304- Does the spirit remember its corporeal existence?
“Yes, having lived many times as a human being, it remembers what it has been, and I assure you that sometimes it laughs, pitying its behavior.”
Like an individual who, having reached the age of reason, laughs at the antics of youth or the puerilities of childhood.
305- Does the memory of its last corporeal existence completely and unexpectedly return to the spirit after death?
“No, it returns little by little, like something that appears out of the fog, and to the degree that the spirit fixes its attention on it.”
306- Does the spirit remember all the events of its life in detail, assimilating the whole in one retrospective glance?
“It remembers things according to the consequences they hold for its situation as a spirit; but you should understand that there are circumstances to which it attributes no importance whatsoever and which it does not even try to remember.”
– Could it remember them if it wanted to?
“It can recall the minutest details and incidents – events or even thoughts – but when such has no usefulness, it does not do so.”
– Does it see the purpose of its past earthly life in relation to its future life?
“Assuredly, it sees and understands it much better than when it lived in the body. It understands the need for purification in order to reach the infinite, and it knows that during each existence it frees itself from a few impurities.”
307- How does its past life unfold in its memory? By an effort of the imagination, or like a picture it holds before its eyes?
“Both ways. All the actions that it has an interest in remembering are as if they were present. The others remain more or less at the back of its memory or are entirely forgotten. The more dematerialized it is, the less importance it attributes to material things. You often evoke an errant spirit who has just left the earth and does not remember the names of the people it has loved or the details that seem important to you. That is because it is no longer concerned with them and they have fallen into forgottenness. What it remembers very well, however, are the main events that have aided in its progress.”
308- Does the spirit remember all the lives that preceded the one it has just left behind?
“Its entire past unfolds before it like the legs of a journey. However, as we have already stated, it does not recall all its actions with absolute precision, and it remembers them only according to the influence they have upon its present state. As for its earliest existences, those that may be regarded as the spirit’s infancy, they are lost in the void and disappear into the night of forgottenness.”
309- How does the spirit regard the body it has just left behind?
“As an ill-fitting garment that has inconvenienced it, and which it feels happy to have gotten rid of.”
– What sentiment does it experience at the sight of its body decomposing?
“Almost always indifference. It is a thing it no longer cares about.”
310- After a certain amount of time has elapsed, does the spirit recognize its bones or other things that had belonged to it?
“Sometimes, depending on the more or less evolved way in which it regards terrestrial things.”
311- Does the respect we have for the material things that a spirit has left behind attract its attention to them, and does it regard such respect with pleasure?
“A spirit is always happy at being remembered. The things we save that once belonged to it awaken its memories, but it is the thought that attracts it to you and not the objects themselves.”
312- Do spirits hold on to the memory of the sufferings they bore during their last corporeal existence?
“They frequently do and this memory enables them to better appreciate the happiness they now enjoy as spirits.”
313- Do humans who were happy on earth regret the pleasures they left behind?
“Only low order spirits could regret the pleasures which correspond to the impurities of their nature, and which they must expiate through suffering. For more evolved spirits, eternal happiness is a thousand times preferable to the fleeting pleasures of earth.”
This is exactly like mature individuals who no longer care about the things that delighted them in childhood.
314- Do those who have begun great works intended for a useful purpose, but which they see interrupted by death, lament at having left them unfinished?
“No, because they understand that others are meant to complete them. On the contrary, they try to influence other human spirits to continue them. Their aim on earth was the wellness of humankind; that aim is the same in the spirit world.”
315- Do those who leave their works of art or literature behind retain the love they had for them during life?
“Depending on how much they have evolved, they often judge them differently and frequently disapprove of what they most admired.”
316- Does the spirit still have an interest in the works that are being done on earth for the progress of the arts and sciences?
“Again, it depends on how much it has evolved or on the mission it may have to fulfill. What appears magnificent to you is often a small matter indeed to certain spirits, who admire it like a scholar admires the work of a student. They examine only that which can demonstrate the elevation and progress of incarnate spirits.”
317- After death, do spirits retain their love for their native land?
“It is always the same principle: for high order spirits, their native land is the universe; on earth it is the place in which there is the greatest number of people sympathetic to them.”
The situation of spirits and their way of looking at things are infinitely varied according to the degree of their moral and intellectual development. Spirits of the higher orders generally make only brief stopovers on earth since everything that is done here is so paltry in comparison with the grandeurs of the infinite. The things that humans attribute the most importance to are so childish to them that this world offers them very little attraction unless they have been called to it in order to cooperate in humankind’s progress. Spirits of an average order are the ones who more frequently stay here, although they regard things from a more elevated point of view than when incarnate. Ordinary spirits are somewhat sedentary and they comprise the mass of the surrounding population of the invisible world. With little difference, they hold on to the same ideas, tastes, and tendencies they had in their corporeal envelope. They get involved in our meetings, our businesses and our entertainments, in which they take part more or less actively according to their character. Since they can no longer satisfy their passions, they take pleasure in being with those who have handed themselves over to theirs and they excite them in such individuals. Nonetheless, among them there are some who are more serious, and who watch and observe in order to acquire knowledge and evolve.
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