Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867

Last November 1^st, having the Society met, as usual, for the commemoration of the dead, it received a large number of communications, among which one, especially, stood out for its completely new style, and that consists of a suite of detached thoughts, each signed by a different name, all linked together and complementing each other. Here is this communication:

“My friends, how many Spirits are around you, who would like to communicate with you, and tell you that they love you; and how happy you would be if the names of all those who are dear to you were mentioned at the table of mediums! What happiness! What a joy, for each of you, if your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your children, and your friends came to talk to you! But you understand that it is impossible to satisfy you all; the number of mediums would not suffice; but what is not impossible is for a Spirit, in the name of all your relatives and friends, to come and say to you: Thank you for your fond memories and your fervent prayers; courage! Have hope that one day, after your liberation, we will all come to extend a hand to you. Rest assured that what Spiritism teaches you echoes the laws of the Almighty; through love, become brothers among you all, and you will lighten the heavy burden you carry.

Now, dear friends, all your protecting Spirits are going to come and bring their thoughts. You, medium, listen, and let your pencil go according to their idea.

Medicine does what frightened crayfish does.

Dr. Demeure.

Because magnetism is progressing, and as it progresses it crushes current medicine to replace it soon.

Mesmer

War is a duel that will only end when the combatants have equal force;

Napoleon



Of equal force materially and morally.

General Bertrand

Moral equality will reign when pride is removed.

General Brune

Revolutions are abuses that destroy other abuses;

Louis XVI

But these abuses give birth to freedom. (No name).

To be equal one must be brothers. Without fraternity, no equality, and no freedom.

Lafayette

Science is the progress of intelligence.

Newton

But what is preferable is moral progress.

Jean Reynaud

Science will remain stationary until morality has reached it.

François Arago

To develop morality, we must first uproot vice.

Béranger

To uproot vice, it must be unmasked.

Eugène Sue

This is what all strong and superior Spirits seek to do.

Jacques Arago

Three things must progress: music, poetry, and painting. Music transports the soul by striking the hearing.

Meyerbeer



Poetry transports the soul by opening the heart.

Casimir Delavigne

Painting transports the soul by flattering the eyes.

Flandrin

So, poetry, music and painting are sisters and go hand in hand; one to soften the heart, the other to soften manners, and the last to open the soul; all three to lift you up to your Creator.

Alfred de Musset

But nothing, nothing should momentarily progress more than philosophy; it must take an immense step, allowing science and the arts to stand still, but to raise them so high, when the time is right, that this rise would be too sudden for you today.

In the name of all, Saint Louis”



On December 6^th, Mr. Bertrand obtained, in the group of Mr. Desliens, a communication of the same kind, that is, in a way, the continuation of the preceding one.

“Love is a lyre whose vibrations are divine chords.

Héloïse

Love has three strings to its lyre: divine emanation, poetry, and song; if one of them is missing, the chords are imperfect.

Abélard

True love is harmonious; its harmonies intoxicate the heart, while uplifting the soul. Passion drowns the chords by lowering the soul.

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre

Love was what Diogenes was looking for, in seeking a man… who came a few centuries later, and whom hatred, pride and hypocrisy crucified.

Socrates

The wise men of Greece were, sometimes, more so in their writings and in their words, than in their person.

Plato



To be wise is to love; let us therefore seek love by way of wisdom.

Fénelon

You cannot be wise if you do not know how to rise above the wickedness of men.

Voltaire

Sage is he who does not believe he is.

Corneille

He who thinks himself small is great; he who thinks himself great is small.

Lafontaine

The sage believes himself to be ignorant, and whoever believes himself to be a sage, is ignorant.

Esope

Humility still believes itself to be proud, and whoever believes itself to be humble is not.

Racine

Do not confuse with the humble those who say, out of feigned modesty, or out of interest, the opposite of what they are: you would be in error. In this case truth is silent.

