You are in:
Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867 > May > Spiritist Dissertations
Spiritist Dissertations
Spiritist DissertationsSpiritual Life
Group Lampérière, January 9th, 1867 – medium Mr. Delanne
“I am here, happy to come and greet you, encourage you and tell you this:
Brothers, God fills you with his blessings, promising you, in these times of disbelief, to breathe deeply the air of spiritual life that blows vigorously through the compact masses.
Believe your former member, believe your intimate friend, your brother by heart, thoughts, and faith; believe in the truths that are taught: they are as certain as logical; believe in me who, a few days ago, contented myself, like you do, with believing and hoping, while today, the sweet fiction is for me an immense and deep truth. I touch, I see, I am, I possess, therefore, this exists; I analyze my impressions from today and compare them to those still fresh from the day before.
Not only am I allowed to compare, to synthesize, to weigh in my actions, my thoughts, my reflections, to judge them by the criterion of my common sense, but I see them, I feel them, I am an eyewitness, I am the realized thing; they are no longer consoling hypotheses, golden dreams, hopes, it is more than a moral certainty: it is the real, tangible fact, the material fact that we touch, that grasps us in its tangible form, and says: that is.
Here, everything breathes calm, wisdom, happiness; everything is harmony, everything says: This is the pinnacle of intimate sense; no more chimeras, false joys, no more childish fears, no more false shame, no more doubts, no more anxieties, no more falsehoods, no more this ugly procession of fabulous sorrows, of gross mistakes, as we see every day on Earth.
Here, one is instilled with an ineffable tranquility; we admire, we pray, we worship, we render thanksgiving to the sublime author of so many benefits, we study, and we catch a glimpse of all the infinite powers; we see the movement of the laws that govern nature. Each work has a goal that leads to love, the tuning fork of the general harmony. We see progress presiding over all physical and moral transformations, for progress is infinite, like God that created it. Everything is understandable; everything is neat, precise; no more abstractions, for we touch with our fingers and our reason the why of human things. The advanced spiritual legions have only one goal, that of becoming useful to their backward brethren, to raise them up to them.
So, work without stopping, according to your own strength, my good brothers, to improve yourself, to be useful to your fellow human beings; not only will you take the doctrine, that is your joy, a step, but you will also have contributed powerfully to the progress of your planet; following the example of the great Christian legislator, you will be men, men of love, and you will help to establish the reign of God on Earth.
The one that is still, and more than ever, your fellow student.
Leclerc.”
Observation: Such, in fact, is the character of the spiritual life; but it would be a mistake to believe that it is enough to be a Spirit to consider it from this point of view. It is with the spiritual world, as it is with the corporeal world: in order to appreciate things from a high order, an intellectual and moral development is necessary, that is peculiar only to advanced Spirits; belated Spirits are foreign to what takes place in the high spiritual spheres, as they were, on Earth, to what is esteemed by enlightened men, because they cannot understand it; since their thought is circumscribed to a limited horizon, they are not able to embrace the infinite, they cannot have the pleasures that result from the widening of the sphere of spiritual activity. The sum of happiness, in the world of the Spirits, is therefore, by the very nature of things, proportional to the development of the moral sense; hence, it follows that by working down here for our improvement and our instruction, we increase the sources of happiness for the future life. For the materialist, work has only a limited result to the present life, that can end at any moment; the Spiritist, on the contrary, knows that nothing that he acquires, even at the last hour, is wasted, and that any accomplished progress will be beneficial to him.
The profound considerations of our former colleague, Mr. Leclerc, on the spiritual life, are therefore proof of his advancement in the hierarchy of the Spirits, and we congratulate him for that.
Brothers, God fills you with his blessings, promising you, in these times of disbelief, to breathe deeply the air of spiritual life that blows vigorously through the compact masses.
Believe your former member, believe your intimate friend, your brother by heart, thoughts, and faith; believe in the truths that are taught: they are as certain as logical; believe in me who, a few days ago, contented myself, like you do, with believing and hoping, while today, the sweet fiction is for me an immense and deep truth. I touch, I see, I am, I possess, therefore, this exists; I analyze my impressions from today and compare them to those still fresh from the day before.
