Meditations,

— Among the books of high piety, whose authors, imbued with true Christian ideas, treat all religious and abstract questions with an enlightened zeal, free of prejudice and fanaticism, one of those that enjoy in Germany the greatest esteem, deserved in every respect, is, without contradiction, the one entitled Hours of Piety [Stunden der Andacht - Google Books.] , by H. Zschokke, a distinguished Swiss writer, author of many literary works, written in the German language and much appreciated in Germany. This book has had, since 1815, more than forty editions. The so-called orthodox, even Protestants, generally find that the book is too liberal in its ideas, in matters of religion, and that the author does not rely sufficiently on the dogmas and the decisions of the Councils; but enlightened believers, those who seek the consolations of religion and wish to acquire the lights necessary to understand its truths, after having read and meditated upon it, will do full justice to the lights and the touching piety of the author. We give here the translation of two meditations contained in this remarkable book, because they enclose ideas entirely Spiritist, set forth with perfect exactness, more than fifty years ago. In both there is found a very exact and admirably elaborated definition of the spiritual body or perispirit, very sound and very lucid ideas about resurrection and the plurality of existences, through which one already glimpses the great light of the sublime doctrine of reincarnation, that cornerstone of modern Spiritism.

W. Foelkner.

141st MEDITATION.

ON BIRTH AND DEATH.

— Birth and death are both surrounded by impenetrable darkness. No one knows whence he came, when God called him; no one knows where he will go, when God will call him. Who could tell me whether I did not already exist, before taking my present body? What is this body, which belongs so little to my self that, during an existence of fifty years, I would have changed it several times like a garment? I no longer have the same flesh and the same blood that I had when I was nursed, in the years of my youth and in maturity; the parts of my body that belonged to me during the first age have already been, for a long time, dissolved and evaporated. Only the Spirit remains the same throughout all the variations that its earthly envelope undergoes. Why would I need, for my existence, the body that I possessed when I was very small? If I existed before it, where was I? And when I free myself from my present garment, where shall I be? No one answers me. I came here as if by a miracle, and it is by a miracle that I shall disappear. Birth and death remind man of this truth, so often forgotten, that he finds himself under the power of God. But this truth is, at the same time, a consolation. The power of God is the power of wisdom, the charm of love. If the beginning and the end of my life are wrapped in darkness, I must think that it must be a benefit for me, as everything that comes from God is benefit and grace. When everything around me proclaims His supreme wisdom and His infinite goodness, can I believe that the darkness surrounding the cradle and the coffin are the only exceptions? Is it possible that I have already existed once, even several times? Who knows the mysteries of the nature of Spirits? n Would my presence not be perhaps a faint image of eternal existence? Do I not already see here my passage from eternity to eternity, as in an opaque mirror?

Would I dare to lull myself in strange presentiments? Would this life really be a miniature image of eternal existence? What would it be if I had already had several existences, if each of them were a waking hour of the infancy of my Spirit and each change of its envelope, of its relations, or what is called death, a lethargy before an awakening with new forces? It is true that it is impossible for me to know how many times and how I existed, before God had called me to my present existence; but does the nursing child know more than I do of its first hours? Has it then lost so much that it cannot remember its first smile and its first tears? When it is older it will certainly remember no more, but it will know what it was in its first years; it will know that it smiled, wept, kept vigil, slept, dreamed, absolutely like others. If here it is possible, why would it be impossible that one day, after a higher journey of my immortal Spirit, it may remember and analyze the course traversed, the various circumstances in which it found itself during its journey and in the worlds it inhabited? At what degree of age am I now placed? I still resemble the child who, an hour later, has already forgotten the events of the preceding hour and is not in a condition to keep the memory of a dream which, having transported it to the exterior life, separated it from the preceding vigil; but I am like a child who, however, already knows how to recognize its parents. It forgets the pleasures and sorrows of the moment that has passed; but, at each awakening, it once again recognizes their dear features. So it is with me: I too recognize my Father, my God in the All-Eternal. I would have sought Him with my eyes, I would have called Him, even if no one had spoken to me of Him; for the memory of the heavenly Father is, it is said, innate in every man. All peoples preserve this memory, even the most savage, whose solitary islands, bathed by the ocean, have never been approached by civilized travelers. They say innate; perhaps one should say inherited, carried over from a previous life, exactly as the little child, from an earlier dream to a later one, refers to the memory of its mother. But I fall into dreams! Who is in a condition to approve or reject them? They resemble the first memories, very vague and very faint, that a child has of something that seems to it to have occurred in its moments of past vigils. Our most audacious suppositions, even when we judge them true, are no more than the fleeting and confused reflection of our feelings dating from a forgotten past. Besides, I do not reproach myself for this. Even supposing them chimerical, they uplift my Spirit, for, regarding our earthly life as an hour of a nursing child, what a vast and incommensurable perspective of eternity unfolds before me! What, then, will be the more advanced youth, the full maturity of my immortal Spirit, when, still many times, I shall have kept vigil, slept, and climbed a greater number of degrees of the spiritual ladder?

