Mediumship and inspiration
Paris, Group Desliens, February 16
th, 1869
“In its infinitely varied forms, mediumship embraces the whole of humanity, like a network from which no one can escape. Everyone being in daily contact with free intelligences, whether they know it or not, whether they want it or revolt against it, nobody can say: I am not, I have not been, or I will not be a medium. In its intuitive form, a mode of communication to which the name voice of conscience
has been vulgarly given, each one is related to several spiritual influences, that advise in one direction or another, and often simultaneously, the pure, absolute good; accommodations with the interest; evil in all its nakedness. - Man evokes these voices; they answer his call, and he chooses; but he chooses between these different inspirations and his own feeling. - Inspirators are invisible friends; like friends on Earth, they are serious or voluble, self-interested, or truly guided by affection.They are consulted, or they advise spontaneously, but like the advice of the earthly friends, their opinions are listened to or rejected; they sometimes lead to an outcome contrary to the expected; often they do not produce any effect. - What can we conclude from this? Not that man is under the influence of an incessant mediumship, but that he freely obeys his own will, modified by opinions that can never, in the normal state, be compelling.When man does more than taking care of the minimal details of his existence, and when it is a question of the works that he has come more especially to perform, of decisive trials that he must endeavor, or of works intended for the general instruction and elevation, the voices of conscience are no longer merely and simply counselors, but they draw the Spirit onto certain subjects, they provoke certain studies and collaborate in the work by making certain brain boxes resonate through inspiration. This is the work of two, three, ten, a hundred, if you will; but, if one hundred have taken part in it, only one can and must sign it off, for only one has done it and is responsible for it!What is any work after all? It is never a creation; it's always a discovery. Man does nothing, he discovers everything. These two terms should not be confused. To invent, in its true sense, is to shed light on an existing law, some knowledge hitherto unknown, but deposited in germ in the cradle of the universe. He who invents lifts one of the corners of the veil that hides the truth, but he does not create the truth. To invent, one must search and search a lot; it is necessary to devour the books, to dig into the depths of intelligences, to ask one about mechanics, geometry to the other, ask a third one for the knowledge of the musical relations, to another one still the historical laws, and make something new from the whole, something interesting, not imagined yet. Is the one who has been exploring the recesses of libraries, who has listened to the masters speak, who has scrutinized science, philosophy, art, religion, from the most remote antiquity to the present day, is he the medium of art, history, philosophy, and religion? Is he the medium of past times when he writes on his own? No, because he does not tell others, but he has learned from others to tell, and he enriches his stories with all that is personal to him. The musician has long heard the warbler and the nightingale, before inventing the music; Rossini listened to nature before translating it to the civilized world. Is he the medium of the nightingale and the warbler? No, he composes, and he writes. He listened to the Spirit that came to sing to him the melodies of heaven; he listened to the Spirit that shouted passion in his ears; he heard the virgin and the mother groaning, dropping her prayer on her child's head in harmonious pearls. Love and poetry, freedom, hatred, revenge, and many Spirits taken by these diverse feelings, have alternately sung their score by his side. He listened to them, he studied them, in the world and in inspiration, and from both he did his works; but he was not a medium, any more than the doctor who hears the sick telling him what they feel and who gives a name to their diseases. Mediumship has had its hours as any other; but apart from those moments too short for his glory, what he did he did alone with the help of studies drawn from men and Spirits.On this account, one is the medium of all; one is the medium of nature, the medium of truth, and a very imperfect medium, because often it appears so blemished by translation that it is unrecognizable and unknown.Halevy.”
