ANGELE - A USELESS LIFE
(Bordeaux, 1862)
A spirit who presented herself spontaneously to the medium
1. Do you repent of your faults?
A. No.
Q. Then why do you come to me?
A. Totrytodoso.
Q. Are you not happy?
A. No.
Q. Are you suffering? A. No.
Q. What is that you lack?
A. Peace.
Certain Spirits solely consider suffering as that which causes them to recall physical pain, but accepting at the same time that their moral state is intolerable.
2. How can you fail to have peace in the spirit-life?
A. Regret for the past.
Q. Regret for the past is remorse; then, you do repent?
A. No, but I dread the future.
Q. What are you afraid of?
A. The unknown.
3. Will you tell me what you did in your last existence? To do so will, perhaps, help me to enlighten you.
A. Nothing.
4. What was your social position?
A. Middling.
Q. Were you married?
A. Y es, and I had children.
Q. Did you fulfill your duties as a wife and a mother?
A. No, my husband wearied me, my children, also
5. How did you employ your time?
A. In amusing myself, when I was a girl; in being tired of everything, when I grew up.
Q. What occupations had you?
A. None.
Q. Who, then, looked after your housekeeping?
A. Theservant.
6. Is not uselessness the source of your present regrets and apprehension?
A. Perhaps so.
Q. It is not enough to make that admission. Will you, to atone for the uselessness of your life, help the guilty and suffering spirits around you?
A. In what way?
Q. By aiding them to grow better, with the help of your counsels and your prayers.
A. I don’t know how to pray.
Q. We will pray together; that will show you how. Will you try?
A. No.
Q. Why not?
A. Fatigue.
COMMENTARY BY THE MEDIUM’S GUIDE
It is for the general instruction that we bring under your eyes the various degrees of suffering and of position of the spirits who are condemned to expiation, as the consequence of their faults.
Angele was one of those creatures devoid of initiative, whose life is as useless to others as to themselves. Caring only for pleasure, incapable of finding, in the accomplishment of her duties to her family and to society, the affectionate satisfactions that alone can impart a charm to life, because they belong to all ages, she could only employ her youth in frivolous amusements; afterwards, when the time for serious duties had come,she found emptiness around her, because there was only emptiness in her own heart. Without any serious faults, but also without good qualities, she made her husband miserable, destroyed her children’s comfort, and ruined their prospects, through her carelessness and negligence. She perverted their feelings and their judgment, both by her own bad example and by leaving them to the care of the servants whom she did not even take the trouble to choose with care. Her life was fruitless of good and therefore guilty, for evil comes from the absence of good. Study the Master’s Commandments, meditate and understand that if you place a barrier that detains the evil path to the side, it will impulse you to retreat and to take the opposite path, conducive to righteousness. Evil is opposed to goodness; therefore, whoever desires to avoid it should follow the contrary path, without which, your life will be null and void, and your achievements shall be obscured. God, our Father, is not the God of the dead, but rather, God of the living.
Q. May I inquire what was the existence of Angele previous to her last one? For the last must have been the consequence of the preceding one.
A. She had lived in the stupid laziness and uselessness of a convent. Idle and selfish, she wished, in her last existence, to try family-life; but her spirit made very little progress. She constantly repelled the inner voice that warned her to her danger; the slope was easy, and she preferred to let herself slip into the gulf rather than make the effort to arrest her fall in time. Although she now sees the danger of this passivity, she has not yet acquired sufficient strength of purpose to make an earnest attempt to emerge from her slothful indifference. Pray for her; rouse her; force her to open her eyes to the light; it is a duty to do this; neglect nothing that can help to bring her into the right road.
Man was created to be active; the activity of the spirit is the essence, and the activity of the body is a necessity. Therefore, fulfill the conditions of that existence, as a spirit destined to eternal peace and as a body created for the service of the Spirit, a role in which the body is nothing but a machine subordinated to its intelligence. Work and cultivate your intelligence in order to effect a healthy stimulus to the instrument which it should help in the fulfillment of its task. Do not permit rest nor truce, and remember that the peace which is aspired shall only be conceded through work. Therefore, the greater the time that has been wasted in their task, the longer the duration of the anxiety for hope.
Work, therefore, incessantly; fulfill all your duties with zeal and perseverance, and let your faith sustain you in everything that you have to do. He who conscientiously accomplishes the most modest task, even though it be classed as the lowest and meanest according to your social fictions, is a hundredfold nobler, in the sight of the Almighty, than he who leaves to others the work which is incumbent upon himself. Duties are the rungs of the ladder by which we ascend to the supreme degree. Be careful to miss none of them; and remember that you are always surrounded by friends who hold out a helping hand to those who put their trust in the Almighty.
MONOD