The day of earthly death will then become my new day of birth into a higher and more perfect life, the beginning of a sleep that will be followed by a pleasant awakening. Divine grace will smile upon me with a love greater than the affection with which an earthly mother smiles at her little child upon awakening, at the moment when it opens its eyes.

143rd MEDITATION.

ON TRANSFIGURATION AFTER DEATH.

— If I have the right of citizenship in the two worlds, if I belong not only to earthly life but also to spiritual life, I think it is quite pardonable to occupy myself sometimes with what awaits me in the latter, toward which a vague ardor draws me incessantly… I dwell with very good will, in memory, on those who were dear to me and whom death snatched from me, as much as on those who, in this world, fill me with joy by their presence, because the former have not ceased to exist, although deprived of a material body. The destruction of the body does not lead to the destruction of the Spirit. I continue to love you, my absent friends, my dear departed! Can I fear no longer being the object of your affection? No, certainly; no mortal has the power to separate Spirits united by God, just as no tomb has that power.

Although the lot that awaits me in another world is hidden from me, I think it is permitted to me to meditate sometimes on this subject, and to try to divine, from what I see here, what could happen to me there. If on Earth we are denied the ability to see, we must seek to nourish within ourselves the faith that vivifies all things. – Jesus Christ spoke many times, in elevated allegories, of the state of the soul after the death of the body, and his disciples also liked to converse on this subject with their confidants, as well as with those who doubt the possibility of the resurrection of the dead.

The doctrine of the resurrection of bodies was one of the oldest of the Jewish religion. The Pharisees taught it, but in a coarse and material manner, claiming that all the bodies buried in the tombs would necessarily become, one day, the envelope and the instrument of the Spirits that had animated them during earthly life, – an opinion that was fully refuted by another Jewish religious party, the Sadducees. Exhorted one day to pronounce himself between these two contrary opinions, the Christ demonstrated that the two Jewish religious parties had arrived, by dint of aberrations, at completely opposed errors; that the immortality of the soul, that is, the continuation of its existence in the other world, or the resurrection of the dead, could occur and would infallibly occur, without having to be a coarsely material resurrection of bodies, provided with all the requirements and all the earthly senses necessary to their preservation and their reproduction. The Sadducees recognized the truth of his words: “Master, you have answered very well!” they said. (Luke, 20:27-39.) What Jesus discussed in public only very rarely, in detail, became the subject of his intimate conversations with the disciples. They had the same ideas as he did about the state of the soul after death and about the Jewish doctrine concerning resurrection. “Senseless ones! – says the apostle Paul – do you not see that what you sow does not come to life unless it first dies? And when you sow, you do not sow the body of the plant that is to be born, but the simple grain, as of wheat or of any other thing. The body, like a seed, is now placed in the earth full of corruption and will rise incorruptible. An animal body is sown, a spiritual body is raised. If there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, and corruption will not possess this incorruptible heritage. (I Corinthians, 15:37 to 50.) The human body, composed of earthly elements, will return to the earth and will enter into the elements that compose the bodies of plants, of animals, and of men. This body is incapable of an eternal life; being corruptible, it cannot inherit incorruptibility. A spiritual body will be born from death, that is, the spiritual self will rise as if transfigured above the parts of the body wounded by death, in a greater liberty and provided with a spiritual envelope.

