2.6 Spirit Life
Errant Spirits
The soul sometimes reincarnates immediately after separation from the body, but most often only after an interval of greater or lesser duration. On more highly evolved worlds, reincarnation is almost always immediate. Since the corporeal matter of those worlds is less coarse, an incarnate spirit there enjoys nearly all of its spiritual faculties. Its normal state resembles that of lucid somnambulists.
During the intervals between incarnations, the soul becomes an errant spirit, aspiring to and awaiting a new destiny.
Such intervals may last from a few hours to thousands of centuries. Strictly speaking, there is no fixed outer limit assigned to the errant state. It may last for a very long time, but never forever. Sooner or later, a spirit always has the opportunity to begin another existence, which serves for the purification of its previous ones.
The length of the interval is a consequence of the spirit’s free will. Spirits know full well what they are doing in prolonging it, but for some, extending it is also a punishment inflicted by God. Others ask for it to be extended in order to pursue studies that cannot be carried out productively except in the spirit state.
The errant state is not, in itself, an indication of lesser evolution, since there are errant spirits of every degree. Incarnation is the transitory state. In their normal state, spirits are disengaged from matter.
All spirits who must reincarnate are errant, but pure spirits, having reached perfection, are not errant: their state is definitive.
Regarding their inmost qualities, spirits belong to different orders or degrees through which they pass successively as they purify themselves. Regarding their condition as spirits, they may be incarnate, that is, connected to a body; errant, that is, disconnected from the material body while awaiting a new incarnation in order to improve themselves; or pure, that is, perfected and having no further need of incarnation.
Errant spirits learn by studying their past and seeking ways to evolve. They watch and observe what is going on in the realms through which they pass. They listen to the discourse of enlightened individuals and to the counsels of spirits more evolved than themselves, and this provides them with ideas they do not yet possess.
Upon losing their corporeal envelope, high-order spirits leave evil passions behind and retain only the ideals of the good. Low-order spirits, however, retain their passions; otherwise, they would belong to the First Order.
When they leave the earth behind, spirits do not abandon their evil passions merely because they can see the trouble such passions cause. In your world there are persons who are excessively jealous, for instance, and they do not lose that defect upon leaving. After death, since they are not entirely freed from matter, especially if they displayed strong passions, they retain a sort of atmosphere around them infused with all their evil qualities. They only occasionally glimpse the truth, so that the moral path may be revealed to them.
A spirit may improve itself a great deal while in the errant state; it always depends on its own will and desire. However, it puts its newly acquired ideas into practice only during corporeal life.
The degree of happiness or unhappiness experienced by errant spirits depends on what they have merited. They either suffer from the passions whose essence they have retained, or they are happy according to their degree of dematerialization. In the errant state, a spirit realizes what it lacks in order to be happier and thus searches for the means to attain it. However, it is not always permitted to reincarnate when it wishes. This, in itself, is a punishment.
While in the errant state, spirits may visit other worlds, depending on their condition. When the spirit leaves the body, it is still not completely disconnected from matter. Hence, it still belongs to the world on which it has lived, or to one of the same degree, unless it has progressed sufficiently during its lifetime. Progress is the purpose to which it must hold, for it will never perfect itself unless it progresses. Nevertheless, it may go to certain more highly evolved worlds, but as an outsider. It can gain only glimpses of such worlds, and these glimpses are what drive it to improve itself so that it may become worthy of the happiness enjoyed there and able to inhabit them later.
Spirits who are already purified frequently go to less evolved worlds in order to help them progress. Without these spirits, such worlds would be left to themselves, without guides to direct them.
Transitional Worlds
There are worlds intended particularly for errant beings, worlds they may temporarily inhabit: a type of campsite, a place where they can repose during a very long errant state, a state that is always somewhat wearisome. These are intermediary positions between worlds and are gradated according to the nature of the spirits who have access to them, where they enjoy a greater or lesser sense of well-being.
Spirits who temporarily inhabit those worlds can leave them whenever they wish in order to follow their destiny. They are like migrating birds that descend on an island in order to regain strength before continuing on their way.
Spirits progress during their layovers on these transitory worlds. Those who gather there do so with the purpose of educating themselves in order to more easily obtain permission to go to better and better places until they reach the position of the elect.
Due to their special nature, these transitional worlds are not destined forever to be layovers for errant spirits; that function is only temporary.
They are not inhabited by corporeal beings at the same time. Their surface is barren, and those who inhabit them need nothing.
This barrenness is not permanent and is only transitory, though connected to their special nature.
These worlds are not destitute of natural beauty. Their nature is expressed in the beauties of their immensity, beauties no less admirable than what is ordinarily called natural beauty.
The earth itself has already been among these worlds. It was so during its formation.
Nothing in nature is useless; each thing has its purpose and its destination. There is no empty space. Everything is inhabited, and life expands everywhere. Thus, during the long series of ages that elapsed before the appearance of humankind on the earth, during the long periods of transition attested to by the geological layers, and even before the formation of the first organic beings upon that formless mass, there was no absence of life in that arid chaos in which the elements were being mixed together. Beings who did not have our needs or our physical sensations found a refuge there. Even in that imperfect state, God willed it to be useful for something. Therefore, among the billions of worlds that spin through the immensity of space, not only one—one of the smallest, lost in the crowd—has the exclusive privilege of being populated. All the others were not made merely as entertainment for our eyes. Such a presumption is incompatible with the wisdom that shines in all God’s works, and unacceptable once we consider all those that cannot be seen. In this notion of worlds still unsuitable for material life and yet populated with beings appropriate to their conditions, there is something grand and sublime in which perhaps the solution to more than one problem may be found.
