We have often seen Spirits who believe themselves to be still alive, because their fluidic body seems tangible to them, like their material body; here is one in an unusual position: while not believing himself dead, he is aware of his intangibility; but since he was profoundly materialistic in his lifetime, in belief and lifestyle, he believes to be dreaming, and everything he has been told was unable to draw him out from that mistake, so convinced he was that everything ends with the body. He was a man of great wit, a distinguished writer, whom we will refer to as
Louis. He was part of the entourage of notables who left for the spiritual world last December. A few years ago, he came to our house where he witnessed several cases of mediumship; in particular, he saw a somnambulist who gave him clear
evidence of lucidity, on things that were all personal to him, but that still did not convince him of the existence of a spiritual principle.
In a session of Mr. Desliens' group on December 22
nd, he spontaneously came to communicate through one of the mediums, Mr. Leymarie, without anyone thinking of him. He had been dead for about eight days. Here is what he wrote:
“What a singular dream!... I feel driven by a whirlwind whose direction I do not understand... A few friends I thought were dead invited me for a walk, and here we are. Where are we going?... Here we are! What a strange joke! In a Spiritist group!... Ah! What a funny farce, seeing these good people conscientiously brought together!... I know one of these figures... Where did I see him? I don't know... (It was Mr. Desliens who was at the above-mentioned gathering). Perhaps at the house of that brave man Allan Kardec, who once wanted to prove to me that I had a soul, by making me feel immortality. But they uselessly appealed to the Spirits, the souls, everything failed; like in those over prepared dinners, all served dishes were wrong, very wrong. I was never suspicious, however, of the good faith of the high priest; I believe him to be an honest man, but a proud victim of the Spirits of the so-called erraticity. I heard you, ladies, and gentlemen, and I offer you my profound respects. You write, it seems to me, and your agile hands will, no doubt, transcribe the thought of the invisible!... innocent spectacle!... crazy dream that I have there! Here is one who writes what I say to myself... But you are not funny at all, nor are my friends, who have compassionate faces like yours. (The Spirits of those who had died before him, and that he believed to see in a dream). Hey! It is surely a strange mania among this valiant French people! It has been at once precluded from education, from the law, the rights, the freedom to think, and that brave people dives into visions and dreams. The country of the Gaul daydreams and it is wonderful to see it acting! Yet here they are in search of an insoluble problem, condemned by science, by thinkers, by workers!... they lack education... Ignorance is Loyola's law widely enforced... They have before them all the freedoms; they can do all sorts of abuse, destroy them, finally become their master, manly master, thrifty, serious, legal, and like children in their diapers, they need religion, a pope, a parish priest, the first communion, the baptism, the baby walker in everything and always. They need pacifiers, these big children, and the Spiritist or spiritualist groups give them some. Ah! If there really was a grain of truth in your elucubrations, but there would be, for a materialist, matter for suicide!... Look! I lived long; I despised the flesh, I revolted it; I laughed at the duties of family, friendship. Passionate, I have used and abused all voluptuousness, and that with the conviction that I obeyed the attractions of matter, the only true law on your Earth, and that I will renew when I wake up, with the same fury, the same ardor, the same skills. From a friend, a neighbor, I will take his wife, his daughter, or his pupil, whatever, provided that being immersed in the delights of matter, I pay homage to this divinity, master of all human actions. But if I were wrong?... if I let the truth pass?... if, really, there were other previous lives and successive existences after death?... if the Spirit were a vivacious, eternal, progressive personality, laughing at death, tempering itself in what we call trial?... then would there be a God of justice and goodness?... I would be a wretched... and the materialist school, guilty of a crime against the state, would have sought to decapitate the truth, the reason!... I would be, or rather we would be profound scoundrels, supposedly liberals!... Oh! then, if you were with the truth, I would shoot my own brain when I woke up, as truly as my name is …” In the session of the Parisian Society, on January 8
th, the same Spirit manifested again, not in writing, but through speech, using the body of Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism. He spoke for an hour, and it was a very curious scene, for the medium took his pose, his gestures, his voice, his language, to the point that those who had known him recognized him without difficulty. The conversation was carefully annotated and faithfully reproduced, but its extent does not allow us to publish it. Besides, it was only the development of his thesis; to all the objections and questions that were addressed to him, he pretended to explain everything by the state of dreaming, and naturally got lost in a maze of sophisms. He himself recalled the main episodes of the session to which he had alluded in his written communication, and said:
"I was quite right to say that everything had failed. Hold on, here's the proof. I asked this question: Is there a God? Well! all your so-called Spirits answered positively. You see that they were at the margin of truth, and that they don't know any more than you do.” One question, however, embarrassed him greatly, so he constantly sought exits to evade it; it was this:
The body by which you speak to us is not yours, for it is slim, and yours was fat. Where is your real body? It is not here, because you are not at home. When you dream you are in bed; so, go and see in your bed if your body is there, and tell us how it is that you can be here without your body?
Pushed to the limit by such repeated questions, he answered only with these words: "
Strange effects of dreams," he finally said: "
I see that you would like to wake me up; Leave me alone.” Since then, he still believes to be dreaming.
In another session, a Spirit gave the following communication about the phenomenon:
“
This is a substitution of person, a disguise. The incarnate Spirit has freedom or falls into inaction. I say inaction, that is, contemplation of what is happening. He is in the position of a man who momentarily lends his home, and who attends the different scenes that are played there with the help of his furniture. If he wishes, he can enjoy his freedom, unless he is interested in remaining as a spectator. It is not uncommon for a Spirit to act and speak with the body of another; you must understand the possibility of this phenomenon, while you know that the Spirit can withdraw with his perispirit somewhat far from his bodily envelope. When this happens without any Spirit taking the opportunity to occupy that place, there is catalepsy. When a Spirit desires to do so in order to act and for a moment take part in the incarnation, he unites his own perispirit to the sleeping body, awakens it by such contact and returns movement to the machine; but the movements, the voice are no longer the same, because the fluids of the perispirit no longer affect the nervous system in the same way as the real occupant. That occupation can never be definitive; this would require the absolute disintegration of the first perispirit, that would necessarily lead to death. It cannot even be of long duration, because the new perispirit having not been united with this body since its formation, it has no roots there; not being modeled on this body, it is not suitable for the interplay of organs; the invading Spirit is not in a normal position; he is embarrassed in his movements, and that is why he leaves that borrowed outfit, for he no longer needs it. As for the specific position of the Spirit in question, he did not come voluntarily into the body he used to speak; he was attracted there by the Spirit of Morin himself, who wanted to enjoy his embarrassment; the other, because he gave in to the secret desire of showing off once again as a skeptic and mocker, seizing the opportunity offered to him. The somewhat ridiculous role he played, so to speak despite himself, in uttering sophisms to explain his position, is a kind of humiliation whose bitterness he will feel when he wakes up, and that will be beneficial to him.” Note. The awakening of this Spirit cannot fail to give rise to instructive observations. In his lifetime, as we have seen, he was a kind of sensualist-materialist; he would never have accepted Spiritism. Men in that category seek the consolations of life in the pleasures of matter; they are not of the Büchner school by study, but because that doctrine frees them from the constraint imposed by spirituality, according to them it must be in the truth. For them Spiritism is not a blessing, but an embarrassment; there is no evidence that can succeed over their obstinacy; they reject them, less out of conviction than out of fear that it is a truth.