This doctrine of the Gospel, such as it came forth from the revelations of Jesus and of his disciples, corresponds admirably to what we now already know of the nature of man. It is irrefutable that the Spirit or soul, besides its earthly body, is, in reality, clothed with a spiritual body, which, exactly like the reproduction of the flower from a rotted seed, frees itself through the death of the material body.

It is often said, by allegory, that sleep is the brother of death; and it is so in reality. Sleep is nothing but the withdrawal of the Spirit or of the soul, the provisional abandonment by it of the exterior and coarser parts of the body. The same occurs at the moment of death. During sleep, in those parts of our body, abandoned for some time by our higher personality, there resides only vegetative life. Man remains in a state of insensibility, but his blood circulates in his veins, his breathing continues; all the functions of vegetative life are in full activity, resembling those of the unconscious life of plants. This passing withdrawal of the spiritual element of man seems necessary, from time to time, for the material element, because the latter ends by destroying, so to speak, itself, through a too prolonged wear, and weakens in the service of the Spirit. Vegetative life, abandoned to itself, and left at rest by the activity of the Spirit, can then continue to work without hindrance at its restoration, according to the laws of its nature. This is why, after a healthy sleep, we feel our body as if rested, in which our Spirit rejoices; but, after death, vegetative life also abandons the material elements of the body, which owed to it their connection, and they disaggregate. The body abandoned by the Spirit or soul may, in certain cases, appear to us to have life, even when true death is already consummated, that is, when the spiritual element has already left it. The corpse abandoned by its Spirit continues to breathe, its pulse to beat; one says: “He still lives.” On the other hand, it can sometimes happen that the vital force, having positively abandoned certain parts of the body, these are truly dead, while the Spirit and the body remain united in the other parts of the body where the vital force still resides.

Sleep, one of the greatest secrets of human existence, deserves our most constant and most attentive observations; but the difficulty that these observations present becomes all the greater inasmuch as, in order to make them, the observing Spirit is forced to submit to the laws of material nature and to let it act, in order to give it the faculty of lending itself more easily to its use and to its experiments. All sleep is the nourishment of the vital force. The Spirit in no way participates in it, because sleep is also completely independent of the Spirit, like digestion, the transformation of foods into blood, the growth of the hair, or the separation from the body of useless liquids. The waking state is a consumption of the vital force, its expansion outside the body and its exterior action; sleep is an assimilation, an attraction of that same force from outside. This is why we find sleep, not only in men and in animals, but also in plants which, at the approach of night, close the corollas of their flowers or let their leaves droop, after having folded them. What, then, is the state of our spiritual element, during its withdrawal from our exterior senses? It is no longer apt to receive the impressions from outside, by the use of the eyes, the ears, by taste, by smell, and by touch; but could one say that during those moments our self annihilates itself? If it were so, our body would receive every morning another Spirit, another soul, in place of the one that would be destroyed. The Spirit, having withdrawn from its senses, continues to live and act, although unable to manifest itself except imperfectly, having renounced for some time the instruments it is in the habit of using ordinarily.

Dreams are just so many proofs of the continuation of the activity of the Spirit. The awakened man remembers having dreamed, but these memories generally become vague or obscure through the vivid impressions that suddenly rush toward the Spirit upon awakening, by means of the senses. If even at that moment he is unaware of what visions he had occupied himself with during sleep, he nonetheless retains, at the moment of a sudden awakening, the consciousness that his attention detached itself from something that had preoccupied him, until then, within himself.

Sleep is always composed of visions, of desires, and of feelings, but which form themselves in a manner independent of exterior objects, since the exterior senses of man remain inactive; this is why they rarely leave a vivid and lasting impression on the memory. Then the Spirit must have been occupied, although we cannot, after sleep, recall the results of its activity. But what man is in a condition to recall the thousands of those rapid visions that present themselves to his Spirit, even in the waking state, at such or such an hour of the day? Has he therefore the right to claim that his Spirit had no visions, just at the moment when, above all, it was active and reflecting?