Perceptions, Sensations, and Sufferings of Spirits
Once in the world of spirits, the soul still has the perceptions it had in this life, along with others it did not have because its body was like a veil that obscured them. Intelligence is a natural attribute of the spirit, but it is expressed more freely when unshackled.
The perceptions and understanding of spirits are not unlimited. The nearer they approach perfection, the more they know. High-order spirits know much; low-order spirits are more or less ignorant on all subjects.
Whether spirits comprehend the beginning of things depends on how evolved and purified they are. Low-order spirits know no more than humans.
Spirits do not perceive time as we do, and that is what causes misunderstandings when it comes to setting dates or epochs.
Spirits live outside of time as we know it; for them, duration practically does not exist. The centuries that are so long for us are to them only instants that disappear into eternity, in the same way that the unevenness of the ground would fade and disappear to someone high in space.
Spirits have a more or less correct and precise idea of the present than we do, just as someone who sees clearly has a more correct idea of things than a blind person. Spirits see what we do not see, and they judge differently than we do; but again, it depends on how evolved they are.
Their knowledge of the past is not unlimited. When they concern themselves with it, the past is present, in much the same way we remember something that impressed us during our exile. However, since they are no longer hampered by the material veil that clouds our minds, they remember things that have disappeared from our memory. Spirits, however, do not know everything, especially not their own creation.
Whether spirits know the future depends on how purified they are. Most of the time, they may glimpse it, but they do not always have permission to reveal it. When they do see it, it appears to them as the present. A spirit sees the future more clearly the more it approaches God. After death, the soul sees and takes in its past migrations at a glance, but it cannot see what God has in store for it. For that, it is necessary to have become one with God after many lives.
Spirits who have reached perfection do not possess complete knowledge of the future. Indeed, complete is not the right term, because God alone is sovereign; no one can equal God.
Only high-order spirits see and understand God; low-order spirits feel and intuit God.
When a low-order spirit says that a thing is forbidden or permitted to it by God, it does not see God, but senses the divine sovereignty; and when something must not be done, or a word must not be spoken, it receives a sort of intuition, a secret warning, which keeps it from proceeding. The same happens with humans, but to a higher degree in spirits, since the essence of spirits is subtler than ours and they can more easily receive divine warnings.
The order is not transmitted by God directly, because to communicate with God directly one must deserve it. God transmits divine orders through spirits more advanced in purification and instruction.
Spirits’ sight is not circumscribed as it is in corporeal beings; it resides in the entire spirit.
Spirits do not need light in order to see. They see with their own light, without the need for any outside light. There is no darkness for them, except that in which they may find themselves due to expiation.
Spirits do not need to move about in order to see in different places. Since spirits travel at the speed of thought, it may be said that they see everywhere at once. Their thought can radiate and be directed to many points at the same time, but this faculty depends on their purity: the less pure they are, the more limited their sight. Only high-order spirits can see everything as a whole.
Among spirits, the faculty of sight is inherent to their nature and permeates their whole being like light in a luminous object. It is a kind of universal lucidity extending to everything, simultaneously embracing space, time, and things, and for which there are no darkness or material obstacles. It must indeed be this way, because in human beings sight functions through an organ that receives light; thus, without light they remain in darkness. In spirits, however, since the faculty of sight is an inherent attribute independent of any outside agent, sight does not depend on light.
Spirits see things more distinctly than we do, for their sight penetrates what ours cannot. Nothing obscures it.
Spirits perceive sounds, including those our limited senses cannot detect.
The faculty of hearing, like that of sight, is present in their whole being. All perceptions are attributes of the spirit and are part of its being. When it is clothed with a material body, perceptions arrive only through organic channels. In the state of freedom, however, they are no longer localized.
Since perceptions are attributes of the spirit itself, it can suspend their use. A spirit sees and hears only what it wants to, at least this is generally the case, especially for more evolved spirits. Less evolved ones frequently must hear and see what may be useful for their improvement, whether they want to or not.
Spirits are sensitive to music. Human music is like primitive chant when compared with a soft melody set beside celestial music, that harmony of which no one on earth can have any idea. Nevertheless, ordinary spirits may take a certain pleasure in listening to human music because they are not yet able to appreciate anything more sublime. For spirits, music has infinite charm due to their highly developed sensitive qualities. This refers to celestial music, which is everything the spiritual imagination can conceive as the most beautiful and delicate of all.
Spirits are sensitive to the beauties of nature. The beauties of nature on different globes are so diverse that spirits are far from knowing them all. They are sensitive to them according to their aptitude for appreciating and comprehending them. Evolved spirits enjoy the beauty of the whole, before which the beauty of details fades, so to speak.
Spirits know our physical needs and sufferings, for they have endured them, but they do not experience them physically as we do, because they are spirits.
Spirits cannot feel fatigue as we understand it and therefore do not need corporeal rest, because they possess no organs whose energies must be restored. However, spirits do rest, in the sense that they do not remain in a state of constant activity. They do not act physically, because their action is entirely intellectual, and their rest is entirely mental. There are moments when their thought decreases in activity and is no longer directed toward any object in particular. This is true repose for them, but it cannot be compared to that of the body. The kind of fatigue spirits can experience is in proportion to how evolved they are: the more purified they are, the less rest they need.
When a spirit says that it is suffering, the nature of such suffering is mental anguish, which tortures it more acutely than physical suffering.
Some spirits complain of cold or heat because it is a remembrance of what they suffered during life, a feeling as painful as the reality itself. Frequently, they use these expressions to describe their situation. When they remember their body, they experience a sensation similar to that of one who takes off a heavy coat and still feels its weight on the shoulders.
