Letter from a deceased to his friend “On the relations that exist between the Spirits and those whom they have loved on Earth.
My beloved, first I must warn you that, of the thousand things that, stimulated by a noble curiosity, you wish to learn from me, and that I would have so longed for to be able to tell you, I hardly dare to communicate only one, since I do not depend on myself, absolutely. My will depends, as I have already told you, on the will of Him who is the supreme wisdom. My relationship with you is based only on your love. This wisdom, this personified love, often pushes us, me and my thousand times thousand guests of a happiness, that becomes continually higher and more intoxicating, towards the still mortal men, and makes us enter with them in relations that are certainly pleasant to us, although very often obscured and not always pure and holy enough. Take from me a few notions about these relations. I do not know how I will manage to make you understand this great truth that will probably astonish you very much, despite its reality, that is: our own happiness often depends, relatively of course, on the moral state of those whom we left on Earth and with whom we establish direct relations.
Their religious sentiment attracts us; their wickedness repels us.
We rejoice in their pure and noble joys, that is, their spiritual and selfless joys. Their love contributes to our happiness; thus, we feel like if not a suffering, at least a decrease in pleasure, when they allow themselves to be involved in the shadows by their sensuality, their egoism, their animal passions, or the impurity of their desires.
My friend, I beg you to stop before these words: be involved in the shadows.
Every divine thought produces a ray of light that springs from the loving man, and that is only seen and understood by loving and radiant natures. Every kind of love has its own particular ray of light. This ray, joining the halo that surrounds the saints, makes it even more magnificent and more pleasant to the sight. The degree of our own bliss or the happiness we feel from our existence often depends on the degree of this clarity and amenity. With the disappearance of love, this light fade and with that the element of happiness of those we love. A man who becomes a stranger to love is involved in shadows, in the most literal and positive sense of the word; he becomes more material, consequently more elemental, earthlier, and the darkness of night covers him with its veil. Life, or what is the same for us: the love of man, produces the degree of his light, his luminous purity, his identity with light, the magnificence of his nature.
These latter qualities alone make our relationship with him possible and intimate. Light attracts light. It is impossible for us to act on dark souls. All unloving natures seem dark to us. The life of every mortal, his true life, is like his love; his light resembles his love; from his light flows our communion with him and his with us. Our element is light, the secret of which is not understood by any mortal. We attract and are attracted to it. This outfit, this organ, this vehicle, this element, in which resides the primitive force that produces everything, light in a word, forms for us the characteristic feature of all natures.
We enlighten in the measure of our love; we are recognized by this clarity, and we are drawn to all loving and radiant creatures like us. By the effect of an imperceptible movement, by giving a certain direction to our rays, we can give birth in creatures that are sympathetic to us more human ideas, to arouse actions, more noble and higher feelings; but we do not have the power to force or dominate anybody, nor to impose our will on men whose will are completely independent of ours. Human free-will is sacred to us. It is impossible for us to impart a single ray of our pure light to a man who lacks sensitivity, that has no sense, no organ to be able to receive anything from us. How sensitive a man is depends on - oh! allow me to repeat it to you in each of my letters - his ability to receive light, his sympathy with all luminous creatures, and with their primordial prototype. From the absence of light arises the inability to approach the sources of light, while thousands of luminous natures can be attracted to one similar nature.
The Man-Jesus, resplendent with light and love, was the luminous focus that incessantly attracted legions of angels to him. Dark, selfish natures attract dark, coarse, light-deprived, malevolent Spirits to themselves, and are further poisoned by them, while loving souls become even purer and more loving, through their contact with good and loving Spirits.
Sleeping Jacob, filled with virtuous feelings, sees the angels of the Lord coming in crowds towards him, and the dark soul of Judas Iscariot gives the leader of the Dark Spirits the right, I would say even the power, to enter the dark atmosphere of his hateful nature. Radiant Spirits abound where there is an Elysium; legions of dark spirits swarm among dark souls.
