Questions
A. Does God perform miracles?
B. Is the supernatural in the foundation of all religions, including Christianity?
C. How can we give people an idea of the power of God without accepting miracles?
Text for reading
767. Since the perispirit of incarnates is of a nature identical to the spiritual fluids, it assimilates them easily like a sponge soaking up a liquid. These fluids exert an action upon the perispirit all the more direct since, due to its expansion and radiation, the perispirit is mixed together with them.
768. As the fluids act upon the perispirit, it in turn reacts upon the physical organism, with which it is in molecular contact. If its emanations are good in nature, the body gets a healthy feeling from them; if they are evil, the feeling is painful. If the evil emanations are continuous and fierce, they can cause physical disorders; certain diseases have no other cause.
769. The environments where evil spirits abound are thus impregnated with harmful fluids, which are absorbed by all the perispirit’s pores just as pestilent miasmas are absorbed by the pores of the body. This is what explains the effects that are produced in meeting places.
770. A gathering is a focal point where different thoughts radiate. It is like an orchestra, a choir of thoughts, where each one produces a note. The result is a multitude of fluidic currents and emanations, from which each participant receives an impression through the spiritual sense just as in a musical choir each singer receives the impression of sounds through the hearing sense. However, just as there are harmonious and discordant sounds, there are also harmonious and discordant thoughts.
771. If the group is harmonious, the impression is pleasant; if it is discordant, the impression is uncomfortable. Moreover, there is no need for thought to be formulated using words; the fluidic radiation exists nonetheless, whether expressed or not. Such is the cause for the feeling of satisfaction that is experienced in a sympathetic meeting animated by good and benevolent thoughts. There, a healthy moral atmosphere reigns where one may breathe easily; there, one feels comforted because he or she is imbued with healthy fluidic emanations.
772. But if there is a mixture of a few bad thoughts, they produce the effect of a current of icy air in a warm environment or a wrong note in a concerto. This also explains the anxiousness, the indefinable ill-at-ease feeling that may occur in an antipathetic environment, where malevolent thoughts provoke currents of nauseating fluid.
773. Thought thus produces a kind of physical effect that reacts upon one’s moral state — something that Spiritism alone can make comprehensible. Persons feel this instinctively, since they look for homogenous or sympathetic meetings where they know they can absorb new moral strength. One could say that in such meetings they recuperate the fluidic losses suffered daily due to the radiation of thought, just as through nourishment they recuperate the losses of the physical body. Actually, thought is an emission that causes a real loss of spiritual fluids, and, consequently, physical fluids, in such a way that persons need to re-strengthen themselves in the emanations they receive from the outside.
774, When one says that doctors heal their patients with good words, this is an absolute truth, for a benevolent thought brings with it reparatory fluids that act as much upon the physical as the mental state.
775. It is of course possible, one might say, to avoid persons known to be ill-intentioned, but how can we avoid the influence of the evil spirits who swarm around us and intrude everywhere without being seen! The way to do so is quite simple, because it depends on the will of persons themselves, who bear within them the necessary protection.
776. Fluids are combined due to the similarity of their natures; dissimilar fluids repel one another. There is incompatibility between good and bad fluids, just as there is between water and oil. What do we do when the air is contaminated? We cleanse it and purify it by destroying the concentration of the miasmas, by expelling the malevolent emanations with stronger currents of healthy air. The invasion of deleterious fluids must therefore be opposed with good fluids, and since we all have in our own perispirit a permanent fluidic source, we have the remedy within us. It takes nothing more than purifying this source and giving it such qualities that it may become a repellant of bad influences instead of being an attracting force.
777. The perispirit is therefore armor that must be given the best possible caliber. Thus, because the qualities of the perispirit result from the qualities of the soul, it is necessary to work on improving it, because it is the soul’s imperfections that attract evil spirits. Flies go where concentrations of decay attract them; destroy the concentrations and the flies will disappear. Similarly, evil spirits go where evil attracts them; eliminate the evil and they will stay away. Truly good spirits, whether incarnate or discarnate, have nothing to fear from the influence of evil ones.