Theoretical Essay on Sensation in Spirits
The body is the instrument of pain; if not its primary cause, then at least its immediate cause. The soul perceives such pain, and this perception is the effect. The memory it preserves of pain can be very acute, but this does not imply any physical sensation. In fact, cold and heat cannot disorganize the soul’s tissues; a soul can neither freeze nor burn. Every day, do we not see the memory of, or anxiety about, a physical illness producing its effects, even to the point of causing death?
We all know that individuals who have undergone an amputation feel pain in the limb that no longer exists. The limb is obviously neither the site nor the starting point of the pain; the brain has simply retained the impression. Likewise, there is something similar in the sufferings of spirits after death. An in-depth study of the perispirit, which plays such an important role in all spirit phenomena—such as vaporous or tangible apparitions, the state of the spirit at the moment of death, the very frequent notion that it is still alive, the frightening situation of suicides, those who have undergone capital punishment, those who have overindulged in material pleasures, and many other facts—has shed light on this question and provided the explanations presented here in summary.
The perispirit is the link that unites the spirit with the matter of the body. It is drawn from the environment, from the universal fluid. At the same time, it contains electricity, magnetic fluid, and, to a certain extent, inert matter. It is the quintessence of matter. It is the beginning of organic life, but not of mental life, because that belongs to the spirit. The perispirit is also the agent of external sensations. In the body, these sensations are localized in the organs that serve as their channels. When the body is destroyed, the sensations become generalized, and that is why a spirit does not say that it suffers more in its head than in its feet. Moreover, one must guard against confusing the sensations of the perispirit, once independent of the body, with those of the body itself; the latter can serve only as a point of comparison, not as an analogy. Freed from the body, the spirit may suffer, but this suffering is not the same as bodily suffering. Still, it is not exclusively mental suffering either, like remorse, because the spirit may complain of being hot or cold. Nevertheless, it suffers no more in summer than in winter. Spirits have been seen passing through flames without feeling any pain, showing that temperature has no effect on them. The pain they feel, then, is not physical pain strictly speaking, but a vague inner sensation of which the spirit is not always fully aware, because the pain is neither localized nor produced by an outside agent. It is a memory rather than a reality, but a very painful memory nonetheless. At times, however, it is more than a memory.
Experience has taught that the perispirit disengages itself more or less slowly from the body at the moment of death. During the first few moments, the spirit does not comprehend its situation; it does not think it has died, because it feels alive. It sees its body beside it and knows that it is its own, but does not understand why they are separate. This state lasts as long as there is a link between the body and the perispirit. A suicide once said, “No, I’m not dead,” and added, “yet I can feel the worms devouring me.” Of course, the worms were not devouring the perispirit, much less the spirit, but only the body. Since the separation between body and perispirit was not yet complete, there continued to be a kind of mental repercussion that transmitted the sensation to the spirit. Repercussion is not quite the right term, however, since it may imply too physical an effect. It was rather the sight of what was happening within the body itself, while the perispirit was still attached, that produced an illusion taken as real. Thus, it was not a memory of a past event, since the body had never been devoured by worms during life; it was a current sensation.
During life, the body receives impressions and transmits them to the spirit through the perispirit, which probably comprises what is called the neural fluid. Once dead, the body no longer feels anything because it has neither spirit nor perispirit. When disengaged from the body, the perispirit experiences sensation, but since sensation no longer reaches it through a limited channel, it becomes generalized. Since the perispirit is only an agent of transmission, because only the spirit possesses consciousness, it may be deduced that if the perispirit could exist without the spirit, it would feel no more than the dead body. Likewise, if the spirit had no perispirit, it would be inaccessible to any painful sensation whatever, as is the case with completely purified spirits. The more a spirit purifies itself, the more etherealized the essence of its perispirit becomes, so that material influences diminish as the spirit progresses—that is, as its perispirit becomes less coarse.
If pleasant sensations are transmitted to the spirit through the perispirit, so are unpleasant ones. If a pure spirit is inaccessible to some, it must be equally inaccessible to others. This is true, but only of sensations that come from the influence of the matter with which we are familiar. The sound of our instruments and the smell of our flowers make no impression on a pure spirit, yet it enjoys inner sensations of indefinable enchantment of which we do not have the slightest idea, because they are as imperceptible to us as light is to those born blind. We know they exist, but beyond that our knowledge ends. It is known that spirits have perception, sensation, hearing, and sight, but these faculties are attributes of their whole being, not of specific organs, as in human beings. But how this occurs is not known. Spirits themselves cannot explain it, because our language was not made to express ideas we cannot conceive, just as the language of primitive tribes contains no terms for expressing our arts, sciences, and philosophical doctrines.
In saying that spirits are inaccessible to the impressions of matter, reference is made to the most evolved spirits, whose etherealized envelope has no analogy in this world. It is different with spirits whose perispirit is denser, because they perceive our sounds and our odors, though not through a limited part of their organism as when alive. It may be said that molecular vibrations are felt throughout their entire being and therefore in their sensorium commune, the spirit itself, but in a different way, perhaps producing a different impression and thus a modification in perception. They hear the sound of our voice, and yet they can understand us without speech, because the mere transmission of thought is sufficient. This proves that mental acuity becomes greater the more dematerialized they become. The faculty of sight is independent of light; it is an essential attribute of the soul, for which darkness does not exist, and it becomes broader and more penetrating in those who are more purified. Therefore, the soul or spirit possesses within itself the faculty of all perceptions. During corporeal life, these perceptions are obscured by the density of our organs; during extra-corporeal life, they become increasingly liberated as the semi-material envelope becomes ever more etherealized.
