Note: In one of the sessions of the Spiritist Society of Paris in which we had discussed the commotion that generally follows death, one Spirit manifested spontaneously to Mrs. Costel through the communication that follows and is not signed:
“
Why do you discuss commotion? Why such hopeless words? You are dreamers and visionaries. You totally ignore things that you are dealing with. No, gentlemen, there is no disruption except perhaps in your minds. I am so recently dead as possible I clearly see myself, around me, everywhere… Life is a gloomy comedy! Awkward the ones that take us out of scene before the curtain is down… Deaf is horrible, a punishment, a desire, according to the weakness or strength of those that fear it, defy or implore for that. It is a bitter derision to everyone!Light obfuscates and penetrates the subtleness of my being like the acute spear… I was punished by the darkness of prison and they thought I was punished again by the darkness of the grave or the ones dreamed by the Catholic superstitions. Ah! It is you, gentlemen that suffer the darkness and I, social pariah, I float above you… I want to continue to be myself… I am strong in my thoughts and I disdain the warnings that resonate around me… I see clearly… A crime! It is a word! Crime is everywhere. When practiced by masses of men, it is glorified; in particular it is hated. Absurd! Don’t feel sorry for me… I ask for nothing… I suffice myself and will know very well how to fight against this hateful light.The one that was a man yesterday.”
After analyzing this communication in the following session it was recognized in the very cynicism of the language a serious teaching and in the situation of this miserable soul we found a new phase of punishment that reaches the guilty ones. In fact while some are embedded in darkness or in an absolute isolation others withstand for long years the anguishes of their last hour, or even still consider to be part of this world. Light shines for this one; the Spirit enjoys the plenitude of its faculties; he knows perfectly well that he is dead and regrets nothing; asks for no assistance and still defies the divine and human laws.
Will that Spirit then escape punishment? No. What happens is that divine justice takes place in all shapes and forms and what is happiness to some to others it is a torment. That light is an ordeal against which the Spirits fights continually and despite his pride he confesses it when says: “
I suffice to myself and will know very well how to fight against that hateful light” and in this other phrase: “
Light obfuscates and penetrates the subtleness of my being like the acute spear”. The words
subtleness of my being are telling. He acknowledges that his body is fluidic and penetrable by light from which he cannot evade and such a light surpasses like an acute spear. When requested to provide their opinion about the matter our guides dictated the three following communications that deserve serious attention:
(Medium: Mr. A. Didier)
“There are tests without atonements and atonements without tests. In erraticity[1] from the point of view of the existences the Spirits are inactive and waiting. They can, however, atone considering their pride and the formidable strength of their mistakes to not keep them behind at the time of their progressing ascension. You have a terrible example in the last communication with respect to a criminal that fights against the divine justice that constrains him and that of man as well. In such a case then the atonement, or even better, the fatal suffering that oppresses him instead of benefiting him by making him feel the profound meaning of his penalties, it exalts that suffering in his rebellion, making him groan or “gnashing of teeth” found in the poetic eloquence of the Scriptures[2], an image by excellence, symbol of a restive suffering, lost in pain but in such a rebellious state that the soul refuses to acknowledge the truth of the penalties and rewards! The great mistakes almost always linger on in the world of the Spirits. By the same token the great criminal minds. To be in control of oneself, despite everything else, and boasting before infinity is like the blindness of a person that gaze the stars and believe them to be decorations on a ceiling, like the Gallic from the times of Alexander. There is a moral infinity! Miserable and pitiful is the one that with the excuse of trying to continue the disgusting struggles and bragging of Earth cannot see further in the other world than down here! For these remains the blindness, the neglect of others, the selfish and petty personality and the stagnation of progress! It is very true, oh mankind, that there is a secret agreement between the immortality of a pure name left on Earth and the immortality that really keeps the Spirits in their successive trials.”LamennaisObservation: To understand the meaning of the phrase “t
here are tests without atonements and atonements without tests” it is necessary to understand atonement as the suffering that purifies and cleans the stains of the past. After the atonement the Spirit is rehabilitated. Lamennais’ thought is this: according to the vicissitudes of life being followed or not followed by the regret of the faults that led to them, by the desire to turn them into something useful to one’s own betterment, there will be or not be atonement, that is, rehabilitation. Therefore the greatest sufferings may not be useful to the one that suffers is such a suffering does not make them better; if they do not rise above matter; if they do not see the hand of God in that; if, finally, it does not make them move one step forward because such a Spirit will have to re-start in even more painful conditions. From that point of view the same happens to the penalties endured after death. The hardened Spirit suffer without being touched by regret. That is why the Spirit can extend that out of their own will. The Spirit is punished but there is no regret.