Bonnefond

Genius is possessed by inspiration and cannot be acquired; God wants the greatest things to be discovered or invented by uneducated beings, to paralyze pride, while making man empathetic with man.

François Arago

They treat as mad only those whose ideas are not stamped by the authority of science; this is how those, that think they know everything, reject the genius thoughts of those that know nothing.

Béranger

Criticism is the stimulus of the study, but it is the paralysis of genius.

Molière

The learned science is only the sketch of the innate science; it only becomes intelligence in the new incarnation.

J.J. Rousseau

The incarnation is the sleep of the soul; the ups and downs of life are its dreams.

Balzac

Sometimes life is a dreadful nightmare to the Spirit, and often it longs for it to be over.

La Rochefoucault

There lies his ordeal; if he resists, he takes a step towards progress, otherwise he obstructs the road that must lead him to the port.

Martin

At the awakening of the soul that has emerged victorious from the earthly struggles, the Spirit is greater and more elevated; if he succumbs, he finds himself as he was.

Pascal

It is the denial of progress to wish language to be the emblem of the immutability of a religious doctrine; moreover, it is forcing man to pray more with the lips than with the heart.

Descartes

Immutability does not reside in the form of words, but in the verb of thought.

Lamennais

Jesus told his apostles to go and preach the gospel in their own language, and that all peoples would understand them.

Lacordaire

Selfless faith makes miracles.

Boileau

The doctrine of Jesus is only felt and understood by the heart; then, however it might be spoken, it will always be love and charity.

Bossuet

Said or written prayers that are not understood, let the thoughts wander, allowing the eyes to be distracted by the pomp of the ceremonies.

Massilon



Everything will change, without however returning to the simplicity of the past, that would be the negation of progress. Things will be done without pomp and pride.

Sibour

Love will triumph, and will be followed by: wisdom, charity, prudence, strength, science, humility, calm, justice, genius, tolerance, enthusiasm, and the majestic and divine glory will crush, by its splendor: pride, envy, hypocrisy, wickedness and jealousy, that carry in their entourage laziness, gluttony and lust.

Eugène Sue

Love will reign, and so that it does not delay, it is necessary, courageous Diogenes, to take in your hand the torch of Spiritism, and show humanity the rodent worms that form ulcers on their soul.

Saint Louis”



Observation: This kind of communication raises an important question. How can the fluids of such a large number of Spirits, assimilate almost instantaneously with the fluid of the medium, transmitting their thought, when this assimilation is often difficult from the part of a single Spirit, and generally it only establishes with time? The spiritual guide of the medium seems to have foreseen this, because two days later he spontaneously gave him the following explanation:

“The communication you obtained on the All Saints, as well as the last one, that is its complement, although there are repeated names, they were obtained in the following way: since I am your protector Spirit, my fluid is similar to yours. I placed myself above you, transmitting to you, as accurately as possible, the thoughts and names of the Spirits who wished to manifest themselves. They formed an assembly around me, whose members took turns, dictating the thoughts that I transmitted to you. It was spontaneous, and what made the communications easier that day was that the Spirits that were present had saturated the room with their fluids.

When a Spirit communicates with a medium, it does so with all the more ease as the fluidic relations are better established between them, otherwise the Spirit is obliged, in order to communicate its fluid with that of the medium, to establish a kind of magnetic current, that ends up in the brain of the latter; and if the Spirit, by reason of its inferiority, or of any other cause, cannot establish this current itself, it resorts to the assistance of the guide of the medium, and the relations are established as I have just demonstrated.

Slener”

Another question is this: among these Spirits, are there any that are embodied in this world or in others, and, if so, how can they communicate? Here is the response to that: “Spirits of a certain degree of advancement have a radiance which enables them to communicate simultaneously in several points. In some, the state of incarnation does not dampen this radiance sufficiently to prevent them from manifesting, even in the waking state. The more advanced the Spirit, the weaker the bonds that unite it with the matter of the body; he is in an almost constant state of disengagement, and one can say that he is where his thought is."

A Spirit