Drawn from the surrounding environment, the perispirit varies according to the nature of different worlds. In passing from one world to another, spirits change this envelope as we change our clothes when moving from summer to winter, or from pole to equator. When they come to visit us, the more evolved spirits assume a terrestrial perispirit, and then their perceptions are similar to those of ordinary spirits. However, all spirits, whether highly evolved or not, hear and feel only what they wish to hear and feel.
Since they do not have sensory organs, they can render their perceptions active or inactive at will, although there is one thing they are compelled to hear: the counsels of good spirits. Their sight is always active, but they can make themselves invisible to one another. Depending on the class to which they belong, they can conceal themselves from those who are less purified, but not from those who are more so. In the first moments after death, a spirit’s sight is always dim and confused, but it becomes clearer as the spirit frees itself from the body, and can become even clearer than it was during life, including the ability to penetrate objects opaque to us. As for the extension of a spirit’s sight into indefinite space, the future, and the past, that depends on the spirit’s degree of purity and evolution.
This entire theory is not very reassuring. Once freed from our dense envelope, the instrument of our pains, we might think we would not suffer anymore. Yet we can continue to suffer; whether in one way or another, suffering remains suffering. Alas, we can still suffer a great deal and for a long time, though we may also cease to suffer from the moment we leave corporeal life behind.
The sufferings of this world are sometimes the result of a cause outside ourselves, but more often they result from our own will. Traced back to their origin, most are due to causes we could have avoided. How many ills and infirmities do people owe solely to their excesses and ambitions—in a word, to their passions? If individuals always lived wisely and abused nothing, if they always had simple tastes and modest desires, they would spare themselves many tribulations. The same applies to spirits: the sufferings they undergo always result from the way they lived on the earth. Of course, they no longer have gout or rheumatism, but they experience other sufferings that are no less real. Such sufferings are the result of the links that still exist between the spirit and matter. The more the spirit is freed from the influence of matter—that is, the more dematerialized it is—the fewer painful sensations it suffers. Starting in its present life, it depends on the spirit itself to break free from the influence of matter, because it has free will and therefore the ability to choose to act or not. Let the spirit conquer its animal passions; let it entertain no hatred, envy, jealousy, or pride; let it cease to be dominated by selfishness; let it purify itself through good sentiments; let it practice the good; let it assign to the things of this world no more importance than they deserve. Then, even while still in its corporeal envelope, it will already have purified itself by detaching from matter, and when it leaves the body behind, it will no longer suffer from matter’s influence. The physical sufferings endured in the past will leave no painful memory or disagreeable impression, because they affected only the body. The spirit is happy to be relieved of them, and its peaceful conscience exempts it from all mental anguish.
On this subject, many thousands of spirits belonging to every social class and condition have been questioned. They have been studied at every period of their spiritual life, from the moment they left the body. They have been followed step by step in that life beyond the grave in order to observe the changes that took place in their ideas and sensations. In this respect, the most ordinary individuals furnished the most precious elements of study. Their sufferings are always related to their conduct; they must suffer the consequences. This new existence is a source of ineffable happiness for those who have taken the path of good. Hence, for those who suffer, it is because they have wanted to, and they have only themselves to blame in the other world as in this one.
The Choice of Trials
While in the errant state, and before a new corporeal existence, a spirit has awareness and foresight of what will happen during its new lifetime. The spirit itself chooses the kinds of trials it will undergo. Its free will consists in doing so.
It is not God who imposes the tribulations of life as a chastisement. Nothing happens without God’s permission, because God established all the laws that govern the universe. In giving a spirit freedom of choice, God leaves it the entire responsibility for its acts and their consequences. Nothing bars its future. The path of good and the path of evil are both open. If the spirit succumbs in its trials, it still has the consolation that not all is lost, because God, in divine goodness, allows it to start over where it failed. It is necessary to distinguish between what belongs to God’s will and what belongs to human will. If a danger threatens you, it is not you who created it, but God. However, you willingly exposed yourself to it because you saw in it a means of advancement, and God allowed it to happen.
If our spirit chooses the kinds of trials it will undergo, it does not follow that all the tribulations of life are foreseen and chosen by us, because it cannot be said that we have chosen and foreseen everything that happens in the world, not even the smallest things. We have chosen the kind of trial; the details are consequences of the position we have chosen and, frequently, of our own actions. If a spirit is born among evildoers, for example, it already knows what kind of temptations it will face, but it does not know how it will act in each specific situation; its actions are the products of its volition or free will. In choosing a particular path, a spirit knows it must endure the struggles that arise there and knows the nature of the tribulations it will encounter, but it does not know what events await it. The details spring from circumstances and from the force of things. Only the major events that will influence its destiny are foreseen. If you walk down a path full of ruts, you know you must be very cautious because you run the risk of tripping, but you do not know when you will trip, and perhaps you will not trip at all if you are sufficiently on guard. If you are walking down the sidewalk and a tile falls on your head, you must not think that it was “written beforehand,” as is commonly said.
A spirit may wish to be born among evildoers because it must be sent into the environment in which it can undergo its requested trial. To that end, it must find an analogous situation. For example, in order to struggle against the instinct of thievery, it must dwell among thieves.
If there were no longer any evil individuals on earth, spirits would not need to find there the necessary conditions for certain trials. That is what happens on highly evolved worlds, where evil has no access; thus, only good spirits dwell on them. Every effort should be made to ensure that the same happens as soon as possible on earth.
In the trials it must undergo to reach perfection, a spirit does not have to experience every possible type of temptation. Some, from the beginning, have taken a road that spares them many trials, but those who allow themselves to be led along the evil road risk all its dangers. For instance, a spirit may ask for wealth and receive it. Then, depending on its character, it may become greedy or wasteful, selfish or generous, or it may indulge in all the pleasures of sensuality. This, however, does not mean that it had to succumb to all those tendencies.
