Family Conversations from Beyond the Grave
Chaudruc Druclos
1. Evocation
- I am here.
Mr. Adrien, a clairvoyant medium who had never seen the spirit
during its life, gave the following description, considered very
accurate by those who were present and who knew it: Long face,
willow cheeks; wrinkled and shaggy forehead; slightly aquiline
and long nose; gray protruded eyes; median, mocking mouth;
a little pale complexion, gray hair and long beard; bigger rather
than small build. Frayed and worn out blue cloth jacket; old and
rotten black pants; a colorless handkerchief replacing a tie.
2. Do you remember your latest Earthly life?
- Perfectly.
3. What was the reason that led you to live such an eccentric life?
- I was tired of life and felt sorry for people and their motivations.
4. Some say that it was vengeance and that you wanted to humiliate
a relative in a better position. Is that true?
- Not only that. By humiliating that man I humiliated many
others.
5. If it was vengeance then it cost you dearly since it prevented you
from enjoying all pleasures of social life for many years in order to
satisfy that desire. Don’t you find it a bit too harsh?
- I enjoyed things differently.
6. Was there a philosophical thought besides that? Would it be the
reason why they compared you to Diogenes?
- There was a relationship with the less healthy part of that man’s philosophy.
7. What do you think about Diogenes?
- Not much: in a lesser degree it is the same that I think
about myself. Diogenes had the advantage that he did what
I did but among people who were less civilized than my
contemporaries.
8. Nevertheless there is a difference between you and Diogenes: his
behavior was a consequence of his philosophical system whilst
yours was led by vengeance.
- Vengeance led me to the philosophy.
9. Did you suffer by being so isolated, for being the object of neglect
and disdain and for the fact that your education separated you
both from the hobos and from the educated people?
- I knew that we have no friends on Earth. Ah! How much I experienced that!
10. What do you currently do and how do you spend your time?
- I visit better worlds and enlighten myself... There are many good
souls there who reveal the celestial Science of the spirits to us!
11. Do you sometimes come to the Palais-Royal, after your death?
- Why would I bother with the Palais-Royal?
12. Among the persons attending this meeting, do you recognize
some that you may have met during your pilgrimage to the
Palais-Royal?
- How could I not recognize them?
13. Does it please you to seem them?
- It gives me pleasure, a great pleasure really. They were good to me.
14. Do you see your friend Charles Nodier?
- Yes, particularly after his death.
15. He is errant or incarnate?
- Errant, like me.
16. Why have you chosen the Palais-Royal, then the mostly visited
place in Paris, for your promenades? Wouldn’t that be contrary to
your tastes for misanthropy?
- I saw everybody there, every afternoon.
17. Wouldn’t that be a sentiment of pride?
- Yes, unfortunately. Pride had an important participation in
my life.
18. Are you happier now?
- Oh! Yes!
19. However, your life style must not have contributed to your
betterment.
- That terrain life? Much more than you imagine! Wouldn’t I experience somber moments when returning home, alone and isolated? I then had the opportunity to ruminate many thoughts.
20. If you had the opportunity to choose another existence, what
would that be?
- It would not be on your Earth. Today I can expect something
better.
21. Do you remember your existence before the last one?
- Yes, and others also.
22. Where have you lived those existences?
- On Earth and in other worlds.
23. And the one before the last?
- On Earth.
24. Can you tell us about it?
- No. It was an obscure and occult life.
25. Without revealing that existence, can you tell us the relationship
it holds to the one that we know, since one should be consequence
of the other?
- Not exactly a consequence but a complement. I led an unhappy life due to vices and defects which were much modified before I came to live the life that you know.
26. Can we do anything useful or pleasant to you?
- Ah! Not much. I am now well above Earth.
Diogenes
1. Evocation
- Ah! I come from far away!
2. Can you show up to Mr. Adrien with the same looks you had in
your existence which is familiar to us?
- Yes. And if you want I can bring the lantern.
Mr. Adrien: Wide forehead, pronounced frontal bones; aquiline
and long nose; large and serious mouth; suspicious black eyes. It
shows a little elongated, skinny and wrinkled face; yellow skin;
coarse beard and mustache; gray and rare hair. It wears white, very dirty clothes; naked arms and legs; skinny and bony body.
3. You said you came from far away. From which world have you
come?
- You don’t know it.
4. Would you kindly answer some questions?
- With pleasure.
5. Was the existence from which we know you by the name Diogenes,
the cynic, useful to your future happiness?
- A lot. You are wrong by ridiculing it like my contemporary
did. I am actually surprised by the fact that History knows
so little about my existence and that posterity, one may say,
is unfair to me.
6. What good were you able to do since your existence was so much
self-serving?
- I worked for me but others could have learned a lot from me.
7. Which qualities would you like to have found in the man you looked for with your torch?
8. Had you encountered Chaudruc-Duclos, the man we have just evoked, would you have taken him by the man you were looking for? He also voluntarily renounced to everything that seemed
superfluous.
9. What do you think about him?
- His soul was corrupted on Earth. How many are like him
and don’t know it! At least he knew.
10. Did you think that you had the qualities which you were looking
for in man?
- No doubt. I had my criterion.
11. Which philosopher of your time had your preference?
12. Who do you prefer now?
13. How about Plato?
-
- Too harsh. His philosophy is too strict. I admitted the poets,
he didn’t!
14. Is it true what they say about your interview with Alexander?
- Very true. History has even truncated it.
15. What is it that history has truncated?
- I refer to other conversations between the two of us. Do you
really think that he came to see me to tell me one word only?
16. Is the statement attributed to him true that if he were not
Alexander he would be Diogenes?
- He might have said that but not in my presence. Alexander was a crazy, vain and proud young man. In his eyes, I was nothing
more than a beggar. How could the tyrant be educated by the
miserable?
17. Have you reincarnate on Earth after your life in Athens?
- No, but in other worlds. I currently belong to a world in
which we are not slaves. It means that if you were evoked in a
state of vigil you could not attend the request, as I do tonight.
18. Could you delineate to us the qualities that you were looking for
in man, how you conceived it then and how you conceive it now?
- In the past: courage, boldness, self-confidence and power
over people by intelligence. Now: abnegation, kindness and
power over people by heart.