During sleep, the Spirit preserves the feeling of its existence, as well as in waking. Even during sleep, it knows how to distinguish itself perfectly from the objects of its visions. Each time we remember a dream, we find that it was our own self that, with a very imperfect feeling of its individuality, floated among the images of its own fantasy. We can forget the accessories of dreams that produce in us only a faint impression, and during which our Spirit did not react strongly by its desires and feelings. Consequently, we could also forget that we then had the feeling of our existence, but this is not a reason to suppose that the latter was suspended for a single instant, by the fact that we no longer remember it!

There are men who, preoccupied with grave reflections, do not know, even in the waking state, what is happening around them. Their Spirit, having withdrawn from the exterior parts of the body and from the organs of the senses, concentrates itself and occupies itself only with itself and, exteriorly, they seem to dream or to sleep with their eyes open. But who can deny that they have fully preserved the feeling of their existence, during those moments of profound meditation, although they do not see with their eyes and do not hear with their ears? Another proof of the unceasing continuation of the feeling of our existence and of our identity is the power that man possesses of awakening by himself, at an hour fixed by him beforehand.

Consequently, one cannot say that a man plunged into a more or less profound sleep has lost the consciousness of himself, when, on the contrary, he carries within himself the feeling of his existence, but without being able to manifest it to us. This is precisely the case of faintings, when the spiritual element of man withdraws into itself, by the effect of a passing and partial disturbance of its vegetative life, because the Spirit flees from everything that is dead, and attaches itself only to the vital force, to that which, by itself, is nothing but inert matter. The fainted man gives no exterior sign of life, but of life he is not deprived, as he is not during sleep. Many fainted persons, like sleepers, often preserve the memory of some of the visions they had during this state, which so nearly approaches that of death; others do not forget them. There are faintings during which the body remains livid, cold, deprived of breathing and of movement and appears entirely a corpse, while the Spirit, finding itself still in communication with some senses, understands everything that is happening around it, without being able, as in cases of catalepsy, to give any exterior sign of life and of awareness. How many persons have been buried alive in this manner, with full consciousness of all that they ordered for their burial, by relatives or friends deceived by a fatal appearance! n Another truly remarkable state of man gives us the proof of the uninterrupted activity of the Spirit and of the knowledge of itself, which is never lost, even when, afterward, it no longer remembers. It is the state of somnambulism. The man falls asleep in his ordinary sleep. He does not hear, does not see, and feels nothing; but, suddenly, he has the air of awakening, not from his sleep, but within himself. He hears, but not with the ears; he sees, but not with the eyes; he feels, but not by the skin. He walks, speaks, does many things and exercises various functions, to the general astonishment of those present, with the greatest circumspection and with more perfection than in waking. In this state he remembers, very distinctly, the past events when in waking, even those he forgets when he is awake, the occasion on which he is in possession of all his senses. After having remained in this state for some time, the somnambulist falls again into ordinary sleep, and when he is drawn out of it, he remembers absolutely nothing of what happened. He has forgotten all that he said and did and often refuses to believe what the spectators tell of him. Could one, however, deny to his Spirit the knowledge of itself, as well as its admirable activity during somnambulic sleep? Who would dare? The somnambulist, falling again into the sleep that constitutes his interior awakening, remembers perfectly, in that state incomprehensible to himself, everything that he did and thought before in a similar state, and of which he had completely lost the memory during the waking state of his exterior senses. How to explain this phenomenon? How is it that a man who sleeps not only can see and hear with his exterior senses inactive, but does so more positively, more perfectly than in waking? Because we know that the body is nothing but the vessel or the exterior envelope of the soul; because, without the latter, it can experience nothing, and because the eye of a corpse sees as much as the eye of a statue. It is, then, the soul and the soul alone that feels, sees, and hears what is happening outside of it. The eye, the ear, etc., are nothing but instruments and favorable devices of the exterior envelope, to provide the soul with the impressions from outside. But there are circumstances in which this coarse envelope, finding itself broken or damaged, the soul, so to speak, passes through it and continues its action, without therefore needing its exterior senses. Then it reacts with an increase of vigor, but completely different from when in its ordinary or waking state, against that which is not dead in man. It is, then, the soul itself that is the being that feels, and not the body; consequently, it is the soul that forms the true body of the Spirit, and the material body is nothing but its exterior framework, its covering, its envelope. Experience and innumerable examples prove to us sufficiently that the Spirit never loses its activity and the consciousness of its self, even when it cannot remember in detail each particular moment of its existence. Knowing that the Spirit, absorbed in profound reflections, loses sight of its own body and of all that surrounds it; that, in certain illnesses, it may find itself in the absolute impossibility of acting upon the exterior parts of its body and, sometimes, dispense with them completely (as in the state of somnambulism), for the execution of its designs, we must clearly understand how the immortal Spirit, having left its material and perishable envelope, preserves, after its earthly death, the consciousness and the feeling of its existence, although finding itself out of the state of being able to manifest it to the living, by means of the corpse, since the latter no longer belongs to it. At the same time, we understand what the spiritual body is, of which the apostle Paul speaks; what we must understand by the imperishable body, which must be reborn from the perishable body (I Cor., 15:4); how weakness sinks and is sown in the tomb, and how strength rises and casts itself toward heaven, ripe for a better life (I Cor., 15:43). This is the true resurrection from death, the spiritual resurrection. That which in us is dust must return to dust and to ashes; but the Spirit, clothed in a transfigured body, bears from then on the image of heaven, exactly as until now it had borne the image of the Earth (I Cor., 15:49). The earthly body, rotting in the tomb, feels nothing more, but also never felt by itself. It was, then, the spiritual body, the soul, that perceived and felt everything. Thus it will continue to do so, free of its broken vessel, but only in a manner infinitely more delicate and more prompt. The Spirit, having consciousness of itself in its spiritual envelope, could perfectly and infinitely better still admire the glory of God in His creations, and at the same time possess the faculties of seeing and loving those who are dear to it; but it will no longer experience material and sensual needs, it will no longer have tears. It will become the image of heaven, which is its true homeland. What shall I feel at the moment when You call me to You, my Creator, my Father! at the moment of my transfiguration, when, surrounded by my beloved ones, weeping around me and seeing my beloved ones who preceded me draw near to me, I shall bless them all with equal love! And when, sanctified by Jesus Christ, partaking of his kingdom, I present myself before You, O my God! adoring You with the most vivid gratitude, with the most profound veneration, with admiration without limits! May my immortal Spirit then be sufficiently ripe to enjoy this supreme happiness! Amen.

