•
The
Spirit's Book |
BOOK
SECOND
THE SPIRIT-WORLD,
OR WORLD OF SPIRITS
CHAPTER
I
1. ORIGIN AND NATURE OF SPIRIT
2. PRIMITIVE AND NORMAL WORLD
3. FORM AND UBIQUITY OF SPIRITS
4. THE PERISPIRIT
5. DIFFERENT ORDERS OF SPIRITS
6. SPIRIT-HIERARCHY
7. PROGRESSION OF SPIRITS
8. ANGELS AND DEMONS
Origin and Nature of Spirits
76. What definition can be given of spirits?
"Spirits may be defined as the intelligent beings of the creation. They constitute the population of the universe, in contradistinction to the forms of the material world."
NOTE. The word spirit is here employed to designate the individuality of extra-corporeal beings, and not the universal intelligent element.
77. Are spirits beings distinct from the Deity, or are they only emanations from or portions of the Deity, and called, for that reason, "sons" or "children" of God?
"Spirits are the work of God, just as a machine is the work of the mechanician who made it: the machine is the man's work, but it is not the man. You know that when a man has made a fine or useful thing, he calls it his 'child'-his 'creation.' It is thus with us in relation to God. We are His children in this sense, because we are His work."
78. Have spirits had a beginning, or have they existed, like God, from all eternity?
"If spirits had not had a beginning, they would be equal with God; whereas they are His creation, and subject to His will. That God has existed from all eternity is incontestable; but as to when and how He created us, we know nothing. You may say that we have had no beginning in this sense, that, God being eternal, He must have incessantly created. But as to when and how each of us was made, this, I repeat, is known to no one. It is the great mystery."
79. Since there are two general elements in the universe, namely, the intelligent element and the material element, would it be correct to say that spirits are formed from the intelligent element as inert bodies are formed from the material element?
"It is evident that such is the case. Spirits are the individualization of the intelligent principle, as bodies are the individualization of the material principle. It is the epoch and mode of this formation that are unknown to us."
80. Is the creation of spirits always going on, or did it only take place at the beginning of time?
"It is always going on, that is to say, God has never ceased to create."
81. Are spirits formed spontaneously, or do they proceed from one another?
"God creates them as He creates all other creatures, by His will. But we must again repeat that their origin is a mystery."
82. Is it correct to say that spirits are immaterial?
"How is it possible to define a thing in regard to which no terms of comparison exist, and which your language is incompetent to express? Can one who is born blind define light? 'Immaterial' is not the right word; 'incorporeal' would be nearer the truth, for you must understand that a spirit, being a creation, must be something real. Spirit is quintessentialised matter, but matter existing in a state which has no analogue within the circle of your comprehension, and so ethereal that it could not be perceived by your senses."
We say that spirits are immaterial, because their essence differs from everything that we know under the name of "matter." A nation of blind people would have no terms for expressing light and its effects. One who is born blind imagines that the only modes of perception are hearing, smell, taste, and touch: he does not comprehend the other ideas that would be given him by the sense of sight which he lacks. So, in regard to the essence of superhuman beings, we are really blind. We can only define them by means of comparisons that are necessarily imperfect or by an effort of our imagination.
83. Is there an end to the duration of spirits? We can understand that the principle from which they emanate should be eternal; but what we desire to know is, whether their individuality has a term, and whether, after a given lapse of time, longer or shorter, the element from which they are formed is not disseminated, does not return to the mass from which they were produced, as is the case with material bodies? It is difficult to understand that what has had a beginning should not also have an end.
"There are many things that you do not understand, because your intelligence is limited; but that is no reason for rejecting them. The child does not understand all that is understood by its father, nor does an ignorant man understand all that is understood by a learned one. We tell you that the existence of spirits has no end; that is all we can say on the subject at present."
84. Do spirits constitute a world apart from that which we see?
"Yes; the world of spirits or incorporeal intelligences."
85. Which of the two, the spirit-world or the corporeal world, is the principal one in the order of the universe?
"The spirit-world. It is pre-existent to, and survives, everything else."
86. Might the corporeal world never have existed, or cease to exist, without changing the essentiality of the spirit-world?
"Yes; they are independent of each other, and yet their correlation is incessant, for they react incessantly upon each other."
87. Do spirits occupy a determinate and circumscribed region in space?
"Spirits are everywhere; the infinitudes of space are peopled with them in infinite numbers. Unperceived by you, they are incessantly beside you, observing and acting upon you; for spirits are one of the powers of Nature, and are the instruments employed by God for the accomplishment of His providential designs. But all spirits do not go everywhere; there are regions of which the entrance is interdicted to those who are less advanced."
