Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1868

Among the books of high religiousness whose authors, imbued with true Christian ideas, treat all religious and abstract questions with an enlightened zeal, free from prejudice and fanaticism, one of those that enjoy in Germany a very high esteem in Germany, deserved in all respects, is unquestionably the one entitled Hours of Piety (Stunden der Andacht), by G. Tschokke, a distinguished Swiss writer, author of many literary works, written in German and much appreciated in Germany; this book has made more than forty editions since 1815. The so-called Orthodox, even Protestants, generally find that this book is too liberal in its ideas, in matters of religion, and that the author does not rely enough on the dogmas and decisions of the Councils; but the enlightened believers, those who seek the consolations of religion and desire to acquire the necessary enlightenment to understand its truths, after having read and meditated on it, will do full justice to the enlightenment and touching piousness of the author.



We give here the translation of two meditations contained in this remarkable book, because they contain quite Spiritist ideas, exposed with perfect accuracy, more than fifty years ago. In both we find a very exact and admirably elaborated definition of the spiritual body or perispirit, very sound and very lucid ideas on the resurrection, and the plurality of existences, through which the great light of the sublime doctrine of reincarnation is already projected, this cornerstone of modern Spiritism.

W. Foelkner





141^st Meditation

Of birth and death



Both birth and death are surrounded by impenetrable darkness. No one knows where they came from, when God called them; no one knows where they are going to, when God calls them. Who could tell me if I did not already exist, before taking my current body? What is this body that belongs so little to myself, that during an existence of fifty years, I would have changed it several times like an outfit? I no longer have the same flesh and the same blood that I had at the breast, in the years of my youth and at the age of maturity; the parts of my body that belonged to me during the first age, have already been dissolved and evaporated for a long time. The Spirit alone remains the same during all the variations that its earthly envelope undergoes. Why would I need the body that I had as a very young child, in my life? If I existed before that, where was I? And when I get rid of my current garments, where will I be? Nobody answers me. I came here as if by a miracle and it is by a miracle that I will disappear. Birth and death remind man of this truth so often forgotten by him, that he is under the power of God.



But, at the same time, this truth is a consolation. The power of God is the power of wisdom, the enchantment of love. If the beginning and the end of my life are shrouded in darkness, I must think that it must be a blessing for me, as everything that comes from God is blessing and grace. When all around me proclaims his supreme wisdom and infinite goodness, can I believe that the darkness that surrounds the cradle and the coffin are the only exceptions? Is it possible that I have already existed once, several times even? Who knows the mysteries of the nature of the Spirits?^[1] Wouldn’t my presence on Earth be perhaps a faint image of the eternal existence? Don't I already see here my passage from eternity into eternity, as in an opaque mirror?



Dare I lull myself to strange forebodings? Would this life really be a miniature image of the eternal existence? What if I already had several existences, if each of my existences is a waking hour of the childhood of my Spirit, and each change of its envelope, of its relations or what is called death is a break for an awakening with new strength? It is true that it is impossible for me to know how many times and how I lived before God called me to my present existence; but does the breastfeeding child know more than I do about his first hours? Has he lost so much for not being able to remember his first laugh and his first tears? When he is older, he will not remember it anymore, of course, but he will know what he was in his early years; he will know that he smiled, that he cried, that he watched, slept, dreamed, just like the others.



If it is possible here on Earth, why would it be impossible that one day, after a more elevated journey of my immortal Spirit, it can remember and analyze his voyage, the different circumstances in which he found himself during his journey, and in the worlds that he has inhabited? How old am I now? I am still like the child that after one hour forgets the events of the previous hour and is not in a condition to keep the memory of a dream that transported it to the external life, detaching it from the previous wakening state; but I am like the child that at least knows how to recognize its parents. It forgets the pleasures and sorrows of the past moment; but the child recognizes their cherished features again, at every awakening. It is like so with me: I also recognize my Father, my God in the All-Eternal. I would have looked for him with my own eyes, I would have called him, even when no one had told me about him; for the remembrance of the heavenly Father is said to be innate in every man. All peoples keep this memory, even the wildest whose solitary islands, bathed by the ocean, were never approached by civilized travelers. Innate, they say; we should perhaps say inherited, transported from a previous life, just as the little child carries the memory of his mother over, from a previous awakening to a later one.



