Family Conversations from Beyond the Grave - Dr. GlasBorn in Lyon and deceased on February 21st, 1861, at the age of 35 and a
half years old
(Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, April 5th, 1861)
Dr. Glas was a devout spiritist. He succumbed after a painful and long
lasting disease where his suffering was only softened by the hope
which Spiritism comforted him with. His laborious and eventful life was
full of bitter concerns and an initially unknown accident shortened his
existence. He was evoked after his father’s request.
1. (Evocation) – A. I am here.
2. For us it is a real pleasure to be able to communicate with you,
first in order to attend your father and your wife’s wishes but also
considering your knowledge which we hope can benefit us all. –
A. I hope this communication can give consolation to those who
have sympathy for me and that it may be instructive to you.
3. It seems that you have succumbed after enduring a cruel disease.
Could you give us some explanations about its cause and its nature? – A. My disease – now I see clearly – was totally moral
and ended up painfully taking my whole body. As for my sufferings,
they are still very present and I cannot forget. Persistent
work, added to a continual agitation in my brain, which was the
true source of my disease.
OBSERVATION: That answer is confirmed by the following
passage from a letter by his father: “His laborious and eventful
life was full of bitter concerns and an initially unknown accident
shortened his existence.” – This letter had not been read before the
evocation and neither the medium nor the attendees were aware
of that.
4. It also seems that your beliefs helped you to endure the suffering
with courage, for that we congratulate you. – A. I had the consciousness
of a better life. That says it all.
5. Have those beliefs also helped you to speed up your separation? –
A. Infinitely because those spiritualist ideas are the necessary understandings
that keep you away from any terrestrial influence.
6. We kindly ask you to describe to us as precisely as possible the
nature of mental confusion that you have experienced, the duration
and your sensations when you became aware of your condition.
– A. When I died I was perfectly aware of myself and I could
glimpse calmly what so many others fear with much dread. My
passage was short and there was no change in my self-awareness.
I don’t know how long the confusion lasted but when I woke up
I was really dead.
7. At the time when you acknowledged yourself were you isolated? –
A. Yes. As a matter of fact in my heart I was still entirely connected
to Earth. It was only gradually that I saw spirits around me.
8. What is your opinion about your comrades who want to demonstrate
through science that man is formed only by matter and
that there is only the nothingness waiting out there? – A. Pride! They will perhaps be quiet when the time of their death is near; it
is what I wish. Ah! As Lamennais said not long ago there are two
sciences, the good one and the bad one. Theirs is the science that
comes from man, the bad one.
OBSERVATION: The spirit was referring to a communication
that had just been given moments earlier, a proof that he had not
waited for the evocation to come to the session.
9. Are you always close to your wife, your son and your father? – A.
Almost always.
10. Is your feeling now, when you see them, different from what you
had during your life? – A. Death gives a broader vision to the
feelings, like it does to the ideas, but now it is filled with a hopefulness
that man cannot understand on Earth. I love them but I
wish I had them with me. It is particularly due to future hopes
that the spirit must have courage and firmness.
11. Since you are here, can you effortlessly see them at home? – A.
Oh! Perfectly.
OBSERVATION: An inferior spirit could not do that. Only
those who have certain elevation can see different points simultaneously.
The others are still too attached to Earth. Reading this
answer some people would undoubtedly say that it was a good
opportunity for control; that we should have asked the spirit what
his relatives were doing at that very moment and then verify its
accuracy. What would have been our objective then? To make
sure that it was truly a spirit speaking with us? But if it was not a
spirit, the medium was deceiving us. However, that medium has
been providing service to the Society for many years now and we
have never had any occasion for suspicion as far as his good faith
is concerned. Had we done that as a proof of identity it would
not have done us any good because a deceiving spirit would know that as much as an honest one. Thus, the question would have
entered the category of curiosities and proof, always neglected and
never responded by the good spirits. We know from experience
that it is possible but we also know that when a spirit wants to get
into some details they do so spontaneously and when they believe
to be useful and not just to satisfy a whim.
12. Can you distinguish between your spirit and your perispirit?
What difference can you establish between the two? – A. I think
therefore I exist and have a soul, said the philosopher. I know
nothing better than that. As for the perispirit, it is a natural and
vaporous shape, as you know; but seeking the soul is the same as
seeking the absolute spiritual.
13. Do you believe that the faculty of thinking resides in the perispirit?
In a word, that the soul and the perispirit are one and the
same thing? – A. It is absolutely the same thing as asking if your
thought resides in your body. One can be seen; the other can be
felt and conceived.
14. Thus, you are not a vague and undefined being, but limited and
bounded? – A. Limited yes but fast as a thought.
15. Can you kindly determine the place where you are here? – A. To
your left and to the right hand side of the medium.
NOTE: Mr. Allan Kardec is sitting at the place indicated by the
spirit.
16. Were you forced to leave your place and give it to me? – A.
Absolutely; we pass through everything as everything passes
through us; it is the spiritual body.
17. Thus, am I embedded in you? – A. Yes.
18. Why don’t I feel you? – A. Because the fluids that make the perispirit
are very ethereal, not sufficiently material to you. However, through
prayer and will, in a word through faith, the fluids may become more material and heavier, even tangible and that is what happens during
physical manifestations - the conclusion of that mystery.
OBSERVATION: Imagine a light beam that penetrates a dark
room: one can trespass it, be embedded by it without affecting
its form or nature. Although that beam is some sort of matter it
does not offer obstacle to the passage of a denser matter. The same
applies to a column of smoke or vapor that one can go through
without resistance. The difference here is that since vapor is
denser than light it will produce an impression on the body that
doesn’t happen with light.
19. Suppose that you could become visible to the eyes of the assembly
here at this very moment. What would be the effect of our two
bodies like one embedding the other? – A. The effect that you
naturally imagine. Your left side would be less visible than your
right hand side; you would be in a mist, in the fog of the perispirit.
The same would happen to the right hand side of the medium.
20. Now supposing that you could become not only visible but also
tangible, as it sometimes happens. Would that be possible at all,
considering our current layout? – A. I would forcibly change place
a little bit. I would form myself by your side.
21. A short while ago when I asked about visibility you said that you
were between the medium and I then indicating that you would
move to another place. It means that for tangibility it would be
even further away. Wouldn’t that be possible for you to take the
two appearances thus remaining in your original position, keeping
me embedded in you? – A. Absolutely not. I would reconstruct
myself on the side; I cannot become dense at that position;
I cannot stay there but in a misty form.
OBSERVATION: A serious teaching stems out from that explanation.
In the normal state, that is fluid and invisible, the perispirit is perfectly permeable to solid matter. In the state of visibility
there is already the beginning of condensation that makes
the perispirit less penetrable. In the state of tangibility condensation
is complete hence there is no penetrability.
22. Do you believe that science one day will submit the perispirit to
the appreciation of the instruments as it is done to other fluids? –
A. Perfectly. You don’t know more than the surface of matter; but
the finesse, the essence is only gradually known. Electricity and
magnetism are the right path.
23. Which other fluids have analogy to the perispirit? – A. Light,
electricity and Oxygen.
24. There is a person here that seems to believe to have been your
schoolmate. Do you recognize that person? – A. I don’t see that.
I don’t remember.
25. That is Mr. Lucien B… from Montbrison who attended college
in Lyon with you. – A. I never thought of meeting you as well. I
have done some serious studies on the Earth but can assure you
that my studies as a spirit are much more serious. I thank you a
thousand times for your kind remembrance.