A spirit that is, at its origin, simple, ignorant, and inexperienced can consciously choose an existence and be responsible for its choices because God compensates for its inexperience by outlining the path it should follow, as one does for a child from birth. However, as the spirit’s free will develops, God gradually leaves it free to choose its own way. It is at this point that the spirit may choose the wrong path if it does not listen to the advice of good spirits. This is what may be called the fall of man.
When a spirit enjoys its free will, the choice of its next corporeal existence does not always depend solely on its own will, because God may impose a certain existence on a spirit when, due to impurity or ill will, it is not capable of determining what would be most useful, and when God sees that such an existence could serve for its purification and advancement and, at the same time, its expiation. God knows how to wait and never hastens expiation.
Spirits do not make their choice immediately after death, because many of them believe in eternal punishment, and that belief is itself a punishment.
What guides a spirit in choosing the trials it wants to bear is whatever may serve as expiation according to the nature of its wrongs and whatever might enable it to evolve more quickly. Some spirits may impose on themselves a life of poverty and hardship in order to try to bear it with courage. Others may wish to experience the temptations of fortune and power, which are much more dangerous than poverty because of the abuse and misuse that may be made of them and because of the base passions they encourage. Still others may desire to be tested in the struggles they must endure through contact with various vices.
If some spirits choose contact with vice as a trial, others choose it out of affinity and from the desire to live in surroundings that cater to their tastes, or where they may give free rein to their materialistic tendencies. Such spirits exist, but only among those whose moral sense is still underdeveloped. The trial then proceeds naturally, and they must endure it for a longer time. Sooner or later, they will understand that satisfying their crude passions has deplorable consequences, which they will have to endure for a period that will seem like an eternity. God may leave them in this state until they understand their wrongs and themselves ask for the means to redeem them through profitable trials.
It would be natural for human beings to choose the least painful trials possible, but not for the spirit. Once freed from matter, illusion disappears and it thinks differently.
Human beings, subjected on earth to the influence of carnal ideas, see only the painful side of their trials. That is why it seems logical to them that they would choose those trials that, from their point of view, can coexist with material pleasures. But in spiritual life they compare such crude and fleeting pleasures with the unchangeable happiness of which they catch a glimpse. What importance, then, are a few temporary hardships? A spirit may therefore choose the hardest trial, and consequently the most painful existence, in the hope of reaching a better state more quickly, just as a patient often chooses the most unpleasant medicine in order to be healed sooner. Explorers who aspire to have their name linked to the discovery of an unknown country do not choose a path strewn with flowers; they know the dangers they must face, but they also know the glory awaiting them if they succeed.
The doctrine of freedom to choose our lives and the trials we must undergo ceases to seem unusual when we consider that spirits, once disengaged from matter, judge things differently than we do. They foresee the goal, and that goal seems far more important than the fleeting pleasures of the world. After each existence, they see the steps already taken and understand what they still lack in purity to reach the goal. That is why they willingly submit to all the vicissitudes of corporeal life, even requesting those that may help them arrive more quickly. It should therefore not be surprising that a spirit may not prefer a softer life. In its state of imperfection, it cannot enjoy life without suffering. It catches only a glimpse of the goal, and it is to reach it that it seeks to improve itself.
We see similar examples every day. Individuals who work part of their life without rest or respite in order to accumulate what is necessary for their well-being impose on themselves a task with a view to a better future. Soldiers who volunteer for a perilous mission, and explorers who confront dangers no less formidable in the interest of science or fortune, willingly submit themselves to trials that will bring them honor and profit if they overcome them. People undertake and expose themselves to much for their own gain or glory. Competitive examinations are voluntary trials for advancement in a chosen career. No one reaches a highly important social position in the sciences, arts, or industry without passing through a series of lower positions, each of which is itself a kind of trial. Human life is thus a copy of spirit life; the incidents of the latter are found in the former, only on a smaller scale. If during our time on earth we often choose the most difficult trials with a view to rising further, then a spirit, who sees even farther ahead and for whom earthly life is only a fleeting incident, may choose a painful and laborious existence if it will lead to eternal happiness. Those who say that, if they could choose their existence, they would ask to be princes or millionaires are like the near-sighted who cannot see beyond what they touch. They are like gluttonous children who, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, answer, “a cake baker” or “a candy maker.”
Likewise, hikers in the depths of a fog-obscured valley see neither the length nor the breadth of their path, but upon reaching the top of a mountain, they behold the path they have traveled, how far they still must go, and the obstacles they must yet overcome. Hence, they choose the surest means to reach their goal. Incarnate spirits are like hikers in the depths of the valley; when freed from earthly ties, it is as though they have reached the mountaintop. For the hiker, the goal is rest after a wearisome trek; for the spirit, it is supreme happiness after trials and tribulations.
All spirits say that in the errant state they search, study, and observe in order to make their choices. An example of this exists in corporeal life. We often spend years searching for a career, which we eventually choose because we think it best suited to our goals. If we fail in one, we seek another. Each career we embrace is a phase, a period of our life. Each day we choose what we will do tomorrow. Different corporeal lives are, for a spirit, phases, periods, and days of its spiritual life, which is the normal life. Corporeal life is nothing more than transitory and temporary.
A spirit can choose its next corporeal life during its present one. Its desire may have an influence, depending on its intention. In the spirit state, however, it often sees things very differently. It is the spirit as such that makes the choice, but it may still make it during material life because a spirit always has moments when it is independent of the matter it inhabits.
