Claire

Claire was personally known to the medium during her life on Earth. She had beauty, wealth, admiration, and every outward sign of happiness, but she lived selfishly and cared little for others. After death, she suffered from isolation, emptiness, shame, and regret. Her later communications show real moral progress.

The medium’s hand begins writing...

ClaireHere I am... I, unhappy Claire.

ClaireWhat can I say to you?

ClaireYou speak of acceptance and hope, but those are only words to someone who feels her suffering will last through endless ages, as countless as the pebbles on the shore.

ClaireYou tell me I can lessen it?

ClaireWhat a senseless thing to say.

ClaireWhere am I supposed to find the courage? Where am I supposed to find the hope?

ClaireTry, with your limited mind, to imagine a day that never ends.

ClaireIs it a day? A year? A century?

ClaireI do not know.

ClaireThere are no hours. There are no seasons.

ClaireIt is eternal... slow... like water dripping forever from a rock.

ClaireThat day I hate, that I curse, weighs on me like a sheet of lead.

ClaireI suffer...

ClaireAround me I see only shadows. Silent shadows. They care about nothing.

ClaireI suffer.

ClaireAnd yet I know that God reigns above this misery.

ClaireGod, the Father... the Master... the One toward whom everything moves.

ClaireI will think of Him. I will beg for His pity.

ClaireI struggle.

ClaireI drag myself along painfully, like a lame creature crawling by the roadside.

ClaireSome power, I don't know what, draws me toward you.

ClairePerhaps you can help set me free.

ClaireWhen I leave you, I feel a little calmer... a little warmer.

ClaireLike a freezing, miserable person comforted by one ray of sunlight, my frozen soul comes back to life when it comes near you.

In a later communication, Claire spoke with deeper awareness of her faults.

ClaireMy misery grows deeper every day as the thought of eternity becomes clearer in my mind.

ClaireOh, the terrible mistake of my past.

ClaireHow I curse those guilty hours of selfishness and foolishness, when I forgot charity and devotion and thought only of my own pleasure.

ClaireI curse those short-sighted plans of life on Earth.

ClaireI curse those useless worries about the body and worldly interests.

ClaireI curse them because they blinded me and led me to ruin.

ClaireI am gnawed by endless regret over the time I wasted.

ClaireWhat can I say to those who listen to me?

ClaireWatch over yourselves constantly.

ClaireThink more of others than of yourselves.

ClaireDo not stay on the path of sensual pleasure.

ClaireDo not feed your body at the cost of your soul.

ClaireWatch, as the Savior said to His disciples.

ClaireDo not thank me for this advice.

ClaireMy mind understands it now, but my heart never listened to it.

ClaireLike a beaten dog, fear makes me crouch, but I haven't yet reached the freedom that comes from loving duty.

ClaireThe divine dawn hasn't yet risen for me.

ClairePray for my dry and miserable soul.

Claire next showed that her old selfishness was still alive in her suffering.

ClaireI've come to find you, because you forget me.

ClaireDo you believe that a few prayers now and then, and speaking my name, are enough to relieve suffering like mine?

ClaireDo not deceive yourselves.

ClaireI roar with pain.

ClaireI wander without rest, without shelter, without hope.

ClaireI feel punishment sinking deeper and deeper into my rebellious soul.

ClaireI laugh when I hear your complaints. I laugh when I see you sad.

ClaireWhat are your weak sorrows? What are your tears?

ClaireWhat are the sufferings of your life, when sleep at least gives you a break?

ClaireDo I sleep?

ClaireI demand, do you hear me, I demand that you put aside your philosophical discussions, pay attention to me, and make others pay attention to me.

ClaireI have no words for the anguish of this time that flows on forever, with no hours to mark it.

ClaireI can barely see one faint ray of hope.

ClaireAnd it is you who gave me that hope.

ClaireDo not abandon me.

Saint Louis then explained the cause of Claire's torment.

Mediums’ GuideThis picture is only too true.

Mediums’ GuidePeople may ask, what did this woman do to be so miserable?

Mediums’ GuideDid she commit some horrible crime? Did she steal? Did she kill?

Mediums’ GuideNo. She did nothing that human law punishes.

Mediums’ GuideOn the contrary, her life seemed full of happiness. She had beauty, fortune, admiration. Everything seemed to smile on her. Nothing was missing.

Mediums’ GuidePeople looked at her and said, what a happy woman.

Mediums’ GuideThey envied her.

Mediums’ GuideWhat had she done?

Mediums’ GuideShe was selfish.

Mediums’ GuideShe had everything except a kind heart.

Mediums’ GuideShe broke no human law, but her life constantly broke the law of God, because she neglected charity, the first and greatest of human virtues.

Mediums’ GuideShe loved only herself. Now no one loves her.

Mediums’ GuideShe gave nothing to others. Now no one gives to her.

Mediums’ GuideShe is alone, neglected, abandoned, lost in space where no one thinks of her or notices her.

Mediums’ GuideThat isolation is her torment.

Mediums’ GuideShe lived only for worldly pleasures, and those pleasures no longer exist for her.

Mediums’ GuideShe has emptiness all around her. She sees only nothingness, and that nothingness feels eternal.

Mediums’ GuideShe has no bodily torture. No devils come to torment her.

Mediums’ GuideShe does not need them.

Mediums’ GuideShe is her own tormentor.

Mediums’ GuideSelfishness was her delight on Earth. Now it follows her. It is the worm that gnaws her heart. It is her demon.

Claire then spoke more clearly and calmly.

ClaireI would speak to you about the great difference between divine morality and human morality.

