“A vain man is to himself and his own intelligence as despicable as pitiful. He keeps the truth away from his eyes, replacing it by his own personal arguments and convictions that he sees infallible and undisputable because they are of his own. A vain man is always selfish and selfishness is the plague of humanity. He shows his insignificance by neglecting the rest of the world. By denying truths that are new to him he also shows the narrowness of his intelligence, perverted by his obstinacy, which in turn increases his vanity and selfishness. Unfortunate is the man who is dominated by these two enemies. When he wakes up from such a state when the truth and light will then be shed upon him from all sides and then only a miserable creature will be seen, someone that madness tried to raise above humanity in his Earthly life, and who will actually be below certain modest and simple people who he thought to be their inferior. You must be humble in your hearts, you who have been endowed by God’s spiritual gifts. Do not think that the merit is yours as much the credit for the work done is not of the utensils used but of the worker. Remember that you are no more than God’s instruments to manifest his Omnipotent Spirit to the world and there is no reason for you to be flattered. Ah! So many mediums become vain instead of humble as their gifts develop! That is a delay in the general progress since instead of being humble and passive the medium frequently repels important communications, out of pure vanity and pride, communications that will come to light through others who are worthy. God does not take into account the worldly position of someone in order to confer that person with the sacred spirit; much to the contrary, for God many times raises the lowly amongst the humble endowing him with the greatest gifts so that the world can see that it is not man but the spirit of God that makes miracles through man. As I said, the medium is a simple instrument of the Great Creator of all things and he is the one to be glorified; He is the one to be thanked for His endless benevolence.
I would also like to say a word about envy and jealousy that is often found amongst the mediums and that is necessary to remove like the weed and as soon as it sprouts, otherwise it can abate the good vegetation around. Envy is as much damaging to the medium as pride, again requiring the same testimony of humility. I say even that it demonstrates a lack of common sense. It is not by being envious of your neighbor’s gifts that you will receive similar ones; if God gives a lot to some rest assured that His reasons are well founded. Envy spoils the heart; it even muffles the best feelings in you; it is thus an enemy that can only be defeated with a lot of effort for there is no truce once envy is with us. That is applicable to every circumstance of your Earthly life but I here refer in particular to envy among mediums, something as much unfounded as ridiculous, a demonstration of man’s weakness when enslaved by passions.”
Luos
OBSERVATION: A discussion was established after reading this latest communication at the Society, comparing envy among mediums to that among the somnambulists. One of the members, Mr. D…, said that in his opinion the same happens among the somnambulists who cannot dissimulate their feelings when in the somnambulistic state.
Mr. Allan Kardec counters that opinion saying: “Envy seems to be inherent to the somnambulistic state due to a factor that is difficult to understand and that the somnambulists themselves cannot explain. Such feeling occurs among somnambulists who only show benevolence to one another when in their wake state. With the mediums it is far from natural and it is evidently related to the moral character of each person. One medium is the envy of another because it is in his nature to be envious. Such wickedness, son of pride and selfishness, is essentially harmful to the purity of the communications, while the most envious somnambulist can be very lucid and it can be easily understood. The somnambulist sees things by himself. It is his spirit that separates and acts. He does not need anybody else. The medium, on the contrary, is just an intermediary, receiving everything from strange spirits, and his personality is much less at play than that of the somnambulist. The spirits sympathize with a given medium for his qualities or his vices; now, the most repulsive defects to the good spirits are pride, selfishness and envy. Experience tells us that the mediumistic faculty is independent of the moral qualities; it thus can be found, like the somnambulistic one, in the highest degree in the most mischievous creature. However, the opposite happens with respect to the sympathies from the good spirits, who communicate more naturally and easily the purer the intermediary in charge of transmitting their thoughts is, the more sincere and the more distant from the bad spirits the medium is. They do the same with that respect as we do when we have someone as our confidante. In particular with respect to envy, as this is present in almost all somnambulists and it is much rarer with the mediums, it seems that it is a rule with the former and an exception with the latter, from what we must conclude that the cause must be different for each case.”