My beloved, think carefully about what I have just told you. You will find many applications of it in the biblical books, that contain still intact truths, as well as instructions of the greatest importance, concerning the relations that exist between mortals and immortals, between the material world and the spiritual world.
It is up to you alone to find yourself under the beneficent influence of the loving Spirits or to keep them away from you; you can keep them with you or force them to leave you. It is up to you to make me happier or less happy.
You must understand now that every loving being becomes happier, when he meets a being just as loving as him; that the happiest and purest of beings becomes less happy, when he recognizes a lessening of love in the loved one; that love opens the heart to love, and that the absence of this feeling makes it more difficult, often even impossible, the access to any intimate communication.
If you want to make me, already enjoying supreme happiness, even happier, become even better. By this, you will make me more radiant and will be able to sympathize more with all the radiant and immortal natures. They will hasten to come to you; their light will unite with yours and yours with theirs; their presence will make you purer, more radiant, more lively, and what will be difficult for you to believe, but not less positive for that, by the effect of your light, that will radiate from you, they will become more luminous themselves, more vivacious, happier with their existence, and by the effect of your love, even more loving.
My beloved, there is an imperishable relationship between what you call the visible and the invisible worlds, an incessant communion between the inhabitants of Earth and those of heaven, who know how to love, a reciprocal beneficial action of each of these worlds on the other.
As you carefully meditate and analyze this idea, you will increasingly recognize its truth, urgency, and holiness.
Do not forget, brother of Earth: you visibly live in a world that is still invisible to you!
Do not forget it! In the world of loving spirits, they will rejoice with your growth in pure and selfless love!
We are near you when you believe we are far away. A loving being is never alone and isolated.
The light of love pierces the darkness of the material world, to enter a less material world.
Loving and luminous Spirits are always found in the neighborhood of love and light.
These words of Christ are literally true: "Where two or three meet in my name, I will be with them."
It is also undoubtedly true that we can afflict the Spirit of God with our selfishness, and rejoice him with our true love, according to the deep meaning of these words: “Whatever you bind on Earth is bound with heaven; whatever you loosen on Earth will also be loosened in heaven.” You loosen with egoism, you bind with charity, that is, with love. You approach and you walk away from us. Nothing is more clearly understood in heaven than the love of those who love on Earth.
Nothing is more attractive to the blessed Spirits belonging to all degrees of perfection than the love of the children of Earth.
You, who are still called mortals, through love you can bring heaven down to Earth.
You could enter an infinitely more intimate communication with us than you can imagine, blessed, if your souls were opened to our influence by the impulses of the heart.
I am often with you, my beloved! I like to find myself in your sphere of light.
Allow me to say a few more words in confidence to you.
When you get angry, the light that radiates from you, the moment you think of those you love or those who are suffering, darkens, and then I am forced to turn away from you, for no loving Spirit can bear the darkness of anger. Lately, I had to leave you. I lost sight of you, so to speak, and walked towards another friend, or rather the light of his love drew me to him. He prayed, shedding tears for a beneficent family, momentarily fallen in the greatest distress and that he was unable to help. Oh! His earthly body already appeared shiny to me; it was as if a dazzling clarity flooded him. Our Lord approached him, and a ray of his Spirit fell into that light. How happy I was to be able to immerse myself in that halo, and re-tempered by that light, to be able to inspire in his soul the hope of imminent help! I seemed to hear a voice deep in his soul, saying to him: “Don't be afraid! Believe! You will taste the joy of being able to relieve those to whom you have just prayed to God. He stood up, full of joy after his prayer. At the same time, I was drawn to another radiant being, also in prayer… It was the noble soul of a virgin who prayed and said: “Lord! teach me to do good according to your will." I could and I dared to inspire her with the following idea:
“Wouldn't I do well by sending this charitable man that I know, a little money so that he can use, even today, for the benefit of some poor family?"
She clung to this idea with childish joy; she received it as she would have received an angel descended from heaven. That virtuous and charitable soul collected a rather considerable sum; then she wrote a very affectionate little letter to the address of the one who had just prayed, and who received it, as well as the money, barely an hour after her prayer, shedding tears of joy and filled with deep gratitude to God!
