“
We left Lumen in Capella, busy with considering the land he had just left. This world being located 170 trillion, 392 billion leagues from earth, and the light traveling at 70,000 leagues per second, it can only arrive from one to the other in 71 years, 8 months, and 24 days, i.e. in about 72 years. As a result, the ray of light, that bears the imprint of the image of earth, does not reach the inhabitants of Capella until 72 years have passed. Having Lumen died in 1864, and casting his sight onto Paris, he saw it as it was 72 years before, or in 1793, the year of his birth. Therefore, he was very surprised at first, to find it quite different from what he had seen it, to see alleys, convents, gardens, fields instead of avenues, new boulevards, railway stations, etc. He saw the Place de la Concorde occupied by a huge crowd and was an eyewitness to the event of January 21st. The theory of light gave him the key to this strange phenomenon. Here is the solution to some of the difficulties it raises.[1] Sitiens. But then, if the past can thus merge into the present; if reality and vision come together in this way; whether long-dead characters can still be seen performing on the stage; if the new constructions and the metamorphoses of a city, like Paris, can disappear and let be seen, in their place, the city of the past; if, finally, the present can vanish for the resurrection of the past, what certainty can we henceforth trust? What happens to science and observation? What happens to deductions and theories? What is our most solid knowledge based on? And if these things are true, shouldn't we now doubt everything or believe everything? Lumen. These considerations and many others, my friend, have absorbed and tormented me; but it did not prevent them from being the reality that I observed. When I was certain that we had the year 1793 before us, I immediately thought that science itself, instead of combating this reality (because two truths cannot be opposed to each other), had to give me the explanation. So, I questioned physics, and waited for its answer. (The scientific demonstration of the phenomenon follows). Sitiens. Thus, the light ray is like a mail that brings us news of the state of the country that sends it, and if it takes 72 years to reach us, gives us the state of that country at the time of its departure, that is to say, almost 72 years before the moment when it gets to us. Lumen. You guessed the mystery right. To speak more precisely still, the ray of light would be a letter that would bring us, not written news, but the photograph, or more rigorously still, the aspect itself of the country from which it came. So, when we examine the surface of a star with a telescope, we do not yet see this surface as it is at the very moment we observe it, but as it was when the light that reaches us from it was emitted by this surface. Sitiens. So that if a star whose light takes, say, ten years to reach us, were suddenly destroyed today, we would still see it for ten years, since its last ray would not reach us for another ten years. Lumen. It is precisely so. There is, therefore, a surprising transformation from past to present. For the star observed, it is the past, already gone; for the observer it is the present, the actual. The past of the star is rigorously and positively the present of the observer. Lumen later sees himself as a child, at the age of six, playing and arguing with a bunch of other children at Panthéon Square. Sitiens. I confess that it seems impossible to me that one can see oneself in this way. You cannot be two people. Since you were 72 years old when you died, your childhood state was past, gone, long passed out. You cannot see a thing that is no more. We cannot see ourselves as a double, a child and an old man. Lumen. You have not thought enough, my friend. You have understood the general fact well enough to admit it; but you have not sufficiently observed that this last fact fits absolutely into the first one. You admit that the image of earth takes 72 years to come to me, don't you? That the events only happen to me at this interval, after they occurred? In short, that I see the world as it was at that time. You also admit that by seeing the streets of that time, I see, at the same time, the children running around in those streets? Well! Since I see this group of children; and that I was part of that group then, why do you want me not to see myself, as well as I see others? Sitiens. But are you no longer there, in that group! Lumen. Once again, that group itself no longer exists now, but I see it as it existed at the moment when the ray of light that reaches me today left, and since I distinguish the fifteen or eighteen children in the group, there is no reason why the child who was me should disappear, because I am the one watching him. Other observers would see him in the company of his mates. Why do you want an exception when it's me watching? I see them all, and I see myself with them. Lumen reviews the series of major political events that have taken place from 1793 until 1864, when he sees himself on his deathbed. Sitiens. Have these events passed quickly before your eyes? Lumen. I cannot appreciate the measure of time; but all this retrospective panorama certainly took place in less than a day… in a few hours, perhaps. Sitiens. So, I don't understand anymore. If 72 earth years have passed before your eyes, it should have taken exactly 72 years to appear to you, not a few hours. If the year 1793 appeared to you only in 1864, the year 1864, in turn, should therefore not appear to you until 1936.Lumen. Your objection is well founded and proves to me that you have correctly understood the theory of the fact. Thus, I will explain to you how it was not necessary for me to wait another 72 years to review my life, and how, under the impulse of an unconscious force, I did indeed see it again in less than a day. Continuing to follow my existence, I arrived at the last remarkable years for the radical transformation that Paris had undergone; I saw my last friends and yourself; my family and my circle of acquaintances; and finally, the moment arrived when I saw myself lying on my deathbed, and witnessed the last scene. This is to tell you that I was back on earth. Attracted by the contemplation that absorbed it, my soul had quickly forgotten the mountain of the old men and Capella. As we, sometimes, feel in dreams, it flew towards the goal of its gazes. I did not notice it at first, so much the strange vision captivated all my senses. I cannot tell you by what law, nor by what power, how souls can be transported so rapidly from one place to another; but the truth is that I