About the Value of the Spiritist CommunicationsBy Mr. Jobard
The religious orthodoxy confers the devil a role of exaggerated importance
as well as to his supposed satellites that should be only designated
as evil, ignorant, spirits of vanity, and almost all stained by the sin of
pride that lost them. They are not much different from human beings in
that respect, as they were also human beings for a short period relatively to
the eternity of their fluidic life, which can be compared to that of a body
that has passed to the volatile state. The mistake is in the belief that for
being spirits they must be perfect, as if the steam or the gases were more
perfect than the water or the liquid which originated them; as if the bully
could only become a peaceful man after leaving prison; as if a mad man
could be considered wise for having transposed the walls of Charenton26;
as if a blind man that came out of Quinze-Vingts27 could be mistaken by
someone with good eyes.
Mediums, do imagine that you have to deal with all those people,
and that there is as much difference among the spirits as there is among human beings. Well, you know that there are as many men as there are
feelings; as many bodies as their multiple properties, before as well as
after their change of state. You can assess the quality of the spirits by
their mistakes, as one can assess the quality of a body by its smell. If they
are sometimes in agreement about certain points, among themselves and
with you; the fact is that they cheat since they know better than you
do what was written before and what is written now about this or that
doctrine which they repeat to you, like parrots often, on other occasions
with conviction if they are conscious and hardworking spirits, like certain
philosophers or wise person who had honored you by coming to discuss
those things with you. However, rest assured that they will only respond
what they think you are in a condition to understand. Without that they
only tell you vulgarities and nothing that surpasses the reach of your intelligence
and knowledge that you have already acquired. They know, as
much as you do, that one doesn’t throw pearls to the swine. Then, they can
cite the Gospel if you are Christians, the Quran if you are Arab and easily
synchronize with you because in the fluidic state they have the intelligence
that the material bodies don’t have. The preceding comparison is
not accurate in that aspect only. If you like to laugh and play with words,
when dealing with a serious spirit it will send you deceiving spirits that
are stronger than you with jokes and word playing. If your mind is weak
it will leave you to mystifying spirits, who will take you further than you
would like.
The spirits generally like to speak with human beings. It is a distraction
and sometimes a study to them. They all say so. Don’t be afraid
of tiring them since you will always tire first; but they will not tell you
anything beyond what they could have told you when alive. That is why
so many people ask what would be the advantage of wasting any time in
consulting with them, since one cannot expect any extraordinary revelation,
any unexpected invention, panaceas, philosophical stones, transmutation
of metals, perpetual motion machine, and since they don’t know
more than you do about results not yet obtained by human science. If
they stimulate you to carry out experiments it is because they are curious themselves about the results. On the other hand, they only give you confusing
explanations, like the pseudo-wise individuals and the lawyers who
want to make sure that they win the debates. If it is a treasure, they will
say: dig it up; if it is an alloy, they will say: blow it up. It is possible that by
searching you find it. They will be as stunned as you and will boast about
having given you advice. Human vanity is still with them.
The good spirits don’t assure you that you will find the solution like
the bad ones do, those who have no scruples in ruining you. That is the
reason why you must never make abstraction of your judgment, of your
free will, of your reason. What do you say when a person leads you to a
bad deal? That he is infernal, diabolic. There you go! The spirit that gives
you bad advice is not more diabolical or more infernal; it is an ignorant
spirit, another deceiving spirit, but he does not have a special mission or
a super human power, nor does he have great interest in deceiving you:
that spirit is equally employing the God given free-will, like you, and like
you he can make a good or bad use: that is all. It is silly to think that he
is connected to you for years and years in order to enlist you in the devil’s
army. What good does one more or one less recruit do to the devil, when
the spontaneously come to him by the millions, without any recruiting
effort? The elected ones are rare but the volunteers to the evil side are in
large number. If God and the devil have each their army then it is God
who needs recruiters. The devil can be spared of the trouble of filling out
the openings. As victory is always on the side of the large battalions, you
may assess its greatness, its power and the easiness of its triumphs in all
corners of the universe, and without going too far, just look around you.
But all that does not make sense, since one can easily talk to the
people from the other world these days, it is necessary to accept them as
they are. There are poets that can dictate good verses; philosophers and
moralists that can dictate good maxims; Historians that can shed light
onto their times; Naturalists who can teach what they know or rectify former
mistakes; Astronomers that may reveal certain phenomena that you
ignore; Musicians; authors who can write their post-mortem works and
that even have the vanity of requesting it to be published in their names.
One of them, that had invented something, was stunned when he learned
that the patent would not be delivered to him in person; others couldn’t
care more about the earthly things than certain wise people. Some watch
the inauguration of their statues with a childish pleasure while others
don’t even bother to see it and show a profound contempt for the idiots
who pay them such homage after their deaths but who have ignored or
even persecuted them when alive. With respect to his statue, Humboldt
said only this: Irony! Another spirit provided the inscription to be placed
on his statue that was in preparation, knowing that he was unworthy: “To
the great thief, from the thankful robbed.”
