knowledge through my intermediary, do not believe that in this I sought a vain satisfaction of self-love; no, far from it. The goal was greater, and the thought of bringing them to the universal knowledge of the Earth had not even come to me. Such knowledge had its usefulness; it must have grave consequences, and it is for this reason that it was given to you to spread it. In the smallest things is found the germ of the greatest renewals. I am happy, gentlemen, to have been left the right to give you a foretaste of the reach that those few reflections, those communications, very poor beside those you obtain at present, will have; and if I glimpse their result, if I feel happy for it, why should you not be so? I shall return, gentlemen, and what I have said this night is so little in relation to what I have for my mission to teach you, that I dare only say to you: it is Lavater.

Question – We thank you for the explanations you have been so good as to give us, and we shall be very glad to count you, henceforth, among the number of our instructing Spirits. We shall receive your instructions with the most lively gratitude. While we wait, permit us a simple question on your communication of today:

1st – You said that the empress brought these ideas to the knowledge of her circle, and so on. Would it be by this initiative, set out from the culminating point of society, that the Spiritist Doctrine is to find such numerous sympathies among the social heights in Russia?

2nd – A point that I am surprised not to see mentioned in your letters is the great principle of reincarnation, one of the natural laws that most testify to the justice and goodness of God.

Answer – It is evident that the influence of the empress and of some other great personages was predominant in determining, in Russia, the development of the philosophical movement in the spiritualist sense; but, if often the thought of the princes of the Earth determines the thought of the great, who find themselves in their dependence, it is not the same with the small. Those who have a chance to develop progressive ideas among the people are the children of the people; it is they who will cause to triumph, everywhere, the principles of solidarity and charity, which are the basis of Spiritism.

For this reason God, in his wisdom, has graduated the elements of progress; they are above, below, under all forms, and prepared to combat all resistances. They thus undergo a constant coming-and-going movement, which cannot fail to establish the harmony of sentiments between the high and the low classes, and to cause to triumph in solidarity the principles of authority and of liberty.

As you know, peoples are formed of Spirits who have among themselves a certain affinity of ideas, which predisposes them more or less to assimilate ideas of such or such an order, because those same ideas are in them in a latent state and await only an occasion in order to develop. The Russian people and several others are in this case in relation to Spiritism. With but little assistance to the movement, instead of its being hindered, ten years would not pass before all individuals, without exception, were Spiritists. But those same hindrances are useful for tempering the movement which, though a little slow, is no less the more considered for that. Omnipotence, by whose will all things are accomplished, will know well how to remove the obstacles, when it is time. One day Spiritism will be the universal faith, and they will wonder that it was not always so. As for the principle of terrestrial reincarnation, I confess to you that my initiation had not reached that far, and no doubt intentionally, because I would not have failed to make of it, as of the other revelations, the subject of my instructions to the empress, and perhaps this would have been premature. Those who preside over the ascending movement know well what they do. The principles are born one by one, according to the times, the places, and the individuals, and it was reserved to your epoch to see them gathered into a solid, logical, and unassailable sheaf.

Lavater. n [1]

[see John Gaspar Lavater.]