But I fall into dreams! Who can approve or reject them? They are like the first vague and faint memories a child has of something that seems to have taken place in his past waking moments. Our boldest assumptions, even when we believe them to be true, are but fleeting and confused reflections of our feelings from a forgotten past. Besides, I do not reproach myself for them. Even supposing them to be chimerical, they cheer me up, for looking at our earthly life like an hour of a lactating child, what a vast and immeasurable prospect of eternity unfolds before me! What will then be the more advanced youth, the full maturity of my immortal Spirit, when I have many more times still watched, slept, and ascended a greater number of degrees of the spiritual ladder?



The day of earthly death will then become my new birthday to a higher and more perfect life, the beginning of a sleep that will be followed by a refreshing awakening. Divine grace will smile at me with a love greater than the affection with which an earthly mother smiles at her child awakened from sleep, when he opens his eyes.





143^rd Meditation

Of the transfiguration after death



If I have the right of bourgeoisie in two worlds, if I belong not only to earthly life, but also to spiritual life, it is very forgivable, I think, to sometimes occupy myself with what awaits me in the latter, to which a vague ardor constantly attracts me ... In good will I entertain myself with the memory of those that were dear to me, and that death has taken away, as with those who, in this world, fill me with joy by their presence, for the former have not ceased to exist, although deprived of a material body. The destruction of the body does not carry the destruction of the Spirit. I continue to cherish you, my absent friends, my dear deceased! Can I fear not to equally be the object of your affection? Certainly not. No mortal has the power to separate Spirits united by God, just as much as no tomb has such power.



Although the fate that awaits me in another world is hidden from me, I believe I am allowed to sometimes meditate on this subject and to try to guess, by what I see here, what could happen to me there. If we are refused to see on Earth, we must try to nurture the faith in us that vivifies everything. - Jesus Christ often spoke in lofty allegories, of the state of the soul after the death of the body, and his disciples also liked to discuss this subject with their confidants, as well as with those that doubted the possibility of the resurrection of the dead.



The doctrine of the resurrection of the body has been one of the oldest in the Jewish religion. The Pharisees taught it, but in a crude and material way, claiming that all the bodies buried in the tombs, were necessarily to one day become the envelope and the instrument of the Spirits who had animated them during their earthly life – an opinion that was fully refuted by another Jewish religious party, the Sadducees.



Christ, one day engaged in pronouncing between these two opposing opinions, demonstrated that the two Jewish religious parties had arrived, out of aberrations, at quite opposite errors; that the immortality of the soul, that is, the continuation of its existence in the next world, or the resurrection of the dead, could and will infallibly occur, without having to be a grossly material resurrection of bodies , provided with all the requirements and all the earthly senses necessary for their conservation and reproduction. The Sadducees recognized the truth of his words. “Master, you answered very well, they said. (Luke; chapter XX, v. 27 to 39).



What Jesus rarely discussed publicly in detail became the subject of his intimate conversations with his disciples. They had the same ideas as him about the state of the soul after death and about the Jewish doctrine concerning resurrection. “Fools that you are,” said the apostle Paul, “don’t you see that what you sow does not come to life unless it dies first? And when you sow, you're not sowing the body of the plant that's to be born, but the seed only, like wheat or something. The body, like a seed, is now put in the ground, full of corruption and it will be raised incorruptible. It is put in the ground like an animal body, and it will rise again like a spiritual body. As there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, and corruption will not possess this incorruptible inheritance. (1. Cor., Chap. XV, v. From 37 to 50).