In summary, we must consider as certain that each one carries their
character, their moral and scientific acquisitions; the fools here are the
fools there. The thieves are there, those who no longer have pockets to
pick; the gluttons who find nothing else to fry; the bankers that cannot
discount anything else and who suffer such deprivations. That is why
the Saint Spirit, the Spirit of Truth recommends neglect for the earthly
things, that we cannot carry or save; that we should think about the spiritual
and moral values which will follow and serve us for eternity, not only
as a distraction but as steps which will allow us to elevate incessantly in
the great ladder of Jacob, in the immeasurable hierarchy of the spirits.
Thus, see how little importance the good spirits give to the goods
and gross pleasures they lost after death, or when entering into their real
homeland, as they say. Like a pioneering scholar who is suddenly withdrawn
from his study, it is not his clothes, his money that he is sorry
for having left behind, but his books and his manuscripts. The butterfly
that shakes the dust off her wings before flying is not much concerned
with the remains of the cocoon that served as a dwelling. Therefore, a
superior spirit like Buffon, does not regret his Montbard castle more than
Lamartine will regret his Saint-Point castle, so much valued in life. That is
why the death of a wise individual is calm whereas that of a “humanimal”
is so horrible, because the latter feels the total loss by losing his earthly
things and that is why he grasps to those things like the avaricious to his
safe. His spirit cannot even separate from it as it bonds to the material and continues to haunt the places which were dear to him, and instead
of struggling to break those links which keep him attached to Earth, he
clings to them in despair. He suffers desperately, like mad, since he is no
longer able to use them. That is actually hell, the fire that those outcasts
struggle to maintain forever.
Those are the bad spirits that repel the advices of the good ones, and
who need the support of reason and even human wisdom to convince
them to abandon their prey. The good mediums must take the task of
helping them to think, moralizing them and praying for them, for they
recognize that the prayer gives them relief and that is why they give testimony
of recognition, sometimes very moving. This demonstrates the
existence of a common solidarity among all spirits, free or incarnated, because
incarnation is nothing more than a punishment and Earth is nothing
more than a place of atonement, where all of us come, as found in the
psalms, not for our enjoyment but for our betterment and for us to learn
the love of God, studying God’s works. Hence, the most unhappy is the
one who is the most ignorant; the most savage becomes the most vicious;
the most criminal is the most miserable of all beings, to whom God has
given a spark of His own divine soul, and talents to be applied and not to
be buried until the arrival of the Master, or even better, until the guilty of
laziness and negligence finds himself before God.
That is how the spiritual world presents itself, likely to some, true to
others, scaring some, enchanting others, and that does not deserve excessive
tributes or so much outrage.
When, by the force of things and from experience, we get familiarized
with the phenomenon of the manifestations, as natural as any other, we
will recognize the truthfulness of the information that we have just given
above. The evil power attributed to some spirits has the opposition of the
good power that we can expect from other spirits. Those two forces are
adequate, as everything in nature, without which the equilibrium would
break and the free will would be replaced by fatality, by the blind fate, by
the brute force, unintelligent, by everyone’s death, by the catalepsy of the
universe, by the chaos.
The prohibition of interrogating the spirits is an acknowledgement of
their existence. Identifying them as followers of the devil is the same as
presupposing that there are others who are God’s agents and missionaries.
We agree that the bad ones are in larger number, but there are many other
things like that on Earth. Should we condemn the miners for the fact that
there are many more grains of sand than golden pellets?
When the spirits tell us that they cannot respond to certain questions
of purely personal interest it is a way of justifying their ignorance
about the future. Everything that depends on our own effort, on our own
studies and intellectual researches, cannot be revealed without a breach
of the law that forces the human being to work. It would be very easy for
the first medium that showed up, communicating with a familiar and
complacent spirit, to effortless acquire the whole knowledge, all treasures
and all imaginable power, moving away from all obstacles that the others
have to face with great difficulty. No, the spirits don’t have such a
power and they want to make it clear that they are not allowed to say
anything beyond certain limits. However, they exert great influence upon
the incarnated spirits, towards good or evil. Fortunate are those who are
advised and protected by the good spirits. Everything goes well if they
obey the good inspirations that, as a matter of fact, they would not receive
if not deserved, and for which they pay an equivalent price for the added
success. Anyone who waits for fortune by just lying in bed will not have
much chance to attract it. Everything here depends on intelligent and
honest work, which gives us great internal satisfaction, keeping us from
physical harm, giving us the gift of alleviating the suffering of others,
because there isn’t a medium that in good faith is not a magnetizer and a
healing medium by nature. However, they ignore having such a treasure
and don’t know how to utilize it. Here is where they should be better advised
and more powerfully helped by their good spirits. There have been
miracles like the one that Duke of Celeuza has experienced, Prince Vasto
in the Nocera Cafe in Naples, on June 13th last, which was just published
that he was cured from a supposedly incurable disease that he carried for
over 10 years, through the simple word of an old French knight, to whom he was speaking about his sufferings. There are others who perform these
things in several other countries such as Holland, England, France and
Switzerland. But they shall multiply with time. The germs are sowed.
The mediums, duly warned by earthly spirits about nature, habits and
customs, there is nothing else to do but to behave accordingly. As for the
heavenly spirits or from a transcendental order it is so rare to have them
communicating with people that it is not enough time to talk about them.
They preside over the destinies of nations and the great catastrophes, the
important evolutions of the globes as well as humanity. They work as
we speak. Let us respectfully wait the great things that are still to come:
“Renovabunt faciem terrae”.
Jobard