I followed him, experiencing supreme happiness myself and rejoicing in his light. He arrived at the poor family's door. "Will God have mercy on us?", asked the pious wife of her pious husband. - "Yes, he will have pity on us, as we had pity on others." - Hearing this answer from the husband, the one who had prayed was filled with joy; he opened the door, and suffocated by his emotion, he could hardly utter these words: “Yes, he will have pity on you, as you yourselves have had pity on the poor; here is a pledge of God's mercy. The Lord sees the righteous and hears their pleas."
With what a bright light shone all the assistants; when after reading the little letter, they raised their eyes and arms to the sky! Masses of Spirits hastened to arrive from all sides. How we rejoiced! How we kissed! How we praised God and praised him! How we all became more perfect, more loving!
You soon shone again; I could, and I dared to come near you; you had done three things that gave me the right to approach you and cheer you up. You had shed tears of shame at your anger; you had thought about and were seriously moved on the means of being able to control yourself; you had sincerely asked for forgiveness from the one whom your anger had offended, and you were looking for how you could compensate him by giving him some satisfaction. This concern restored calm to your heart, cheerfulness to your eyes, light to your body.
You can judge, by this example, if we are still well informed about what the friends we have left on earth do, and how much we care about their moral state; you must also understand now the solidarity that exists between the visible world and the invisible world, and that it depends on you to give us joys or to afflict us.
Oh! my beloved, if you could comprehend this great truth, that a noble and pure love finds its finest reward in itself; that the purest pleasures, the enjoyment of God, are only the product of a more refined feeling, you would hasten to purify yourself from all that is egoism.
From now on, I will never be able to write to you without coming back to this subject. Nothing has a price without love. Love alone he has a clear, precise, penetrating eye to distinguish what deserves to be studied, that is eminently true, divine, imperishable. In every mortal and immortal being, animated with pure love, we see, with a feeling of inexpressible pleasure, God himself reflecting, as you see the sun shining in every drop of pure water. All those who love, on Earth as in heaven, are one in feeling. The degree of our perfection and our inner and outer bliss depend on the degree of love. It is your love that regulates your relationship with the Spirits who have left Earth, your communion with them, the influence they can exercise on you and their intimate connection with your Spirit.
In writing this to you, a feeling of foresight that never deceives me, teaches me that at this moment you are in an excellent moral disposition, since you are thinking of a work of charity. Each of your actions, your thoughts, carries a particular stamp, instantly understood, and appreciated by all discarnate Spirits. May God help you!
I wrote this on December 16th, 1798.”
It would be superfluous to stress the importance of these letters from Lavater, that have excited the keenest interest everywhere. They attest, on his part, not only knowledge of the fundamental principles of Spiritism, but a fair appreciation of its moral consequences. On a few points only, he seems to have had slightly different ideas from what we know today, but the cause of these discrepancies, which, by the way, are perhaps more due to form than to substance, is explained in the following communication he gave to the Parisian Society. We will not raise them, because everyone understood them; the essential thing to note is that, long before the official appearance of Spiritism, men whose high intelligence could not be called into question, had had the intuition of it. If they did not use the word, it is because it did not exist.
We will, however, draw attention to a point that might seem strange: it is the theory according to which the happiness of the Spirits is subordinated to the purity of feelings of the incarnate, and that it is altered by the slightest imperfection of those. If this were so, considering what men are, there would be no truly happy Spirits, and true happiness would not exist in the next world any more than on Earth. Spirits must suffer from the faults of men, since they know them to be perfectible. Imperfect men are for them like children whose education has not been completed, and for whom they have a mission to work, they who have also gone through the ranks of imperfection. But if we consider what the principle developed in this letter may have that is too absolute, we cannot help recognizing in it a very deep meaning, an admirable understanding of the laws that govern the relations between the visible and the invisible world, and the nuances that characterize the degree of advancement of the incarnate or discarnate Spirits.