Many individuals desire greatness and wealth, not as expiation or trial. It is the flesh that desires greatness and wealth in order to enjoy them, but it is the spirit that desires them in order to experience the tribulations they may cause.
Until it reaches the state of perfect purity, a spirit must constantly undergo trials, but these are not material tribulations in the ordinary sense. Even though it may not yet be perfect, a spirit that reaches a certain degree has no more trials to endure. However, it still has duties free from suffering, consisting in helping others improve themselves; these, in turn, help it evolve further.
A spirit can be mistaken as to the effectiveness of a trial it chooses. It may choose one that exceeds its strength, and then it succumbs. It may also choose one that will not be profitable at all, such as a kind of idle and useless life. In such a case, however, upon returning to the spirit world it realizes that it has gained nothing and asks to make up for lost time.
Certain vocations, or the desire to follow one career rather than another, result from everything said about the choice of trials and the progress accomplished in a preceding existence.
When a spirit in the errant state studies the conditions that will enable it to progress, it could imagine that it might do so by being born among cannibals only if it is not already advanced. Spirits who have already advanced are not born among cannibals, only those of the same nature as cannibals, or those even less evolved.
Our cannibals are not at the lowest degree of the scale, and there are worlds where brutality and ferocity have no comparison on earth. Such spirits are therefore even less evolved than the least evolved on our world. To be among our cannibals is progress for them, just as it would be progress for our cannibals to exercise a profession among us that would require them to shed blood. If they aim no higher, it is because their moral impurity does not allow them to comprehend a more complete progress. A spirit can advance only gradually; it cannot simply leap over the gap between barbarity and civility. In this lies one of the necessities of reincarnation, clearly showing it to be in accord with God’s justice. Otherwise, what would become of the millions of beings who die every day in the ultimate state of degradation if they had no means of lifting themselves out of it? Why would God withhold from them the favors granted to others?
Spirits who come from a world less evolved than earth, or from a much less advanced people such as cannibals, can be born among civilized people. Some go astray by wanting to ascend too quickly, but they are out of place among the civilized. They display habits and instincts that clash with those around them.
Such beings present the sad spectacle of ferocity in the midst of civility. Returning to live among cannibals would not be a regression for them, because it would be no more than a resumption of their proper place, perhaps even with some advantage.
A person belonging to a civilized culture could reincarnate into a less advanced one as an expiation. It would depend on the kind of expiation. Masters who had been cruel to their servants might become servants themselves and suffer the harsh treatment they once inflicted on others. Those who gave orders at one time might, in a new existence, obey those who formerly bent to their will. This would be an expiation if they had abused their power, and God may impose it on them. Furthermore, a good spirit may choose an influential life among such a people in order to help them advance; in that case, it is a mission.
Relationships beyond the Grave
The different orders of spirits establish a hierarchy of powers, and there is subordination and authority among them. Spirits have authority over one another relative to their degree of evolution and exert it through an irresistible moral ascendancy. Low-order spirits cannot evade the authority of those more evolved.
The power and influence that individuals enjoy on earth do not secure them any supremacy in the spirit world, because the lowly will be exalted and the great will be abased. Spirits belong to different orders according to their merits. The greatest on earth may be in the last class among spirits, while their servants may be in the first. Whoever humbles themself shall be exalted, and whoever exalts themself shall be humbled.
Those who were great on earth but find themselves abased among spirits almost always feel deeply humiliated, especially if they had been proud and jealous.
After a battle, a soldier who meets a general in the spirit world does not acknowledge the general as superior. Title is nothing; true superiority is everything.
The spirits of different orders are both mixed and separate. They may see one another, but they are distinguished from one another. They avoid or approach one another according to the similarity or dissimilarity of their sentiments, just as humans do. It is a complete world in itself, of which the human world is only a dim reflection. Those of the same order are drawn together by a kind of affinity, and they form groups or families of spirits united by sympathy and purpose: the good by their desire to do good; the evil by their desire to do evil, by shame for their wrongs, and by the need to be among others like themselves.
It is exactly like a large city, where individuals of every social class and condition see and meet one another without truly mixing, where societies are formed by similarities of taste, and where vice and virtue jostle each other without speaking.
Not all spirits have mutual access to one another. The good go everywhere, because it must be so in order that they may bring their influence to bear upon the evil. Nevertheless, the realms inhabited by the good are forbidden to imperfect spirits, so that the latter cannot bring their evil passions there.
The relation between good and evil spirits is this: the good seek to combat the evil tendencies of the others in order to help them evolve. It is a mission.
Certain low-order spirits take pleasure in inducing humans to evil out of spite for not having deserved to be among the good. Their desire is to prevent inexperienced spirits, as much as possible, from attaining the supreme good. They want others to experience what they themselves are experiencing.
Spirits communicate with one another by seeing and comprehending one another. Speech is material; it is a reflection of the spirit. The universal fluid establishes constant communication among them. It is the vehicle for the transmission of thought, as air is for humans the vehicle for sound. It is a kind of universal telegraph that connects all worlds, enabling spirits to communicate from one world to another.
Spirits cannot disguise their thoughts or hide themselves from one another. Everything is open to them, especially when they are perfect. They may be apart from each other, but they always see one another. This is not an absolute rule, however, since certain spirits can very easily make themselves invisible to others if they deem it useful.
Since spirits no longer have a body, they retain their individuality and make themselves recognizable to one another by means of the perispirit, which distinguishes them from one another as bodies do among humans.
Spirits recognize each other after having lived on earth. The son recognizes his father, the friend recognizes her friend, and so on from generation to generation. Those who knew each other on earth recognize each other in the spirit world by seeing their past life and reading it as if it were a book. As they watch the friends and enemies of their past, they also witness their passage from life to death.