88. Have souls a determinate, circumscribed, and unvarying form?
"Not for eyes such as yours; but, for us, they have a form though one only to be vaguely imagined by you as a flame a gleam, or an ethereal spark."
-- Is this flame or spark of any color?
"If you could see it, it would appear to you to vary from a dull gray to the brilliancy of the ruby, according to the degree of the spirit's purity."
Genie are usually represented with a flame or a star above their foreheads-a sort of allegorical allusion to the essential nature of spirits. The flame or star is placed upon the head because the head is the seat of intelligence.
89. Do spirits employ any time in transporting themselves through space?
"Yes; but their motion is as rapid as that of thought."
-- Is not thought the movement of the soul itself, a transportation of the soul itself to the place or the object thought of by it?
"Wherever the thought is, there the soul is, since it is the soul that thinks. Thought is an attribute."
90. When a spirit travels from one place to another, is he conscious of the distance he traverses and of the extent of space through which he passes; or is he suddenly transported to the place to which he wishes to go?
"A spirit can travel in either way. He can, if he will, take cognizance of the distance he passes through, or he can rid himself entirely of the sense of distance. This depends on the spirit's will, and also on his degree of purity."
91. Does matter constitute an obstacle to the movement of a spirit?
"No; spirits pass through everything; the air, the earth, water, fire even, are equally accessible to them."
92. Have spirits the gift of ubiquity? In other words, can a spirit divide itself, or exist at several points of space at the same time?
"There can be no division of any given spirit; but every spirit is a center which radiates in all directions, and it is thus that a spirit may appear to be in several places at once. The sun is only one body, yet it radiates in all directions, and sends out its rays to great distances; but it is not divided."
-- Have all spirits the same power of radiation?
"There is a great difference between them in this respect: it depends on the degree of their purity."
Each spirit is an indivisible unity, but each spirit has the power of extending his thought on all aides without thereby dividing himself. It is only in this sense that the gift of ubiquity attributed to spirits is to be understood. It is thus that a spark sends out its brightness far and wide, and may be perceived from every point of the horizon. It is thus, also, that a man, without changing his place, and without dividing himself, may transmit orders, signals, etc., to many distant points in many different directions.
93. Is the spirit, properly so called, without a covering, or is it, as some declare, surrounded by a substance of some kind?
"The spirit is enveloped in a substance which would appear to you as mere vapor, but which, nevertheless, appears very gross to us, thought it is sufficiently vaporous to allow the spirit to float in the atmosphere, and to transport himself through space at pleasure."
As the germ of a fruit is surrounded by the perisperm so the spirit, properly so called, is surrounded by an envelope which, by analogy, may be designated as the perispirit.
94. Whence does the spirit draw its semi-material envelope?
"From the universal fluid of each globe. For this reason the perispirit is not the same in all globes. In passing from one globe to another, the spirit changes its envelope as you change a garment."
-- When spirits who inhabit worlds of a higher degree than ours come among us, are they obliged to take on a grosser order of perispirit?
"Yes; they are obliged to clothe themselves with your matter in order to be able to enter your world."
95. Does the semi-material envelope of the spirit assume determinate forms, and can it become perceptible for us?
"Yes; it can assume any form that the spirit may choose to give to it. It is thus that a spirit is able sometimes to make himself visible to you, whether in dreams or in your waking state, and can take a form that may be visible, and even palpable, for your senses."
96. Are all spirits equal or does there exist among them a hierarchy of ranks?
"They are of different degrees according to the degree of purification to which they have attained."
97. Is there a fixed number of order or degrees of purification among spirits?
"The number of such orders is unlimited, because there is nothing like a barrier or line of demarcation between the different degrees of elevation; and, therefore, as there are no fixed or arbitrary divisions among spirits, the number of orders may be increased or diminished according to the point of view from which they are considered. Nevertheless, if we consider the general characteristics of spirits, we may reduce them to three principal orders or degrees "We may place in the first or highest rank those who have reached the degree of relative perfection which constitutes what may be called 'pure spirits.' We may place in the second rank those who have reached the middle of the ascensional ladder, those who have achieved the degree of purification in which aspiration after perfection has become the ruling desire. We may place in the third or lowest rank all those imperfect spirits who are still on the lower rungs of the ladder. They are characterized by ignorance, the love of evil, and all the low passions that retard their progress upwards."