The human body, made up of earthly elements, will return to the earth and enter the elements that make up the bodies of plants, animals, and men. This body is incapable of eternal life; being corruptible, it cannot inherit incorruptibility. A spiritual body will be born from death, that is, the spiritual self will rise as transfigured above the parts of the body struck by death, in greater freedom and provided with a spiritual envelope.



This doctrine of the gospel, as it emerged from the revelations of Jesus and his disciples, corresponds admirably with what we already now know about the nature of man. It is indisputable that the Spirit or the soul, besides his earthly body, is clothed with a spiritual body, that like the reproduction of the flower of a rotten seed, is released by the death of the material body.



It is often said, by allegory, that the sleep is the brother of death; it really is. Sleep is only the retreat of the Spirit or the soul, the temporary abandonment made by it of the exterior and coarser parts of the body. The same takes place at the time of death. During sleep, in those parts of our body abandoned for some time by our higher personality, only vegetative life resides. Man remains in a state of insensitivity, but his blood circulates in his veins, his breathing continues; all the functions of its vegetative life are in full swing, resembling those of the unconscious life of plants.



This temporary retreat from the spiritual element of man seems necessary, from time to time, for the latter ends up destroying itself, so to speak, by too prolonged use, and weakens in service to the spirit. Vegetative life, abandoned to itself, and left at rest by the activity of the Spirit, can then continue to work unhindered for its restoration, according to the laws of matter. That is why, following a healthy sleep, we feel our body rested and our Spirit rejoices; but after death, the vegetative life also abandons the material elements of the body, that were bonded by that, and they disaggregate.



The abandoned body of the Spirit or of the soul may, in some cases, appear to us alive, even when true death has already been accomplished, that is, when the spiritual element has already left it. The corpse abandoned by its Spirit continues to breathe, its pulse beating; we say: "He is still alive." On the other hand, it can sometimes happen that the vital force, having positively abandoned some parts of the body, these are truly dead, while the Spirit and the body remain united in other parts of the body where the vital force still resides.



Sleep, one of the greatest secrets of human existence, deserves our most constant and attentive observations; but the difficulty presented by these observations becomes greater since to make them, the observing Spirit is forced to submit to the laws of matter, and to allow it to act, to give it the ability to lend itself more easily to its use and experiences. Every sleep is the food of the vital force. The Spirit has nothing to do with it, for sleep is as completely independent of Spirit as digestion, the transformation of food into blood, growing hair, or separating unnecessary fluids from the body. The waking state is a consumption of the vital force, its expansion outside the body and its external action; sleep is an assimilation, an attraction of this same force from outside. That is why we find sleep, not only in men and animals, but also in plants, that when the night comes, close the petals of their flowers, or let their leaves hang down after having folded them.



So, what is the state of our spiritual element during its retreat from our exterior senses? It is no longer able to receive impressions from the outside, through the eyes, ears, by taste, smell, and touch; but could we say that during such moments, our self is annihilated? If this were so, our body would receive another Spirit every morning, another soul, in place of the one that would be destroyed. The Spirit, having withdrawn from its senses, continues to live and act, although it can only manifest itself imperfectly, having renounced for some time the instruments that it is accustomed to using ordinarily.



Dreams are all evidence of the continued activity of the Spirit. The awakened man remembers having dreamed, but these memories are most often vague or obscure by the vivid impressions that suddenly rush towards the Spirit upon awakening, through the intermediation of the senses. If even at this moment he does not know what visions he had during the sleep, he nevertheless retains, at the time of a sudden awakening, the awareness that his attention has become detached from something that had preoccupied him until then, within himself.



Sleep always consists of visions, desires, and feelings, but which are formed independently of external objects since the external senses of man remain inactive; that is why they seldom leave a vivid and lasting impression in the memory. The Spirit therefore had to be occupied, although after sleep we could not recall the results of its activity. But what man can remember the thousands of these rapid visions that present themselves to the Spirit, even in the waking state, at such and such time of the day? Does he have the right to claim that his Spirit did not have visions just when he was first and foremost active and reflecting?