ClaireDivine morality has pity on the abandoned woman taken in adultery and says to the sinner, repent, and the kingdom of Heaven will be opened to you.

ClaireDivine morality accepts every repentance and forgives every fault that is admitted.

ClaireHuman morality pushes repentance away and smiles while forgiving faults only when they're hidden.

ClaireOne has the grace of forgiveness. The other has hypocrisy.

ClaireChoose, you who want truth.

ClaireChoose between Heaven opening to repentance, and the tolerance that closes its eyes to evil as long as selfish comfort isn't disturbed, while it rejects the passionate sobbing of remorse that confesses in the light of day.

ClaireRepent, all of you who have sinned.

ClaireGive up your evil ways.

ClaireBut above all, give up the hypocrisy that hides the ugliness of evil under the smiling and deceitful mask of social respectability.

ClaireI have become calm, and I accept the atonement for my faults.

ClaireThe evil I suffer is in me, not outside me.

ClaireSo I'm the one who must change, not outward things.

ClaireWe carry our Heaven and our hell within ourselves.

ClaireOur faults are written on our conscience, and when we enter the spirit world, everyone can read them.

ClaireIn that way, we are our own judges, because the state of our soul raises us up or throws us down.

ClaireLet me explain.

ClaireA spirit stained and weighed down by faults can neither desire nor imagine a height beyond him.

ClaireBe sure of this. Just as each kind of being lives in the place that suits it, spirits, according to their advancement, find themselves in surroundings that match their abilities.

ClaireThey can only understand what lies beyond them when progress, that slow worker of the soul, clears away their low tendencies and strips off the shell of sin, so they may try their wings before flying, swift as an arrow, toward God, their only aim and desire.

ClaireSadly, I still crawl on the ground.

ClaireBut I no longer hate.

ClaireAnd I am beginning to form some faint idea of the happiness of loving God.

ClaireSo keep praying for me, I who hope and wait.

Claire then described her husband Felix. When the suffering became too strong for her, the guide finished the explanation.

ClaireI come to you, though you have forgotten me for so long. But I have become patient and I no longer despair.

ClaireYou want to know the condition of poor Felix.

ClaireHe wanders in darkness, prey to complete spiritual poverty.

ClaireHe was shallow and frivolous, stained by bodily passions.

ClaireHe never knew love or friendship.

ClaireEven passion itself could not give depth to his emptiness.

ClaireHis present state is like that of a child who can't manage even the things of physical life and is left without the help of others.

ClaireFelix wanders in terror through this world, so strange to him, where everything reflects the splendor of the God whose existence he denied.

Mediums’ GuideClaire cannot continue describing her husband's sufferings without feeling them herself, so I will speak for her.

Mediums’ GuideFelix was as shallow in mind as in feeling, violent because he was weak, and corrupt because he did not love.

Mediums’ GuideHe returned to the spirit world as naked morally as physically.

Mediums’ GuideDuring his life on Earth he gained nothing, so now he must begin everything again.

Mediums’ GuideLike a man waking from a long dream and seeing how useless the excitement of his nerves has been, this unhappy being, coming out of the confusion of separation, will see that he lived by illusions that led him astray.

Mediums’ GuideHe will curse the materialism that made him embrace emptiness while he thought he was grasping reality.

Mediums’ GuideHe will curse the ideas that led him to treat the future life as fantasy, aspiration as foolishness, and belief in God as weakness.

Mediums’ GuideWhen he wakes fully, he will see that the truths he mocked were real, and that what he thought was solid was less profitable than what he scorned as a shadow.

The later explanations about darkness were kept because Claire confirmed them from personal experience.

Mediums’ GuideThe darkness spoken of by suffering spirits is the darkness that Jesus and the prophets spoke of when describing the punishment of the wicked.

Mediums’ GuideBut it must be understood spiritually.

Mediums’ GuideSome spirits are truly plunged into a thick darkness, an obscuring of the soul that becomes for them a night of the mind.

Mediums’ GuideIt is not madness.

Mediums’ GuideIt is a lack of awareness of themselves and of everything around them, and it can remain just as dense in the presence of light as in its absence.

Mediums’ GuideThis darkness is especially the punishment of those who doubted a future life while on Earth.

Mediums’ GuideThey believed in nothingness, and that likeness of nothingness becomes their torture until the soul finally makes a strong effort and breaks the web of moral weakness that has trapped it.

Mediums’ GuideThis forced stillness, this emptiness of being, this uncertainty, is the torture.

Mediums’ GuideIt is a real darkness for the soul.

ClaireI am here. I, too, can answer about the darkness of the spirit world, because I wandered and suffered for a long time in that vague place where all is weeping and misery.

ClaireYes, the visible darkness spoken of in Scripture really exists.

ClaireThose miserable spirits who leave life on Earth in ignorance or guilt are plunged into that icy region.

ClaireThey understand nothing about themselves or their destiny.

ClaireThey think their condition will last forever.

ClaireThey still repeat the words that misled them during life.

ClaireThey are astonished and terrified by their complete loneliness.

ClaireDarkness truly is their region, empty and yet crowded, where they are carried forward by a power they don't understand, wandering pale and groaning, without comfort, without affection, without help of any kind.

ClaireTo whom can they turn for help?

ClaireThey feel the weight of eternity pressing heavily on them. They tremble.

ClaireThey miss the foolish little interests that at least marked the passing of hours on Earth.

ClaireThey even miss the night that, after the day, often comforted them with a pleasant dream.

ClaireSpirit darkness is ignorance, emptiness, and fear of the unknown...

ClaireI cannot continue.