Instructions about the preceding fact
(Parisian Society, May 10th, 1867 – medium Mr. Morin, in spontaneous somnambulism)
The facts are showing everywhere, and everything that happens seems to have a special direction that leads to the spiritual studies. Observe well, and you will see, at every moment, things that seem, at first glance, to be anomalies in human life, and the cause of which we would uselessly seek elsewhere but in the spiritual life. Undoubtedly, for many people these are simply curious events that they no longer think about, once the page is turned; but others think more seriously; they seek an explanation, and by force of seeing the spiritual life rising up before them, they will be obliged to recognize that there alone is the solution of what they cannot understand. You who know the spiritual life, carefully examine the details of the fact that has just been read to you and see if it does not show itself there with evidence.
Do not think that the studies that you are doing on these contemporary subjects and others are lost to the masses, because until now they only go to the Spiritists, to those who are already convinced. No. First, rest assured that the Spiritist writings go beyond the followers; there are people too interested in the matter not to keep abreast of all that you are doing and the progress of the doctrine. Without showing, society, that is the center where the work is carried out, is a focal point, and the wise and reasoned solutions that emerge here give more food for thought than you think. But a day will come when these same writings will be read, commented on, analyzed publicly; people will draw from it all the elements on which the new ideas must be based, because they will find the truth there. Again, be convinced that nothing you do is lost, even for the present, let alone for the future.
Everything is a matter of instruction for the thoughtful man. In the fact that concerns you, you see a man in control of his intellectual faculties, his material forces, and who seems, for a moment, completely stripped of the former; he does something that seems insane, at first sight. Well! there is a great lesson here.
Has it happened? Some people will ask. Was the man in a state of natural somnambulism, or did he dream? Did the Spirit of the woman have any part in this? These are the questions we can ask ourselves in this regard. Well! The Spirit of Mrs. Magnan had much to do with this matter, and for much more than even the Spiritists might suppose.
If we follow the man closely, from the moment of his wife's death, we see him changing little by little; from the first hours of his wife's departure, we see his Spirit taking a direction that becomes more and more accentuated, to arrive at the act of madness of exhuming the corpse. There is something other than grief in this act; and as The Spirits’ Book teaches, as all communications teach: it is not in the present life, but in the past that we must seek the cause. We are only here to accomplish a mission or to pay a debt; in the first case, a voluntary task is accomplished; in the second, make the counterpart of the sufferings that you experience, and you will have the cause of those sufferings.
When the woman died she remained there in the Spirit, and since the union of the spiritual fluids with those of the body was difficult to break, due to the inferiority of the Spirit, it took some time for her to regain her freedom of action, a new work for the assimilation of the fluids; then, when she was able to, she took hold of the man's body and possessed it. Here you have, therefore, a real case of possession.
The man is no longer himself and notice it: he is no longer himself when night breaks. It would be necessary to go into too long an explanation to make you understand the cause of this singularity; but, in two words: the mixture of certain fluids, like that of certain gases in chemistry, cannot withstand the glare of light. That is why certain spontaneous phenomena take place more often at night than during the day.
She possesses this man; she makes him do what she wants; it was she who took him to the cemetery to make him do a superhuman work, and make him suffer; and the next day, when the man is asked what happened, he is stunned and only remembers having dreamed of his wife. The dream was reality; she had promised to come back, and she came back; she will come back, and she will drag him.
A crime was committed in another existence; the one who wanted revenge let himself to be embodied first, and chose an existence that allowed him to accomplish his revenge, putting him in relation with himself. You will ask why such a permission? But God does not grant anything that is not fair and logical. One wants revenge; he must have, as a test, the opportunity to overcome his desire for revenge, and the other must experience and pay for what he made the first suffer. The case is the same here; only the phenomena not being finished, one does not extend any longer: there will still exist something else.