Upon leaving its mortal remains behind, the soul does not always immediately see the relatives and friends who had preceded it into the spirit world. It requires some time to recognize its situation and shake off the material veil.
Upon returning to the spirit world, the soul of the just is received as a beloved and long-awaited brother or sister; the soul of the wicked, as a despised being.
Impure spirits are pleased at the sight of another evil spirit newly arrived. Evil spirits are pleased at seeing beings who resemble them and who are deprived, as they are, of infinite happiness. It is, just as on earth, a rascal among equals.
Relatives and friends sometimes come to meet us when we leave the earth. They come to meet the soul they love. If it has escaped the dangers of the road, they congratulate it as though it were returning from a journey, and they help it break free from its corporeal bonds. It is a blessing granted to good spirits when those who love them come to meet them. On the other hand, those who are blemished remain in isolation or are surrounded only by spirits like themselves. This is a punishment.
Relatives and friends are not always reunited after death. That depends on how evolved they are and on the path they are following in their advancement. If one is more advanced and progresses more quickly than the other, they cannot remain together. They may see each other occasionally, but they will not be reunited until they can walk side by side, or until they have reached equality of purification. Moreover, being kept from seeing relatives and friends is sometimes a punishment.
Sympathies and Antipathies among Spirits. Eternal Halves
Besides a general sympathy resulting from various similarities, there are also special affections among spirits, just as among humans. However, the link that unites spirits is stronger in the absence of the body because they are no longer exposed to the vicissitudes of the passions.
There is no hatred among spirits except among impure ones, and these are the spirits who sow enmity and dissension among you.
Two beings who were enemies on earth will not usually retain their resentment in the spirit world. Usually they understand that their hatred was senseless and its motive childish. Only imperfect spirits retain a kind of animosity until they are purified. If it was nothing more than a material interest that separated them, they no longer think about it, however little dematerialized they may be. If there is no antipathy between them, and if the cause of their dissension no longer exists, they can meet again with pleasure.
The remembrance of the wrongs two individuals committed against each other is an obstacle to sympathy and makes them keep their distance.
Those whom we have wronged in this world experience, after death, forgiveness if they are good, according to our repentance. If they are evil, they may hold on to resentment and at times even pursue us in another existence. God may allow this as a chastisement.
Spirits’ personal affections are not susceptible to change because they cannot be mistaken about one another; they can no longer deceive one another. They no longer wear the mask behind which hypocrites hide, and that is why their affections are unchangeable when they are pure spirits. The love that unites them is a source of supreme bliss.
The affection two beings had for each other on earth always continues in the spirit world if it is based on true sympathy. However, if physical attraction had more influence than sympathy, it ceases with its cause. Affections among spirits are more solid and lasting than on earth because they are not subject to the whims of material interests and selfishness.
Souls who must come together are not predestined from their origin for such a union, and none of us has, somewhere in the universe, “our other half,” whom we will someday inevitably join. There is no particular and predestined union between two souls. Unity exists among all spirits, but in different degrees, according to the order they occupy, that is, according to their degree of purification. The greater their purification, the more united they are. All the ills of humankind are born from discord; concord gives rise to complete happiness.
The term other half, which certain spirits use to designate sympathetic spirits, should be understood as an inaccurate expression. If one spirit were another’s other half, each would be incomplete when separate from the other.
When two perfectly sympathetic spirits are united, they remain so throughout eternity; they do not separate in order to unite with other spirits. All spirits are mutually united, meaning those who have already reached perfection. In less evolved spheres, once a spirit has improved itself, it no longer has the same sympathy for those it has left behind.
Two sympathetic spirits are not each other’s complement. Such sympathy results from the perfect harmony of their tendencies and instincts. If one were necessary to complete the other, it would lose its individuality.
The affinity required for perfect sympathy does not consist only in similarity of thoughts and sentiments. It also consists in similarity of degree of evolution.
Spirits who are not sympathetic today can become more so later. All will become so someday. Thus, when a spirit who now inhabits a less evolved sphere is perfected, it will reach the sphere where the other dwells. Their reunion will occur more quickly, however, if the more evolved spirit has remained at a standstill because it has poorly borne the trials to which it submitted itself.
Two sympathetic spirits may cease to be sympathetic if one of them becomes idle.
The theory of “eternal halves” is an image representing the union of two sympathetic spirits. It is an expression used even in ordinary speech and must not be taken literally. The spirits who use it certainly do not belong to the highest order. The sphere of their ideas is necessarily limited, and they express their thought through the terms they used in corporeal life. The idea of two spirits created for each other, who must someday inevitably be reunited in eternity after having remained separated for a longer or shorter span of time, must therefore be rejected.
The Remembrance of Corporeal Existence
The spirit remembers its corporeal existence. Having lived many times as a human being, it remembers what it has been and sometimes laughs, pitying its former behavior.
The memory of its last corporeal existence does not return completely and suddenly to the spirit after death. It returns little by little, like something emerging from the fog, and in proportion as the spirit fixes its attention on it.
The spirit remembers the events of its life according to the consequences they hold for its situation as a spirit. There are circumstances to which it attributes no importance whatever and which it does not even try to remember.
It can recall the minutest details and incidents, events, or even thoughts, but when such things are of no use, it does not do so.
It sees and understands the purpose of its past earthly life in relation to its future life much better than when it lived in the body. It understands the need for purification in order to reach the infinite, and it knows that in each existence it frees itself from a few impurities.