[1]

[Méditations religieuses: en forme de discours, pour toutes les …, Volume 1 par Heinrich Zschokke - Google Books.]

[2] One must remember that these lines were written fifty years before the revelations of the Spirits gathered by Spiritism. (Note of the translator into French.)

[3] The celebrated German physiologist Dr. Buchner published in 1859, in no. 349 of the Disdarcalia, a scientific journal that appeared in Darmstadt, an article on the use of chloroform, at the end of which he adds these words very remarkable in the mouth of the author of Force and Matter [Kraft und stoff, Ludwig Büchner - Google Books.] : “The discovery of chloroform and of its extraordinary effects is not only of great significance for medical science, but also for two of our principal sciences: physiology and — do not be too astonished — philosophy.” What leads the materialist doctor to say that, even under the psychological aspect, the use of chloroform has some weight, is that the patients, during the operations undergone, finding themselves in a state of semi-stupefaction, produced by the effect of the chloroform, several times declared, after awakening, that during the operation they had felt no pain, nor feeling of anguish or of fear, but that they always heard perfectly everything that was happening and being said around them, without, however, being in a condition to make any movement, nor to move a single one of their limbs. Does this fact not positively prove the possibility of the existence of the Spirit outside of matter, which dies as soon as the Spirit that vivified it definitively leaves it?

Does magnetism also not offer proofs, so to speak palpable, of the existence of the soul independent of matter? And how is it treated by the learned and by the academies? Instead of giving it all their attention and of applying themselves to studying it seriously, they limit themselves to denying it, which certainly is more convenient, but does not honor our scientific corporations. (Note of the translator into French.)