(Medium Mr. D’Ambel)
Throw a man in darkness or in waves of light: won’t the result be the same? In either case that man sees nothing around and will even adapt more rapidly to the shadow than to the triple electric clarity in which one can be submerse. That is how the Spirit that communicated in the last session expresses the truth of his situation when says:
“
I suit myself and will know very well how to fight against this hateful light!” In fact such a light is the more terrible and the more scaring the more it makes one’s most secret thoughts visible and apparent. That is one of the hardest spiritual punishments. He is like an intern in a glass house like the one requested by Socrates, being that a teaching considering that what would be a joy and consolation to the wise man becomes a dishonorable and continuous punishment of the criminal, the perverse and parricide, haunted by his own personality. Can you understand, my children that the pain and horror that must hinder the one that during a sinister life was happy to plot and feed the saddest thoughts in the inner core of their own being, like a hiding beast in a cave, now expelled from that private refuge, hiding from the eyes and investigation of his contemporaries? The mask of impassivity is now yanked and each of his thoughts shows successively on his face! Yes, from now on no more resting or asylum to that formidable criminal! Every bad thought, and God knows his soul well, betrays itself from the inside and outside like a strong electric shock. He wants to avoid the crowds but the hateful light continuously surrounds him. He wants to flee, escaping in a desperate surge through the incommensurable space but light is everywhere! Staring eyes landing on him from all sides. He rushes again seeking the shadow, the darkness but there is none for him. He demands the help of death but death is a meaningless word. The miserable runs nonstop. He moves towards spiritual madness, terrible punishment, horrible pain in which there will always be the struggle against himself on trying to disentangle his own soul because that is the supreme law on this Earth: it is the guilty person that becomes the most inexorable punishment to oneself. How long will that last? Up to the time when the finally broken will bends before the overpowering pressure of remorse and in which his pride shall be humiliated before his appeased victims and the Spirits of justice. Observe the robust logic of the immutable laws for he will still accomplish what was written in that haughtily message, clear, lucid and also so much full of himself, in a communication voluntarily given on the last Friday.”Protector Spirit of the medium(Medium Mr. Costel)
“Human justice does not privilege the individuality of those that are punished. The crime is measured by the crime itself, indistinctly reaching the criminal, the same punishment applied to the guilty one without distinction of gender and education. The divine justice proceeds differently. The degree of punishment corresponds to the level of advancement of those involved. The equality of crimes does not correspond to equality of individuals so that two persons guilty of the same crime may be separated by distance of the atonements being one in intellectual opacity of the first initiating circles and the other overpassed those circles and acquired the lucidity that frees the Spirit of any confusion. Hence no more the punishment of ignorance but the spiritual light of awareness. That reaches the earthly intelligence and leads to the anguish of the exposed ulcer. The discarnate Spirits that are persecuted by the material image of their crimes suffer the effect of physical electricity. They suffer through the senses. Those that are already dematerialized by the Spirit feel a much superior pain that annihilates the memory of the facts, only allowing the recollection of their causes. The person can then, despite the seriousness of the criminal act, have a previous advancement and despite the passions that made that person act like a brute, the faculties raise that person above the thick atmosphere of inferior layers. The absence of ponderation and balance between the moral and intellectual progress produces the anomalies so much frequent in periods of materialism and transition.The light that tortures the guilty Spirit is therefore the spiritual ray inundating the most secret corners of pride with clarity and uncovering the uselessness of a fragmentary being. These are the first symptoms and the first anguishes of the spiritual agony that announces a separation or dissolution of the material and intellectual elements that constitute a primitive human duality and that must disappear in the great unit of a complete being.”Jean ReynaudObservation: These three communications, received simultaneously, complement one another and present punishment with a new eminently philosophical aspect, a little bit more rational that the flames of hell surrounded by sharp blades. It is likely that the Spirits, willing to handle the issue with an example, may have provoked the communication of the guilty Spirit.
[1] Period between two physical existences; state of the soul prior to incarnation (TN)
[2]Mathews 25, 28-30 (TN)