Not only am I allowed to compare, to synthesize, to weigh in my actions, my thoughts, my reflections, to judge them by the criterion of my common sense, but I see them, I feel them, I am an eyewitness, I am the realized thing; they are no longer consoling hypotheses, golden dreams, hopes, it is more than a moral certainty: it is the real, tangible fact, the material fact that we touch, that grasps us in its tangible form, and says: that is.
Here, everything breathes calm, wisdom, happiness; everything is harmony, everything says: This is the pinnacle of intimate sense; no more chimeras, false joys, no more childish fears, no more false shame, no more doubts, no more anxieties, no more falsehoods, no more this ugly procession of fabulous sorrows, of gross mistakes, as we see every day on Earth.
Here, one is instilled with an ineffable tranquility; we admire, we pray, we worship, we render thanksgiving to the sublime author of so many benefits, we study, and we catch a glimpse of all the infinite powers; we see the movement of the laws that govern nature. Each work has a goal that leads to love, the tuning fork of the general harmony. We see progress presiding over all physical and moral transformations, for progress is infinite, like God that created it. Everything is understandable; everything is neat, precise; no more abstractions, for we touch with our fingers and our reason the why of human things. The advanced spiritual legions have only one goal, that of becoming useful to their backward brethren, to raise them up to them.
So, work without stopping, according to your own strength, my good brothers, to improve yourself, to be useful to your fellow human beings; not only will you take the doctrine, that is your joy, a step, but you will also have contributed powerfully to the progress of your planet; following the example of the great Christian legislator, you will be men, men of love, and you will help to establish the reign of God on Earth.
The one that is still, and more than ever, your fellow student.
Leclerc.”
Observation: Such, in fact, is the character of the spiritual life; but it would be a mistake to believe that it is enough to be a Spirit to consider it from this point of view. It is with the spiritual world, as it is with the corporeal world: in order to appreciate things from a high order, an intellectual and moral development is necessary, that is peculiar only to advanced Spirits; belated Spirits are foreign to what takes place in the high spiritual spheres, as they were, on Earth, to what is esteemed by enlightened men, because they cannot understand it; since their thought is circumscribed to a limited horizon, they are not able to embrace the infinite, they cannot have the pleasures that result from the widening of the sphere of spiritual activity. The sum of happiness, in the world of the Spirits, is therefore, by the very nature of things, proportional to the development of the moral sense; hence, it follows that by working down here for our improvement and our instruction, we increase the sources of happiness for the future life. For the materialist, work has only a limited result to the present life, that can end at any moment; the Spiritist, on the contrary, knows that nothing that he acquires, even at the last hour, is wasted, and that any accomplished progress will be beneficial to him.
The profound considerations of our former colleague, Mr. Leclerc, on the spiritual life, are therefore proof of his advancement in the hierarchy of the Spirits, and we congratulate him for that.
Earthly proofs of men on a mission
Douay, March 8th, 1867 – medium Mrs. M…
“… The blood must, my children, purify the earth; terrible struggle, more horrible still by the splendor of the civilization amid which it breaks out. Oh, Lord! when everything is being prepared to strengthen the bonds of peoples from one end of the world to the other, when in the dawn of material fraternity we see the lines of demarcation of races, customs, and language tending to unity, the war comes, war and its entourage of ruins, fires, deep divisions, and religious hatred; yes, all that because nothing in our progress has followed the Spirit of God; because your bonds were not tightened neither by kindness nor by loyalty, but by interest alone; because it is not true charity that imposes silence to religious hatreds, but indifference; because the barriers were not lowered at your frontiers by the love of all, but by mercantile calculations; finally, because the views are human and instinctive and not spiritual and charitable; because the rulers only seek their own interests and each one of the peoples does the same.