98. Have spirits of the second order only the aspiration after perfection; have they also the power to achieve it?
"They have that power in degrees proportionate to the degree of purification at which they have severally arrived. Some of them are distinguished by their scientific knowledge, others by their wisdom and their kindness; but all of them have still to undergo the discipline of trial through temptation and suffering."
99. Are all spirits of the third order essentially bad?
"No. Some of them are inactive and neutral, not doing either good or evil; others, on the contrary, take pleasure in evil, and are delighted when they find an opportunity of doing wrong. Others, again, are frivolous, foolish, fantastic, mischievous rather than wicked, tricky rather than positively malicious; amusing themselves by mystifying the human beings on whom they are able to act, and causing them various petty annoyances for their own diversion."
100. Preliminary Observations.--The classification of spirits is based upon the degree of their advancement, upon the qualities which they have acquired, and upon the imperfections from which they have still to free themselves. This classification, however, is by no means absolute. It is only in its totality that the character of each category is distinctly marked, for each category merges in the one above it by imperceptible gradations, the peculiarities of the successive categories shading off into one another at their extremities, as is the case in the various reigns of nature, in the colors of the rainbow, in the phases of a human life. Spirits may, therefore, be divided into a number of classes more or less considerable, according to the point of view from which we consider the subject. It is in this matter as in all other systems of scientific classification. The systems adopted may be more or less complete, more or less rational, more or less convenient for the understanding; but, whatever may be their form, they change nothing in regard to the facts of the science which employs them. That the answers of spirits, when questioned on this point, should vary as to the number of the categories into which they are divided is, therefore, a matter of no practical importance. Too much weight has been attributed to this apparent contradiction by those who forget that disincarnate intelligences attach no importance whatever to mere conventionalities. For them, the meaning of a statement is the only important point about it. They leave to us the question of its form, the choice of terms and of classification,-in a word, all that belongs to the making of systems.
Another thing that should never be lost sight of is the fact that there are among spirits, as well as among men, some who are very ignorant, and that we cannot be too much on our guard against a tendency to believe that all spirits know everything simply because they are spirits. The work of classification demands method, analysis, and a thorough knowledge of the subject investigated. But those who, in the spirit-world, possess only a small amount of knowledge, are as incompetent as are ignorant human beings to embrace the whole of any subject or to formulate a system. They have no idea, or but a very imperfect one, of any sort of classification. All spirits superior to themselves appear to them to be of the highest order; for they are as incapable of discriminating the various shades of knowledge, capacity, and morality by which they are distinguished, as one of our savages would be to discriminate the various characteristics of civilized men. And even those who are capable of this discrimination may vary, in their appreciation of details, according to their special point of view, especially in regard to a matter which, from its very nature, has nothing fixed or absolute about it. Linnaeus, Jussieu, Tournefort, have each their special system of classification, but the nature of botany has not been changed by this diversity of system among botanists. The latter have not invented either plants or their characteristics; they have merely observed certain analogies, according to which they have formed certain groups or classes. We have proceeded in the same way. We have not invented either spirits or their characteristics. We have seen and observed them, we have judged them by their own words and acts, and we have classed them by order of similitude, basing our classification on the data furnished by themselves.
The higher spirits generally admit the existence of three principal categories, or main divisions, among the people of the other world. In the lowest of these, at the bottom of the ladder, are the imperfect spirits who are characterized by the predominance of the instincts of materiality over the moral nature, and by the propensity to evil. Those of the second degree are characterized by the predominance of the moral nature over the material instincts, and by the desire of good. They constitute the category of good spirits. The first or highest category consists of those who have reached the state of pure spirits, and have thus attained to the supreme degree of perfection imaginable by us.
This division of spirits into three well-marked categories appears to us to be perfectly rational; and, having arrived at this general classification, it only remained for us to bring out, through a sufficient number of subdivisions, the principal shades of the three great spirit-categories thus established. And this we have done with the aid of the spirits themselves, whose friendly instructions have never failed us in the carrying out of the work upon which we have been led to enter.
With the aid of the following table it will be easy for us to determine the rank and degree of superiority or inferiority of the spirits with whom we may enter into communication, and, consequently, the degree of esteem and confidence to which they are entitled. The power of determining these points may be said to constitute the key to spiritist investigation; for it alone, by enlightening us in regard to the intellectual and moral inequalities of spirits, can explain the anomalies presented by spirit-communications. We have, however, to remark that spirits do not, in all cases, belong exclusively to such and such a class. Their progress in knowledge and purity being only accomplished gradually, and often, for a time, more in the one than in the other, they may unite the characteristics of several subdivisions; a point which is easily settled by observing their language and their acts.
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