Its past life unfolds in memory both through an effort of imagination and like a picture before its eyes. All the actions it has an interest in remembering are as if present. The others remain more or less at the back of memory or are entirely forgotten. The more dematerialized it is, the less importance it attributes to material things. One often evokes an errant spirit that has just left the earth and does not remember the names of the people it loved or details that seem important to humans. That is because it is no longer concerned with them, and they have fallen into oblivion. What it remembers very well, however, are the principal events that aided its progress.
The spirit remembers all the lives that preceded the one it has just left, in the sense that its entire past unfolds before it like the stages of a journey. However, it does not recall all its actions with absolute precision, and remembers them only according to the influence they have on its present state. As for its earliest existences, those that may be regarded as the spirit’s infancy, they are lost in the void and disappear into the night of forgetfulness.
The spirit regards the body it has just left as an ill-fitting garment that inconvenienced it, and it feels happy to have gotten rid of it.
At the sight of its decomposing body, it almost always feels indifference. It is a thing it no longer cares about.
After a certain amount of time has elapsed, the spirit may sometimes recognize its bones or other things that belonged to it, depending on the more or less evolved way in which it regards terrestrial things.
The respect we show for the material things a spirit has left behind attracts its attention to them, and it regards such respect with pleasure. A spirit is always glad to be remembered. The things we preserve that once belonged to it awaken its memories, but it is the thought that attracts it, not the objects themselves.
Spirits often retain the memory of the sufferings they bore during their last corporeal existence, and this memory enables them better to appreciate the happiness they now enjoy as spirits.
Humans who were happy on earth regret the pleasures they left behind only if they are low-order spirits. Such spirits regret the pleasures corresponding to the impurities of their nature, and these they must expiate through suffering. For more evolved spirits, eternal happiness is a thousand times preferable to the fleeting pleasures of earth.
Those who began great works intended for a useful purpose, but which they saw interrupted by death, do not lament having left them unfinished, because they understand that others are meant to complete them. On the contrary, they try to influence other human spirits to continue them. Their aim on earth was the welfare of humankind; that aim remains the same in the spirit world.
Those who leave their works of art or literature behind retain the love they had for them during life, depending on how much they have evolved, and they often judge them differently, sometimes disapproving of what they most admired.
The spirit still takes an interest in the works being done on earth for the progress of the arts and sciences, depending on how much it has evolved or on the mission it may have to fulfill. What appears magnificent to human beings is often a small matter indeed to certain spirits, who admire it as a scholar admires the work of a student. They examine only what can demonstrate the elevation and progress of incarnate spirits.
After death, spirits retain love for their native land according to the same principle: for high-order spirits, their native land is the universe; on earth, it is the place where there is the greatest number of persons sympathetic to them.
Spirits’ ideas change considerably in spiritual life. Their ideas undergo great modification as they become more dematerialized. They may sometimes hold to the same ideas for a long time, but little by little the influence of matter diminishes and they see things more clearly. It is then that they seek ways to improve.
Although it had already lived the spirit life before its incarnation, the spirit is astonished when it re-enters the spirit world, but only because of the first moments and the state of confusion following its awakening. Later, it recognizes its condition perfectly as the memory of the past returns and the impression of earthly life fades.
The Commemoration of the Dead. Funerals
Spirits are much more sensitive to being remembered by those who loved them on earth than might be supposed. Being remembered adds to their happiness if they are already happy and consoles them if they are despondent.
Memorial Day has no more solemn meaning for spirits than other days, for spirits answer the call of thought on that day as on all others. They assemble in greater numbers at gravesides on that day because the number of persons who call them is greater, but each spirit attends only to its friends and not to the crowd of indifferent people. If they could make themselves visible, they would appear as they did while alive.
Forgotten spirits, whose graves are visited by no one, may still come despite that fact, but they are not troubled by seeing no friends remember them. The earth is nothing to them. They are linked to it only by the heart. If no one loves them any longer, there is nothing to connect them to the earth. They have the whole universe before them.
A visit made to a grave provides no more satisfaction to a spirit than a prayer made on its behalf in someone’s home. A visit to the grave is a way of showing that one is thinking of the absent spirit; it is the outward expression of thought. It is the prayer that blesses the act of remembrance. The place itself is of little importance if the memory comes from the heart.
The spirits of individuals who are honored with statues or monuments often attend their inaugurations and watch them when they can, but they are less sensitive to the honors paid them than to the memories.
A spirit’s attachment to certain places is a sign of moral impurity. One piece of earth means no more than another to an evolved spirit, which knows that its soul will be reunited with its loved ones even though their bones may be far apart.
Gathering together the mortal remains of all the members of a family should not be considered meaningless. It is a pious custom and a witness to the sympathy of loved ones. If such gatherings mean little to spirits, they are nonetheless useful to humans; their memories are better concentrated.
A soul that has returned to life as a spirit may be sensitive to the honors paid to its mortal remains. When a spirit has already reached a certain degree of purification, it has no more earthly vanity and understands the futility of all these things. Nonetheless, there are spirits who, in the first moments after death, take great satisfaction in the honors paid to them. Others become disturbed if they see that their envelope is being forgotten, because they still cling to some of the prejudices of this world.
Spirits often watch their own burial, though at times they do not perceive what is happening if they are still in a state of confusion. They may feel more or less flattered by a large gathering at their burial, according to the sentiments of the people assembled there.
The spirit almost always attends the meetings of its heirs. God wills this both for its instruction and as punishment for the guilty. There the spirit judges what its heirs’ declarations of affection are truly worth. All sentiments become plain to the spirit, and the disappointment it feels on seeing the greed of those dividing the spoils makes their true sentiments unmistakably clear. Yet their time shall also come.
The instinctive respect people have shown for the dead in all times and among all cultures is the natural consequence of the intuition of a future life. Without that intuition, such respect would have no meaning.