During sleep, the Spirit retains the sense of its existence, just as well as during its waking state. Even during his sleep, he knows how to distinguish himself perfectly from the objects of his visions. Whenever we recall a dream, we find that it was our own self that, with a much imperfect sense of its individuality, floated among the images of its own fantasy. We can forget the accessories of dreams that have only produced a weak impression on us, and during which our Spirit has not reacted strongly with its desires and feelings; therefore, we could also forget that we had the feeling of our existence then, but this is no reason to suppose that this was suspended for a single moment, for the fact that we do not remember it anymore!



There are men who, preoccupied with serious reflections, do not know, even in a waking state, what is going on around them. Their Spirit, having withdrawn from the external parts of the body and the organs of the senses, concentrates and deals only with itself, and outwardly they appear to be dreaming or sleeping with their eyes open. But who could deny that they have fully retained the feeling of their existence, during those moments of deep meditation, although then they do not see with their eyes and do not hear with their ears? Another proof of the incessant continuation of the feeling of our existence and our identity is the power that one has to wake up by oneself, at a pre-determined time.

Consequently, one cannot say that a man, plunged into a somewhat deep sleep, has lost the knowledge of himself, when on the contrary, he carries within him the feeling of his existence, but without being able to manifest it. This is precisely the case in fainting spells, when the spiritual element of man withdraws by the effect of a temporary and partial disturbance of his vegetative life, for the Spirit flees all that is dead, and only holds on thanks to the vital force, to what by itself, is only inert matter. The unconscious man gives no external sign of life, but he is not deprived of it, as he is not during his sleep. Many fainting people, as well as sleeping ones, often retain the memory of some of the visions they had during that state, which is so close to that of death; others forget them. There are fainting spells in which the whole body remains pale, cold, deprived of breath and movement, quite like a corpse, while the Spirit, still in communication with some of the senses, understands everything that is happening around him, without being able, as in the cases of catalepsy, to give any exterior sign of life and consciousness. How many people were buried alive in this way, in full knowledge of everything that was ordered for their burial by their parents or their friends, deceived by a fatal appearance!^[2]



Another very remarkable state of man gives us proof of the uninterrupted activity of the Spirit and the knowledge of himself that is never lost, even when he no longer remembers it afterwards. It is the state of somnambulism. Man falls asleep in his ordinary sleep. He does not hear, see, or feel anything; but suddenly, he seems to be waking up, not from his sleep, but within himself. He hears, but not with his ears; he sees, but not with his eyes; he feels, but not through his skin. He walks, he talks, he does a lot of things and fulfills several functions, to the general astonishment of the assistants, with the greatest circumspection and more perfection than in his waking state. He remembers in this state, very distinctly, the events that happened while he was awake, even those that he forgets during his vigil, when he is in possession of all his senses. After remaining in this state for some time, the somnambulist falls back into ordinary sleep, and when he is awakened from it, he remembers absolutely nothing of what happened, he has forgotten everything he has said and done, and often he refuses to believe what the spectators say about him. Could one, however, deny to his Spirit the knowledge of himself, as well as his remarkable activity during the sleepwalking? Who would dare? The somnambulist, having fallen again into the sleep that constitutes his inner awakening, remembers perfectly, in this incomprehensible state for himself, all that he had done and thought before in such a state, and of which he had completely lost the memory during the waking state of his exterior senses.



How to explain this phenomenon? How can it be that a sleeping man can not only see and hear with his exterior senses inactive, but do that more positively, more perfectly than in a waking state? Because we know that the body is nothing other than the vessel or the outer envelope of the soul; that without it he can feel nothing, and that the eye of a corpse sees just as little as the eye of a statue. It is therefore the soul and only the soul that feels, sees, and hears what is happening outside of it. The eye, the ear, etc., are only instruments and favorable instruments of the external envelope to provide the soul with exterior impressions. But there are circumstances in which this rough envelope being broken or damaged, the soul pierces it, so to speak, and continues its action, without needing its external senses for that. It then reacts with increased vigor, but quite differently from its ordinary or waking state, against what is not dead in man.



