Answer from the dead to the living brother“I am here, my good brother, but you ask too much. With all good will I cannot answer the multiple questions that you ask me in a single evocation. Don’t you know that sometimes is very difficult to a Spirit to transmit the thoughts through certain mediums that are not much capable of receiving clearly in their brains the photographic impression of the thoughts of certain Spirits, and that by altering those thoughts they give them a certain falsity that leads the majority of the interested parties to the most formal denial of the manifestations, something that is little encouraging and that brings a profound sadness to those that in the absence of more adequate instruments are powerless to provide sufficient signs of identity?
Believe me, good brother, have me evoked in family and you yourself with some good will and persistent trials will be able to speak with me at will. I am always by your side because I know that you are a Spiritist and I have hopes in you. It is true that sympathy attracts sympathy and that we cannot expect much with a medium that we meet for the first time. I will, nonetheless, try to satisfy you.
My death that makes you suffer was the end of captivity to my soul. Your love, support and kindness had soothed my exile on Earth. However, in my most beautiful moments of musical inspiration my eyes were driven to regions where everything is harmony, and I would forget myself by hearing the far away chords of celestial melodies that inundated my soul in their sweet vibrations. How many times was I left in such ecstatic reveries to which I owned the success of my studies in music that I continue here!
It would be a strange mistake to believe that individual aptitudes are lost in the spiritual world. On the contrary, it gets perfected to later on serve other planets where the Spirits are led to inhabit.
Cry no more, all of you my beloved relatives! What are the tears for? To make you upset. To discourage the souls. I departed first but you will meet me. Isn’t that certainty enough to reassure you? The rose that spread its perfume on the oak dies like I did, after having lived for a short while, sowing the soil with its withered petals. The oak, in turn, dies also and meets the fate of the rose for which the oak cried and whose lively colors harmonize with its somber foliage. Still some time and you shall come to me. We will then sing the song of the songs and praise God in his works because together we shall be happy if you resign to the trial that comes to you.
The one that was your brother on Earth and that always loves you.
B…”
Several important teachings stem out of this communication. The first is the difficulty that the Spirit has to express with the help of an instrument that was provided. We personally know that medium that has given proof of strength and flexibility of his faculty, particularly in the case of private evocations; it is what can be called a confident and well assisted medium. What is then the origin of the difficulty? Fact is that the easiness of communication depends on the degree of fluidic affinity between the Spirit and the medium. Each medium is therefore more or less apt to receive the impression or the impulsion of the thought of this or that Spirit. The medium can be a good instrument to one and a bad to another and that does not allow any conclusion with respect to the mediumistic qualities since the condition is more physical than moral. The Spirits therefore preferably seek the instruments with which they vibrate in synchronism. Imposing to the Spirit the first medium that shows up is to believe that they can utilize the instrument irrespectively, like imposing a pianist to play violin with the allegation that he knows music and must therefore play every instrument.
Without such harmony, the only that can produce fluidic assimilation, as much needed in tiptology as in writing, the communications are either incomplete, impossible or false. In the absence of the Spirit that we cannot see, if he cannot communicate freely there will always be others ready to take advantage of the occasion, not much interested in the truth of what they say. That fluidic similarity is sometimes totally impossible between certain Spirits and certain mediums; on other occasions, and that is the more common case, it only occurs gradually and with time, and that is what explains the fact that the Spirits that communicate through a medium do so with more facility and why the first communications almost always attest a certain difficulty and are less explicit.
It is, consequently, demonstrated both by theory and experience that there is no universal medium to the evocations but only by their aptitude to the several kinds of manifestation. The one that pretended to be able to receive at will and at a given set time communications from all Spirits and, consequently, is capable of the legitimate wishes of anyone that wishes to communicate with their loved ones, would be giving proof of radical ignorance of the most elemental principles of the science or of charlatanism, and in all cases proof of a presumption incompatible with the essential qualities of a good medium. We could believe that for some time but today the advances of the theoretical and practical science demonstrate that it is, in principle, impossible. When a Spirit communicates for the first time through a medium, and without any difficulty, that is due to an exceptional or previous fluidic affinity between the Spirit and the interpreter.
It is therefore a mistake to impose a medium to the Spirit that one wishes to evoke. It is necessary to allow the Spirit the freedom of choice of the instrument. However, people will ask, how to proceed when there is only one medium available, something that is very frequent? To begin with accept one we have and what we do not have. It is not in the scope of the Spiritist science to change the normal conditions of the manifestations as it is not in the scope of Chemistry to change the combination of the elements.
Nonetheless, there is here a means of attenuating the difficulties. In principle, when dealing with a new evocation, the medium must always evoke her spiritual guide first and ask if that evocation is possible. If positive, ask the Spirit if the medium provides the necessary aptitude to receive and transmit his thought. If there is any difficulty or if it is impossible then ask the Spirit to do it through the guide of the medium or have the Spirit accepting the guide’s assistance. In such a case the thoughts of the Spirit only arrive as a second hand, in other words, after having transposing two media.
It becomes then clear the importance of the medium to be well guided because if the assistance is given by an obsessing, ignorant or proud Spirit the communication will be altered. Here the moral qualities of the medium forcibly play an important role regarding the nature of the Spirit that the medium attracts to oneself. The most unfit mediums may have powerful faculties but the most confident ones are those that add the best sympathies in the invisible world to that strength. Now, those sympathies are not absolutely guaranteed by the more or less imposing names of the Spirits that sign the communications but by the constantly good nature of the communications that are received. Such principles are founded simultaneously on logic and experience. The very difficulties that they present demonstrate that the practice of Spiritism must not be treated lightheartedly. Another aspect sticks out from the communication above. It is the confirmation of the principle that intelligent Spirits continue in the spiritual world the works and studies that they undertook during their corporeal life. That is why we give preference, in the communications that we publish, to those that may lead to a useful lesson.
As for the letter from the living to the dead brother it is a naive and touching expression of the sincere faith in the survival of the soul, in the presence of the beings who are dear to us, and the possibility of continuing with those relationships of affection that united us to them.
The incredulous, no doubt, will laugh at what, in their eyes, is a puerile credulity. However much they try, the nothingness that they promote will never appeal to the masses because it breaks the heart and the most sacred relationships; it freezes instead of warming up; it brings fear and desperation instead of strength and consolation.
The keystone of their diatribes against Spiritism is this terrifying doctrine of the void and because of that it comes as no surprise its impotence to deviate the crowds form the new ideas. Between a doctrine of desperation and another one of reassurance there could be no doubt about the choice of the majority.
After the astonishing catastrophe of the Church of Santiago del Chile in 1864, they found a box with letters that the followers wrote to Hail Mary. Would there be any similarity between the letter above and the latter ones that have excited the verve of mockery? Certainly not. However, the mistake was not with those that believed in the possibility of communicating with the other world but with those that exploited such belief, giving answers compatible with the payments that were made with the letters of request. There are only a few superstitions that have not started from a truth altered by ignorance. Accused of resurrecting them, Spiritism on the contrary comes to bring them back to their fair value.