778. Explanation of certain phenomena reputed to be supernatural - The perispirit is the link between the corporeal and spirit life. It is through it that the incarnate spirit is in a continuous relationship with discarnate spirits. In sum, it is through the perispirit that special phenomena occur in certain humans. The primary cause of these phenomena is not to be found in tangible matter, and for that reason they might appear to be supernatural.
779. It is in the properties and radiation of the perispiritual fluids that one must search for the cause of second sight or spirit sight, which may also be called psychic sight, with which many persons are endowed, frequently without their being aware of it, just as occurs with somnambulistic sight.
780. The perispirit is the spirit’s sensory organ; through its intermediation the incarnate spirit perceives spirit-related things that are outside the corporeal senses. Through the body’s organs, sight, hearing and the various other sensations are localized and limited to the perception of physical things. Through the spiritual or psychic sense they are generalized; that is, the spirit sees, hears and feels in its entire being everything that is within the sphere of its perispiritual fluidic radiation.
781. In humans, such phenomena are the manifestation of the spirit life; the soul is acting outside the organism. In second sight, or perception through the psychic sense, they do not see through the eyes of the body, although often, out of habit, they direct them toward the point on which they have set their attention. They see through the eyes of the soul, the proof of this being that they see just as well with their eyes closed and they also see beyond the reach of their line of vision.
782. Although during life the spirit is held captive to the body by the perispirit, it is not so enslaved that it cannot stretch its chain and go to a distant point, whether on the earth or in space. The spirit is only reluctantly attached to its body, because its normal life is one of freedom, whereas its corporeal life is that of a serf attached to the glebe. Consequently, the spirit is happy upon leaving its body, like a bird leaving its cage; it seizes every occasion to free itself from it, and hence takes advantage of every instant in which its presence is not needed for its life of relationships.
783. This is the phenomenon designated by the name emancipation of the soul; it always occurs during sleep. Every time the body is at rest, when the senses are inactive, the spirit disengages itself. During these moments, the spirit lives the spirit life, whereas the body lives only the vegetative life. It is partly in the state it will be in after death: it travels space and converses with its friends and other spirits who are either discarnate or incarnate.
784. The fluidic tie that holds the spirit to the body is permanently broken only at death, and complete separation occurs only with the absolute extinction of the vital principle’s activity. While the body is alive, the spirit, whatever distance away it might be, is instantly called back once its presence is necessary. It then resumes the course of its outward life of relationships.
785. Sometimes, upon waking, it retains a memory of its pilgrimages: a precise or imprecise image, which comprises the dream. In any event, it brings back intuitions that suggest new ideas and thoughts justifying the proverb: The night brings counsel.
786. This also explains certain characteristic phenomena such as natural and magnetic somnambulism, catalepsy, lethargy, ecstasy, etc., which are none other than manifestations of the spirit life.
787. Since spirit sight does not operate by means of the eyes of the body, it follows that the perception of things does not occur by means of ordinary light. In fact, material light is made for the material world; for the spirit world there is a special light whose nature is unknown to us, but which is undoubtedly one of the properties of the ethereal fluid impacting the visual perceptions of the soul.
788. Thus, there is material light and spiritual light. The former has focal points circumscribed in luminous objects, whereas the latter has its focal point everywhere. That is why there are no obstacles to spirit sight; it is limited by neither distance nor opacity of matter; darkness does not exist for it. The spirit world is therefore illuminated by spirit light, which has its own effects, just as the physical world is illuminated by the sun light.
789. Enveloped by its perispirit, the soul thus carries its own luminous principle, and since it penetrates matter due to its ethereal essence, there are no objects opaque to its sight. Nevertheless, spirit sight entails neither the same extent nor the same penetration in all spirits. Only pure spirits possess spirit sight in all its power. In low order spirits it is weakened by the relative density of the perispirit, which imposes itself like a kind of fog.
790. Spirit sight manifests to different degrees in incarnate spirits through the phenomenon of second sight, whether in natural or magnetic somnambulism or whether in the waking state. According to the degree of this faculty’s power, it is said that its lucidity is greater or lesser. It is with the help of this faculty that certain persons can see inside the human body and describe the causes of illnesses.