It is in fact the soul that feels and not the body; therefore, it is the soul that forms the true body of Spirit, and the material body is only its outer framework, its covering, its envelope. Experience and countless examples sufficiently prove to us that the Spirit never loses its activity and self-awareness, even when it cannot thoroughly remember every detail of its existence. Knowing that the Spirit, absorbed in deep reflections, loses sight of his own body and all that surrounds it; that in certain illnesses he may find it absolutely impossible to act on the exterior parts of his body, and may sometimes do without them altogether (as in the state of somnambulism), for the performance of his purposes, we must understand clearly how the immortal Spirit, having left its material and perishable envelope, preserves, after its earthly death, the consciousness and the feeling of its existence, although being unable to manifest it to the living through the corpse, since it no longer belongs to him. At the same time, we understand what the spiritual body is, of which the apostle Paul speaks; what we must understand by the imperishable body that must be reborn from the perishable body (1. Cor., XV:4); how weakness breaks out and is sown in the tomb, and how strength arises and rushes up to heaven, ripe for a better life (1. Cor., XV, 43). That is the real resurrection from death, the spiritual resurrection. What is dust in us must become dust and ashes again; but the Spirit, clothed in a transfigured body, henceforth bears the image of heaven, just as until then he had carried the image of Earth (1. Cor., XV, 49).

The rotting earthly body in the tomb no longer feels anything, but it also never felt anything on its own. It was therefore the spiritual body, the soul, that perceived and felt everything. She will also continue to do so, delivered from her broken vessel, but only in an infinitely more delicate and promptly way. The Spirit, being aware of itself in its spiritual envelope, will then be able to admire the glory of God in his creations, just as well and infinitely better, and at the same time possess the faculty of seeing and loving those who are dear to him; but he will no longer experience material and sensual needs, he will no longer shed tears. He will become the image of heaven, that is his true homeland. How will I feel when you call me to you, my Creator, my Father! At the time of my transfiguration, when, surrounded by my loved ones weeping around me, and seeing my beloved ones that preceded approaching me, I will bless them all with equal love! And when, sanctified by Jesus Christ, participating in his reign, I will present myself before you, O my God, worshiping you with the liveliest gratitude, the deepest veneration, boundless admiration! May my immortal Spirit be mature enough then to enjoy such supreme bliss! Amen.

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[1] One should remember that these lines were written fifty years before the revelations of the Spirits collected by Spiritism. (Note from the translator to French).




[2] The famous German physiologist, Doctor Buchner, published in 1859, in the issue 349, of Disdascalia, a scientific journal which appeared in Darmstadt, an article on the use of chloroform, at the end of which he adds these very remarkable words in the mouth of the author of Force et Matière: “The discovery of chloroform and its extraordinary effects is not only of great significance for medical science, but also for two of our main sciences: physiology and – do not be too surprised by it - philosophy.” What leads the materialist doctor to say that, even from a psychological point of view, the use of chloroform is of some weight, is that the patients, during the operations they have undergone, found themselves in a state of semi-dizziness, produced by the effect of chloroform, have many times declared, after waking up, that during the operation, they had not felt any pain, nor a feeling of anguish or fear, but that they had perfectly heard everything that was going on and being said around them, without however being in a position to make any movement whatsoever, nor to move a single one of their limbs. Doesn’t this positively prove the possibility of the existence of the Spirit outside of matter, that dies as soon as the Spirit that vivified it leaves it definitively? Doesn't magnetism, too, offer some tangible proof, so to speak, of the existence of the soul, independent of matter, and how is it treated by scholars and academics? Instead of giving it their full attention and applying themselves to studying it seriously, they constrain themselves to denying it, which is certainly more convenient, but does not do honor to our scientific corporations. (French translator note).