Sublime selflessness of Jesus and his apostles, where are you? You are saddened, my children, when you sometimes think of the harsh mission of these sublime Spirits, that come to lift the courage of humanity, and die at the task, after having emptied the cup of human ingratitude. You moan when you see that the Lord, who sent them, seems to abandon them, when his protection seems most necessary. Have you not been told of the trials that the superior Spirits endure when they take a higher step in their spiritual initiative? Have you not been told that each rank of the celestial hierarchy is acquired by merit, by dedication, like with you in the army, by the bloodshed and by the services accomplished? Well, that is the case with the Messiahs in this land of sorrows; they are supported while their humanitarian work lasts, as long as they work for man and for God, but, when they alone are at stake, when their ordeal becomes individual, the visible help disappears, and the struggle becomes as bitter and harsh as man must endure it.
That is the explanation for this apparent abandonment, that afflicts you in the life of missionaries of all ranks of your humanity. Do not ever think that God abandons his creature out of whim or powerlessness; no, but in the interest of one’s own advancement, He leaves it to one’s own strength, to the entire use of one’s free will.
Cura D’Ars.”
Sublime selflessness of Jesus and his apostles, where are you? You are saddened, my children, when you sometimes think of the harsh mission of these sublime Spirits, that come to lift the courage of humanity, and die at the task, after having emptied the cup of human ingratitude. You moan when you see that the Lord, who sent them, seems to abandon them, when his protection seems most necessary. Have you not been told of the trials that the superior Spirits endure when they take a higher step in their spiritual initiative? Have you not been told that each rank of the celestial hierarchy is acquired by merit, by dedication, like with you in the army, by the bloodshed and by the services accomplished? Well, that is the case with the Messiahs in this land of sorrows; they are supported while their humanitarian work lasts, as long as they work for man and for God, but, when they alone are at stake, when their ordeal becomes individual, the visible help disappears, and the struggle becomes as bitter and harsh as man must endure it.
That is the explanation for this apparent abandonment, that afflicts you in the life of missionaries of all ranks of your humanity. Do not ever think that God abandons his creature out of whim or powerlessness; no, but in the interest of one’s own advancement, He leaves it to one’s own strength, to the entire use of one’s free will.
Cura D’Ars.”
The genius
Douay, March 13th, 1867 – medium Mrs. M…
“Question: Is the genius assigned to each Spirit according to their acquired knowledge, or according to a divine law in relation to the needs of a people or of humanity?
Answer: Genius, dear children, is the radiation of previous achievements. This radiation is the state of the Spirit in detachment or in the superior incarnations: there are, therefore, two distinctions to be made. The most ordinary genius, among you, is simply the state of a Spirit of which one or two faculties have remained unveiled, and able to act freely; he received a body that allows them to flourish in their acquired plenitude. The other kind of genius is the Spirit that comes from the happy and advanced worlds, where the acquisitions are universal, on all points; where all the faculties of the soul have come to a prominent degree, unknown on earth. These kinds of geniuses are distinguished from the first, by an exceptional aptitude for all talents, all studies. They conceive of all things by a sure intuition and that confuses the science learned from the most renowned. They excel in goodness, in greatness of soul, in true nobility, in excellent works. They are lighthouses, initiators, examples. They are men from other lands, who have come to shine light from above onto a dark world, just as one sends a few scholars from a civilized capital among barbarians, to educate them; such were among you the men who, at various times, have advanced humanity, the wise men who have pushed back the limits of knowledge, and dispelled the darkness of ignorance. They saw and foresaw the earthly destiny, however far they were from the accomplishment of this destiny; they all laid the foundations of some science or were its culmination.
The genius, therefore, is not gratuitous, and is not subordinated to a law; it comes from man himself and his antecedents. Consider that the background is all human. The criminal is by his antecedents; the man of merit and the man of genius are superior for the same reason. Not everything is veiled in the incarnation to the point that it does not touch our former being. Intelligence and goodness are too bright lights, too brilliant foci for earthly life to have them reduced to darkness.
The trials to be undergone may well veil, attenuate some of our faculties, put them to sleep, but if they have reached a high degree, the Spirit cannot entirely lose their possession and their exercise; he has the assurance that he has them at his disposal; often he cannot even consent to deprive himself of them. This is what causes the painful lives of certain advanced men who have preferred to suffer through their high faculties rather than let them vanish for a time.
