Spiritual Atmosphere Spiritism teaches us that the Spirits constitute the invisible population of the globe, that they are in space and among us, seeing us and elbowing us incessantly, so that, when we believe ourselves alone, we constantly have secret witnesses of our actions and thoughts. This may sound embarrassing to some people, but since it is a fact, one cannot prevent it from being; it is up to each one to behave like the righteous man who would not fear that his house was made of glass. It is, undoubtedly, to this cause that we must attribute the revelation of so much wickedness and misdeeds that were believed to be buried in the shadows.
We also know that in a meeting, besides the corporeal assistants, there are always invisible listeners; that being the permeability one of the properties of the organism of the Spirits, these can be found in unlimited number in a given space. Often, we were told, that at certain sessions they were in innumerable quantities. In the explanation given to Mr. Bertrand, concerning the collective communications that he obtained, it is said that the number of Spirits present was so large, that the atmosphere was, so to speak, saturated with their fluids. This is not new to the Spiritists, but perhaps we have not deduced all the consequences.
We know that the fluids emanating from the Spirits are, to some extent, beneficial, according to their degree of depuration; we know their curative power in certain cases, as well as their morbid effects, from individual to individual. Now, since the air may be saturated with these fluids, isn’t that obvious that, depending on the nature of the Spirits that abound in a determined place, the ambient air is impregnated with healthy or unhealthy elements, that must exert an influence on physical, as well as on the moral health? When one think of the energy of the action that a Spirit can exert on a man, can one be surprised by the one that results from an agglomeration of hundreds or thousands of Spirits? Such action will be good or bad, depending on whether the Spirits pour a beneficial or harmful fluid into a given environment, a fluid that acts in the manner of strengthening emanations or harmful miasmas, disseminated in the air.
This can explain certain collective effects produced on masses of individuals, the feeling of well-being or discomfort that one experiences in certain environments, and which have no known apparent cause, the collective drive towards good or bad, general impulses, enthusiasm or discouragement, sometimes the kind of vertigo that seizes a whole assembly, a whole city, even a whole people. Each one suffers in proportion to their degree of sensitivity, influenced by this contaminated or invigorating atmosphere. By this unquestionable fact, about the relationship between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds, confirmed by both theory and experience, we find a new principle of hygiene that science will, undoubtedly, one day make recognized by everyone.
Can we, however, escape these influences emanating from a source inaccessible to material means? Without a doubt; for just as we clean up unhealthy places, by destroying the source of pestilential miasmas, we can cleanse the moral atmosphere around us, escaping the pernicious influences of unhealthy spiritual fluids, and that more easily than we can escape the marshy odors, because it depends only on our will, and that will not be one of the least benefits of Spiritism, when it is universally understood and especially practiced.
A principle perfectly proven to any Spiritist, is that the qualities of the perispiritual fluid are in direct proportion to the qualities of the incarnate or discarnate Spirit; the more his feelings are elevated and freed from the influences of matter, the more his fluid is purified. According to the dominating thoughts, an incarnate radiates fluids impregnated with these same thoughts, that vitiate or cleanse them; really material fluids, although impalpable, invisible to the eyes of the body, but perceptible to the perispirit senses, and visible to the eyes of the soul, since they impress physically, and take very different appearances for those that are gifted with spiritual sight.
The sole fact of the presence of the incarnate in an assembly determines, therefore, that the ambient fluids are healthy or unhealthy, depending on whether the dominant thoughts are good or bad. Anyone that brings thoughts of hatred, envy, jealousy, pride, selfishness, animosity, greed, falsehood, hypocrisy, slander, malevolence, in a word, thoughts drawn from the source of bad passions, spreads unhealthy fluidic odors around them, reacting on those around them. In an assembly in which, on the contrary, each one would bring only feelings of goodness, charity, humility, selfless devotion, benevolence and love to their neighbor, the air is impregnated with healthy emanations, in the midst of which we feel good.
If we now consider that thoughts attract thoughts of the same nature, that fluids attract similar fluids, we understand that each individual brings along an entourage of sympathetic spirits, good or bad, and that thus the air is saturated with fluids related to the predominant thoughts. If bad thoughts are in the minority, they do not prevent good influences from occurring, but they paralyze them. If they dominate, they weaken the fluidic radiation of the good Spirits, or even sometimes, prevent the good fluids from entering this environment, as the fog weakens or stops the rays of the sun.
So, what is the way to escape the influence of bad fluids? This arises from the very cause that produces the evil. What do we do when we have recognized that a food is unhealthy? We reject it and replace it with a healthier food. Since it is bad thoughts that generate bad fluids, and attract them, we must strive to have only good ones, pushing away all that is bad, like pushing away food that can make us sick; in short, one must work for one’s moral improvement, and using a comparison from the Gospel, we must “not only clean the vessel on the outside, but especially clean it on the inside. "
Humanity, as it improves, will see the fluidic atmosphere, in which it lives, purifying, because it will only send good fluids, and these will oppose a barrier to the invasion of the bad ones. If, one day, earth happens to be populated only by people practicing the divine laws of love and charity, among themselves, there is no doubt that they will then be in conditions of physical and moral hygiene quite different from those that exist today.
This time is still far away, no doubt, but in the meantime, these conditions may partially exist, and it is up to the Spiritist assemblies to set an example. Those who have possessed the light will be all the more reprehensible as they will have had in their hands the means to enlighten themselves; they will incur the responsibility for the delays that their example and their unwillingness will have brought onto the general improvement.
Is this a utopia, a vain declamation? No; it is a logical deduction from the very facts that Spiritism reveals to us every day. Indeed, Spiritism proves to us that the spiritual element, that we have until now considered as the antithesis of the material element, has an intimate connection with the latter, from which it results a multitude of unobserved or misunderstood phenomena. When science has assimilated the elements provided by Spiritism, it will draw from them new and important resources for the very material improvement of humanity. Every day we thus see expanding the circle of applications of the doctrine, that is far from being restricted to the childish phenomenon of turning tables or other effects of pure curiosity, as some still believe. Spiritism only really took off when it entered the philosophical path; it then became less fun to some people, who were only looking for a distraction, but it is more appreciated by serious people, and will be even more so, as it is better understood in its consequences.