had returned to earth, in less than a day, and that I was entering my room at the very moment of my funeral. Since, in this return journey, I was going in front of the rays of light, I constantly shortened the distance that separated me from earth; light had less and less distance to travel, and thus narrowed the succession of events. In the middle of the path, when I was only 36 years old, they no longer showed me the land of 72 years before, but 36. Three quarters of the way, and the images were only 18 years late. Halfway through the last shift, they happened to me only 9 years after they had happened, and so on; so that the whole series of my existence was condensed in less than a day, owing to the rapid return of my soul, ahead of the rays of light. When Lumen arrived in Capella, he saw a group of old men engaged in considerations about earth, and talking about the event of 1793; one of them said to his companions: On your knees, my brothers; let us ask the universal God for indulgence. This world, this nation, this city is soiled with a great crime; the head of an innocent king has just fallen. I approached the elder, said Lumen, and asked him to recount his observations to me. He taught me that, by the intuition with which the Spirits at the level of those that inhabit this world are endowed, and by the intimate faculty of perception that they shared, they possess a kind of magnetic relation with the neighboring stars. These stars are twelve or fifteen in number; they are the closest ones; outside this region, perception becomes confused. Our sun is one of these neighboring stars[2]. They thus know, vaguely but appreciably, the state of the humanities that inhabit the planets dependent on this sun, and their relative degree of intellectual and moral elevation. Moreover, when a great disturbance hits one of these humanities, either in the physical order or in the moral order, they undergo a kind of intimate commotion, as one sees a vibrating string causing a vibration onto another string, located at a distance. For a year (the year of that world is equal to ten of ours), they felt drawn by a particular emotion towards the terrestrial planet; and the observers had followed with interest and concern the progress of this world.” We would be mistaken if we were to infer from the above that the inhabitants of the different globes keep, from the point where they are, an investigative look at what is happening in the other worlds, and that the events that take place there pass before their eyes as in the field of a telescope. Besides, each world has its special concerns that captivate the attention of its inhabitants, according to their own needs, their very different habits, and their degree of advancement. When the Spirits incarnated in a planet have a personal motive to be interested in what is happening in another world, or in some of those that inhabit it, their soul is transported there, as did that of Lumen, in the state of detachment, and then they temporarily become, so to speak, spiritual inhabitants of that world, or else they incarnate there in a mission. This is, at least, what results from the teaching of the Spirits. This last part of Lumen's account, therefore, lacks accuracy; but we must not lose sight of the fact that this story is only a hypothesis, intended to make more accessible to the understanding, and in a way palpable by the putting into action the demonstration of a scientific theory, as we observed in our preceding article. We draw attention to the paragraph above where it says: "
The great physical and moral disturbances of a world produce on the neighboring worlds a kind of intimate commotion, as a vibrating string makes another string vibrate placed at a distance.” The author, who does not speak lightly in science, sets out a principle that could one day be converted into law. Science already admits, as a result of observation, the reciprocal material action of the stars. If, as one begins to suspect, this action, increased by the fact of certain circumstances, can cause disturbances and cataclysms, it would not be impossible that these same disturbances had their backlash. So far, science has considered only the material principle; but if we take into account the spiritual principle as an active element of the universe, and if we consider that this principle is just as general and just as essential as the material principle, we can imagine that a great effervescence of this element and the modifications that it undergoes, at a given point, may have their reaction, in consequence of the necessary correlation that exists between matter and spirit. There is, certainly, in this idea, the germ of a fruitful principle and of a serious study to which Spiritism opens the way.
[1] According to the calculation, and because of the distance from the sun, that is 38 million, 230 thousand leagues, and 4 kilometers, the light of this star reaches us in 8 minutes and 13 seconds. It follows that a phenomenon that would occur on its surface would appear to us only 8 min. 13 s later, and that if the phenomenon were instantaneous, it would no longer exist when we saw it. The distance from the moon being only 85 thousand leagues, its light reaches us in about a second, and a quarter, the disturbances that could occur there would appear to us, therefore, at about the time where they take place. If Lumen had been on the moon, he would have seen the Paris of 1864, and not that of 1793; if he had been in a world twice as distant as Capella, he would have seen the Regency.
[2] 170 trillion, 392 billion leagues! By the distance that separates the neighboring stars one can assess the extent occupied by all those that to us appear to be so close to each other, without counting the infinitely greater number of those that are only perceptible by the telescope, and that are themselves only a tiny fraction of those that, lost in the depths of infinity, escape all our means of investigation. If we consider that each star is a sun, the center of a planetary vortex, we will understand that our own vortex is only a point in this immensity. What then is our 3,000 leagues in diameter globe, among those billions of worlds? What are its inhabitants who have long believed their little world to be the central point of the universe, and have believed themselves the only living beings of creation, concentrating in themselves alone the concerns and solicitude of the Eternal, and believing, in good faith, that the spectacle of heavens was only made to entertain their sight? This whole egoistic and petty system, that for many centuries formed the basis of religious faith, collapsed before the discoveries of Galileo.