Yes, we are all by hope, and some by memory, citizens of these high celestial spheres where thought radiates pure and powerful. Yes, we will all be Platos, Aristotles, Erasmus; our Spirit will no longer see its achievements fading under the weight of the life of the body or die out under the weight of old age and illnesses.
Friends, this is truly the most sublime hope; given all this, what are the dignities and treasures that were placed at the feet of these men? The sovereigns begged for their works, strived for their presence. Do you think these vain honors flattered them? No. The memory of their glorious homeland was too vivid. They went back, happily, on the shine of their glory, to those worlds that their Spirit longed for incessantly.
Earth! Earth! Cold, dark, restless region; blind, ungrateful, and rebellious land! You could not make them forget the heavenly homeland where they had lived, where they were returning to live.
Farewell, friends, rest assured that every good man will become a citizen of these happy worlds, of these splendid Jerusalems, where the Spirit lives free in an ethereal body, possessing all his assets, without clouds and without veil. You will then know all that you aspire to know, you will understand all that you seek to understand, even my name, dear medium, that I do not want to tell you.
A Spirit.”
Answer: Genius, dear children, is the radiation of previous achievements. This radiation is the state of the Spirit in detachment or in the superior incarnations: there are, therefore, two distinctions to be made. The most ordinary genius, among you, is simply the state of a Spirit of which one or two faculties have remained unveiled, and able to act freely; he received a body that allows them to flourish in their acquired plenitude. The other kind of genius is the Spirit that comes from the happy and advanced worlds, where the acquisitions are universal, on all points; where all the faculties of the soul have come to a prominent degree, unknown on earth. These kinds of geniuses are distinguished from the first, by an exceptional aptitude for all talents, all studies. They conceive of all things by a sure intuition and that confuses the science learned from the most renowned. They excel in goodness, in greatness of soul, in true nobility, in excellent works. They are lighthouses, initiators, examples. They are men from other lands, who have come to shine light from above onto a dark world, just as one sends a few scholars from a civilized capital among barbarians, to educate them; such were among you the men who, at various times, have advanced humanity, the wise men who have pushed back the limits of knowledge, and dispelled the darkness of ignorance. They saw and foresaw the earthly destiny, however far they were from the accomplishment of this destiny; they all laid the foundations of some science or were its culmination.
The genius, therefore, is not gratuitous, and is not subordinated to a law; it comes from man himself and his antecedents. Consider that the background is all human. The criminal is by his antecedents; the man of merit and the man of genius are superior for the same reason. Not everything is veiled in the incarnation to the point that it does not touch our former being. Intelligence and goodness are too bright lights, too brilliant foci for earthly life to have them reduced to darkness.
The trials to be undergone may well veil, attenuate some of our faculties, put them to sleep, but if they have reached a high degree, the Spirit cannot entirely lose their possession and their exercise; he has the assurance that he has them at his disposal; often he cannot even consent to deprive himself of them. This is what causes the painful lives of certain advanced men who have preferred to suffer through their high faculties rather than let them vanish for a time.
Yes, we are all by hope, and some by memory, citizens of these high celestial spheres where thought radiates pure and powerful. Yes, we will all be Platos, Aristotles, Erasmus; our Spirit will no longer see its achievements fading under the weight of the life of the body or die out under the weight of old age and illnesses.
Friends, this is truly the most sublime hope; given all this, what are the dignities and treasures that were placed at the feet of these men? The sovereigns begged for their works, strived for their presence. Do you think these vain honors flattered them? No. The memory of their glorious homeland was too vivid. They went back, happily, on the shine of their glory, to those worlds that their Spirit longed for incessantly.
Earth! Earth! Cold, dark, restless region; blind, ungrateful, and rebellious land! You could not make them forget the heavenly homeland where they had lived, where they were returning to live.
Farewell, friends, rest assured that every good man will become a citizen of these happy worlds, of these splendid Jerusalems, where the Spirit lives free in an ethereal body, possessing all his assets, without clouds and without veil. You will then know all that you aspire to know, you will understand all that you seek to understand, even my name, dear medium, that I do not want to tell you.
A Spirit.”