791. Spirit sight therefore provides special perceptions that are not centered in the physical organs but rather operate under different conditions than corporeal sight. That is why one cannot expect identical effects from it or experiment with it using the same procedures. Since it occurs outside the organism, it has a mobility that frustrates all predictions. It is necessary to study it as to its effects and causes, and not compare it to ordinary sight, which it is not meant to replace except in exceptional cases that are not to be taken as the general rule.
792. Spirit sight is necessarily incomplete and imperfect in incarnate spirits, and consequently it is subject to aberrations. Since its seat is in the soul itself, the state of the soul must influence the perceptions it provides. According to the degree of its development, the circumstances and the moral state of the individual, spirit sight can provide either during sleep or during the waking state:
1) The perception of certain real physical events, such as knowledge of events that occur far away, details describing a locality, the causes of an illness and appropriate remedies;
2) The perception of things equally real in the spirit world, such as being able to see spirits;
3) Fantastic images created by the imagination, analogous to the fluidic creations of thought. Such creations always go hand in hand with the moral dispositions of the spirit that creates them. It is thus that the thoughts of persons who are strongly imbued and preoccupied with certain religious beliefs portray hell, its furnaces, its tortures and its demons just as they imagine them to be. Sometimes it is an entire epopee. Pagans saw Olympus and Tartarus just as Christians saw heaven and hell. If upon waking or upon leaving the ecstatic state such individuals retain an exact memory of their visions, they take them as realities and confirmations of their beliefs, whereas they are nothing more than a product of their own thoughts.
793. Hence, ecstatic visions must be strictly examined before accepting them. Under this aspect, the remedy for excessive credulity is the study of the laws that govern the spirit world.
Answer Key
A. Does God perform miracles?
No. God does not perform miracles, because, since the divine laws are perfect, God has no need to derogate from them.
Since miracles are not necessary for the glorification of God, nothing in the universe deviates from the general laws. Of course, nothing is impossible to the Creator, it can indeed work miracles. But why would the? To attest to God’s power, it is said. However, does not God’s power manifest much more impressively through the magnificent whole of the works of creation, through the providential wisdom presiding over the tiniest parts as well as the greatest, and through the harmony of the laws that govern the universe, than through a few tiny and childish derogations. (Genesis, Ch. XIII, items 15 and 16)
B. Is the supernatural in the foundation of all religions, including Christianity?
To insist that the supernatural is the necessary foundation of all religion, that it is the cornerstone of the Christian edifice, is to uphold a dangerous thesis. Making the bases of Christianity rest on the sole base of the extraordinary is to give it a fragile support, whose stones are coming loose every day. This thesis, of which eminent theologians have made themselves defenders, leads directly to the conclusion that, at a given time, religion will no longer be possible, not even the Christian religion, if what is considered supernatural were shown to be natural. Spiritism considers the Christian religion from a more elevated point of view. It gives it a more solid base than miracles: the immutable laws of God, which govern both the spiritual principle and the material principle. (Genesis, Ch. XIII, item 18)
C. How can we give people an idea of the power of God without accepting miracles?
Then men will be truly religious, rationally religious, much more than believing in stones sweating blood, or statues flashing eyes and shed tears.
Does one wish to give people, the unlearned, the poor in spirit an idea of God’s power?
Show them that the infinite wisdom presides over everything: in the admirable organism of everything that lives, the fructification of plants, and the appropriation of all the parts of each being for its needs according to the environment into which it has been called to live.
Show them God’s goodness in God’s kindness for all creatures no matter how tiny they may be; in God’s providence; in the reason for each thing to exist, none of which are useless, and in the good that always comes out of an apparent and temporary evil.
Especially, enable them to understand that true evil is the work of human beings and not of God. Do not seek to scare them with a picture of eternal flames, which they no longer believe in and which makes them question God’s goodness; instead, encourage them with the certainty that they will be able someday to redeem themselves and right the evil they might have committed. Finally, teach them to read the book of nature that is constantly open right in front of them; in that inexhaustible book, where the wisdom and goodness of the Creator is inscribed on each page. Then they will comprehend that a Being who is so great and concerned about everything, who watches over everything and foresees everything, must be supremely powerful. Then, men and women will be truly religious and rationally religious especially, much more so than if they believe in stones that sweat blood or statues that blink their eyes and shed tears. (Genesis, Ch. XIII, item 19)
