By Camille Flammarion, Professor of Astronomy, associated to the Observatory of Paris
This is not a book, but an article that could make an interesting and, above all, instructive book, because the data are provided by positive science, and treated with the clarity and elegance that the young scientist brings to all his writings. Mr. Camille Flammarion is known to all our readers for his excellent work on the
Plurality of inhabited worlds, and for the scientific articles he publishes in
Le Siècle. The one we are going to report on is published in the
Revue du XIXe siècle(Review of the 19
th Century), on February 1
st, 1867.
[1]The author supposes an interview between a living individual named Sitiens, and the Spirit of one of his friends, called Lumen, who describes to him his last earthly thoughts, the first sensations of the spiritual life, and those that accompany the phenomenon of separation. This image is in perfect conformity with what the Spirits have taught us, on this subject; it is the most exact Spiritism, except the word that is not pronounced. We can judge it by the following quotes:
“The first sensation of identity that one experiences, after death, resembles what one feels when awakening during life, when gradually returning to the morning consciousness, still traversed by the visions of the night. Called upon by the future and the past, the Spirit seeks both to regain full control of himself and to grasp the fleeting impressions of the vanishing dream, that still pass through him with its procession of pictures and events.Sometimes in hindsight, absorbed by the captivating dream, he feels, under the closing eyelid, the renewed chain of visions and the continuation of the spectacle; he falls back both into the dream and into a sort of semi-sleep. That is how our thinking faculty oscillates at the end of this life, between a reality that is not yet understood, and a dream that has not completely disappeared.”Observation: In this situation of the Spirit, it is no wonder that some do not believe they are dead.
Death does not exist. The fact that you designate by this name, the separation of body and soul, to tell the truth, does not take place in a material form, comparable to the chemical separations of the dissociated elements, that one observes in the physical world. We do not notice this definitive separation, that seems so harsh to us, any more than the newborn child is aware of its birth; we are born to the future life as we were born to the earthly life. It is only that the soul, no longer being enveloped in the bodily swaddling clothes, that dressed it here below, more quickly acquires the notion of its state, and of its personality. This capacity of perception, however, varies essentially from one soul to another. There are some that, during the life of the body, have never risen to the sky and have never felt eager to penetrate the laws of creation. These, still dominated by bodily appetites, remain for a long time in a state of unconscious disorder.Fortunately, there are others that from this life, soar on their winged aspirations towards the peaks of eternal beauty; these see the moment of separation arriving with calm and serenity; they know that progress is the law of existence and that they will enter, beyond, into a life superior to that one here; they follow, step by step, the lethargy that takes their heart, and when the last beat, slow and imperceptible, stops its course, they are already above their body, observing its dormancy, and freeing themselves from the magnetic bonds, they quickly feel themselves carried away by an unknown force, towards the point of creation where their aspirations, their feelings, and their hopes, attract them.Years, days, and hours are made up by the movements of earth. Apart from these movements, terrestrial time no longer exists in space; it is, therefore, absolutely impossible to have any notion of that time."Observation: This is strictly true; thus, when the Spirits want to specify an intelligible duration for us, they are obliged to identify again with earthly habits, making themselves men again, so to speak, in order to make use of the same terms of comparison. Immediately after its separation, the Spirit of Lumen is transported with the speed of thought to the group of worlds composing the star system designated, in astronomy, as Capella or the Goat. The theory he gives, about the sight of the soul, is remarkable.
“The sight of my soul had an incomparably greater power than that of the eyes of the earthly body, that I had just left; and, surprisingly, its power seemed to me subject to the will. It suffices to me to allow you to understand that, instead of simply seeing the stars in the sky, as you see them on earth, I could clearly distinguish the worlds that revolve around them; when I no longer wanted to see the star, so as not to be obfuscated in the examination of these worlds, it disappeared from my sight, leaving me in excellent conditions to observe one of those worlds. In addition, when my eyesight focused on a particular world, I could distinguish the details of its surface, continents and seas, clouds, and rivers. By a particular intensity of concentration in the sight of my soul, I managed to see the object on which it was focused, for example, a city, a countryside, buildings, streets, houses, trees, paths; I even recognized the inhabitants and I followed the people in the streets and in their houses. For that, all I had to do was to constrain my thoughts to the neighborhood, to the house, or to the individual I wanted to observe. In the world where I had just arrived, beings, not incarnate in a coarse envelope as down here, but free and endowed with powers of perception raised to an eminently high degree, can distinctly perceive details that, at this distance, would be absolutely hidden from the eyes of terrestrial organizations.”Sitien: Do they use instruments superior to our telescopes for this?Lumne: If, to be less rebelliousto the admission of this marvelous faculty, it is easier for you to conceive them equipped with instruments, you can do it, in theory. But I must warn you that these kinds of instruments are not external to these beings, belonging to the very organ of their sight. Be it understood that this optical construction and this power of sight are natural in these worlds, and not supernatural. Think about the insects that have the property of shortening or lengthening their eyes, like the tubes of a telescope, of swelling or flattening their crystalline lens, to make it into a magnifying glass of different degrees, or of concentrating on the same focus a multitude of eyes, pointed like many microscopes to capture the infinitely small, and you can, more legitimately, admit the faculty of these ultra-terrestrial beings."The world where Lumen is located is at such a distance from earth, that it takes light seventy-two years to travel from one to the other. However, born in 1793 and deceased in 1864, when he arrived in Capella, from where he looked out over Paris, Lumen no longer recognized the Paris he had just left. The rays of light that came from earth, arriving in Capella only after seventy-two years, brought him the image of what was happening here in 1793.
This is the scientific part of the story; all difficulties are solved there in the most logical way. The data, admitted in theory by science, are demonstrated there by experience; but since this experience cannot be made directly by men, the author supposes a Spirit that accounts for its feelings, and placed in conditions that allow the establishment of a comparison between earth and the world that it inhabits.
The idea is ingenious and new. It is the first time that true and serious Spiritism, although anonymously, is associated with positive science, and this by a man capable of appreciating both, and of grasping the link of union that must bond them one day. This work, that we acknowledge of fundamental importance, seems to be one of those that the Spirits have announced to us as being due to mark the present year. We will analyze this second part in a future article.
[1] Each issue forms a volume of 160 pages, in-8. Price: 2 francs Paris, International bookshop, 15, boulevard Montmartre, and 18 avenue Montaigne, Palais Pompeian
