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Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1867 > May > Spiritist Dissertations > Spiritist Dissertations
Spiritist Dissertations
Spiritual Life
Group Lampérière, January 9th, 1867 – medium Mr. Delanne
Spiritual Life
Group Lampérière, January 9th, 1867 – medium Mr. Delanne
“I am here, happy to come and greet you, encourage you and tell you this:
Brothers, God fills you with his blessings, promising you, in these times of disbelief, to breathe deeply the air of spiritual life that blows vigorously through the compact masses.
Believe your former member, believe your intimate friend, your brother by heart, thoughts, and faith; believe in the truths that are taught: they are as certain as logical; believe in me who, a few days ago, contented myself, like you do, with believing and hoping, while today, the sweet fiction is for me an immense and deep truth. I touch, I see, I am, I possess, therefore, this exists; I analyze my impressions from today and compare them to those still fresh from the day before.
Not only am I allowed to compare, to synthesize, to weigh in my actions, my thoughts, my reflections, to judge them by the criterion of my common sense, but I see them, I feel them, I am an eyewitness, I am the realized thing; they are no longer consoling hypotheses, golden dreams, hopes, it is more than a moral certainty: it is the real, tangible fact, the material fact that we touch, that grasps us in its tangible form, and says: that is.
Here, everything breathes calm, wisdom, happiness; everything is harmony, everything says: This is the pinnacle of intimate sense; no more chimeras, false joys, no more childish fears, no more false shame, no more doubts, no more anxieties, no more falsehoods, no more this ugly procession of fabulous sorrows, of gross mistakes, as we see every day on Earth.
Here, one is instilled with an ineffable tranquility; we admire, we pray, we worship, we render thanksgiving to the sublime author of so many benefits, we study, and we catch a glimpse of all the infinite powers; we see the movement of the laws that govern nature. Each work has a goal that leads to love, the tuning fork of the general harmony. We see progress presiding over all physical and moral transformations, for progress is infinite, like God that created it. Everything is understandable; everything is neat, precise; no more abstractions, for we touch with our fingers and our reason the why of human things. The advanced spiritual legions have only one goal, that of becoming useful to their backward brethren, to raise them up to them.
So, work without stopping, according to your own strength, my good brothers, to improve yourself, to be useful to your fellow human beings; not only will you take the doctrine, that is your joy, a step, but you will also have contributed powerfully to the progress of your planet; following the example of the great Christian legislator, you will be men, men of love, and you will help to establish the reign of God on Earth.
The one that is still, and more than ever, your fellow student.
Leclerc.”
Observation: Such, in fact, is the character of the spiritual life; but it would be a mistake to believe that it is enough to be a Spirit to consider it from this point of view. It is with the spiritual world, as it is with the corporeal world: in order to appreciate things from a high order, an intellectual and moral development is necessary, that is peculiar only to advanced Spirits; belated Spirits are foreign to what takes place in the high spiritual spheres, as they were, on Earth, to what is esteemed by enlightened men, because they cannot understand it; since their thought is circumscribed to a limited horizon, they are not able to embrace the infinite, they cannot have the pleasures that result from the widening of the sphere of spiritual activity. The sum of happiness, in the world of the Spirits, is therefore, by the very nature of things, proportional to the development of the moral sense; hence, it follows that by working down here for our improvement and our instruction, we increase the sources of happiness for the future life. For the materialist, work has only a limited result to the present life, that can end at any moment; the Spiritist, on the contrary, knows that nothing that he acquires, even at the last hour, is wasted, and that any accomplished progress will be beneficial to him.
The profound considerations of our former colleague, Mr. Leclerc, on the spiritual life, are therefore proof of his advancement in the hierarchy of the Spirits, and we congratulate him for that.
Brothers, God fills you with his blessings, promising you, in these times of disbelief, to breathe deeply the air of spiritual life that blows vigorously through the compact masses.
Believe your former member, believe your intimate friend, your brother by heart, thoughts, and faith; believe in the truths that are taught: they are as certain as logical; believe in me who, a few days ago, contented myself, like you do, with believing and hoping, while today, the sweet fiction is for me an immense and deep truth. I touch, I see, I am, I possess, therefore, this exists; I analyze my impressions from today and compare them to those still fresh from the day before.
Not only am I allowed to compare, to synthesize, to weigh in my actions, my thoughts, my reflections, to judge them by the criterion of my common sense, but I see them, I feel them, I am an eyewitness, I am the realized thing; they are no longer consoling hypotheses, golden dreams, hopes, it is more than a moral certainty: it is the real, tangible fact, the material fact that we touch, that grasps us in its tangible form, and says: that is.
Here, everything breathes calm, wisdom, happiness; everything is harmony, everything says: This is the pinnacle of intimate sense; no more chimeras, false joys, no more childish fears, no more false shame, no more doubts, no more anxieties, no more falsehoods, no more this ugly procession of fabulous sorrows, of gross mistakes, as we see every day on Earth.
Here, one is instilled with an ineffable tranquility; we admire, we pray, we worship, we render thanksgiving to the sublime author of so many benefits, we study, and we catch a glimpse of all the infinite powers; we see the movement of the laws that govern nature. Each work has a goal that leads to love, the tuning fork of the general harmony. We see progress presiding over all physical and moral transformations, for progress is infinite, like God that created it. Everything is understandable; everything is neat, precise; no more abstractions, for we touch with our fingers and our reason the why of human things. The advanced spiritual legions have only one goal, that of becoming useful to their backward brethren, to raise them up to them.
So, work without stopping, according to your own strength, my good brothers, to improve yourself, to be useful to your fellow human beings; not only will you take the doctrine, that is your joy, a step, but you will also have contributed powerfully to the progress of your planet; following the example of the great Christian legislator, you will be men, men of love, and you will help to establish the reign of God on Earth.
The one that is still, and more than ever, your fellow student.
Leclerc.”
Observation: Such, in fact, is the character of the spiritual life; but it would be a mistake to believe that it is enough to be a Spirit to consider it from this point of view. It is with the spiritual world, as it is with the corporeal world: in order to appreciate things from a high order, an intellectual and moral development is necessary, that is peculiar only to advanced Spirits; belated Spirits are foreign to what takes place in the high spiritual spheres, as they were, on Earth, to what is esteemed by enlightened men, because they cannot understand it; since their thought is circumscribed to a limited horizon, they are not able to embrace the infinite, they cannot have the pleasures that result from the widening of the sphere of spiritual activity. The sum of happiness, in the world of the Spirits, is therefore, by the very nature of things, proportional to the development of the moral sense; hence, it follows that by working down here for our improvement and our instruction, we increase the sources of happiness for the future life. For the materialist, work has only a limited result to the present life, that can end at any moment; the Spiritist, on the contrary, knows that nothing that he acquires, even at the last hour, is wasted, and that any accomplished progress will be beneficial to him.
The profound considerations of our former colleague, Mr. Leclerc, on the spiritual life, are therefore proof of his advancement in the hierarchy of the Spirits, and we congratulate him for that.