257 – The body is the instrument of pain; if not its primary cause, at least its immediate cause. The soul has the perception of such pain and this perception is the effect. The memory that it preserves of pain can be very acute, but this does not imply any physical sensation. Actually, cold and heat cannot disorganize the soul’s tissues – a soul can neither freeze nor burn. Every day, do we not see the memory of or the concern about a physical ill producing its effects, even to the extent of causing death?
We all know that individuals who have undergone an amputation feel pain in the limb that no longer exists. The limb is obviously neither the site nor the starting point of the pain; the brain itself has simply retained the impression. Likewise, we can assume there is something similar in the sufferings of spirits after death. An in-depth study of the perispirit, which plays such an important role in all spirit phenomena, such as vaporous or tangible apparitions, in the state of the spirit at the moment of death, in the so-frequent notion that it is still alive, in the frightening situation of suicides, in those who have undergone capital punishment, in those who have overindulged in material pleasures, and so many other facts, have shed light on this question, providing the explanations that we are presenting here in summary.
The perispirit is the link that unites the spirit with the matter of the body. It is drawn from the environment, from the universal fluid. At the same time, it contains electricity, magnetic fluid and to a certain extent, inert matter. We could say that it is the quintessence of matter. It is the beginning of organic life but not of mental life, because that belongs to the spirit. The perispirit is also the agent of external sensations. In the body, these sensations are localized in the organs that serve as their channels. When the body is destroyed, the sensations become generalized, and that is why a spirit does not say that it suffers more in its head than in its feet. Moreover, we have to be on our guard against being confused as to the sensations of the perispirit, which have become independent of the sensations of the body; we can only take the latter as a term of comparison and not as an analogy. Freed from the body, the spirit may suffer, but this suffering is not the same as that of the body; however, it is not an exclusively mental suffering either, like remorse, because the spirit may complain of being hot or cold. Nevertheless, it suffers no more in summer than in winter. We have seen spirits pass through flames without feeling any pain, showing that temperature has no effect on them. The pain they do feel is not physical pain per se; it is a vague inner sensation, of which the spirit is not always aware because the pain is not localized or produced by an outside agent. It is a memory rather than a reality, but a very painful memory nonetheless. At other times, it is more than a memory, as we shall see.
Experience has taught us that the perispirit disengages itself more or less slowly from the body at the moment of death. During the first few moments, the spirit does not comprehend its situation – it does not think it has died, because it feels alive. It sees its body at its side and knows that it is its own, but does not understand why they are separate. This state lasts as long as there is a link between the body and the perispirit. A suicide once said to us, “No, I’m not dead,” and added, “yet, I can feel the worms devouring me.” Of course, the worms were not devouring the perispirit, let alone the spirit, but only the body. Since the separation between the body and the perispirit was not yet complete, there continued to be a mental repercussion that transmitted the sensation to the body. Repercussion is not quite the right term, however, since it may imply a highly physical effect. It was rather the sight of what was happening within the body itself; the perispirit was still attached, producing an illusion which was taken as real. Thus, it was not a memory of a past occurrence – its body had never been devoured by worms during life – but a current sensation. With these elements in mind, let us see what conclusions we might draw from these facts by studying them carefully. During life, the body receives impressions and transmits them to the spirit via the perispirit, which probably comprises what is called the neural fluid.45 When it is dead, the body no longer feels anything because it has neither spirit nor perispirit. When disengaged from the body, the perispirit experiences sensation, but since sensation no longer reaches it via a limited channel, it becomes generalized. Since the perispirit is only an agent of transmission – because only the spirit possesses consciousness – we may deduce that if the perispirit could exist without the spirit, the perispirit would feel no more than the dead body. Likewise, if the spirit had no perispirit, it would be inaccessible to any painful sensation whatsoever, as is the case with completely purified spirits. We know that the more a spirit purifies itself, the more etherealized the essence of its perispirit becomes, so that material influences diminish as the spirit progresses; that is, as its perispirit becomes less coarse.
45 “[The]… instrument that is indispensable for the soul to relate to the outside world. Since by its very nature the ‘neural fluid’ is very material and coarse, it is necessarily separate from the soul itself, but becomes more rarified as the soul becomes sublimated and gradually approaches the radiant nature of the spirit ….” (Bozzano, Ernesto. Metapsíquica Humana, FEB., 1992, p. 130 – translation ours.) – Tr.
You might say, however, that if pleasant sensations are transmitted to the spirit via the perispirit, so are unpleasant ones, and if a pure spirit is inaccessible to some, it must be equally inaccessible to others: yes, without a doubt, but only those sensations coming from the influence of the matter with which we are familiar. The sound of our instruments and the smell of our flowers make no impression whatsoever on a pure spirit, yet it enjoys inner sensations of indefinable enchantment, of which we do not have the slightest idea, because they are as imperceptible to us as light is to those born blind. We know they exist, but in what way? Our knowledge ends there. We know that spirits have perception, sensation, hearing and sight, but these faculties are attributes of their whole being, not only of certain organs, as is the case with human beings. But once again, how is this so? That is what we do not know. The spirits themselves cannot explain it to us, because our language was not made to express ideas that we cannot conceive of, just as in the language of primitive tribes there are no terms for the expression of our arts, sciences and philosophical doctrines.
In saying that spirits are inaccessible to the impressions of matter, we are referring to the most evolved spirits, whose etherealized envelope finds no analogy in this world. It is different with spirits whose perispirit is denser, because they perceive our sounds and our odors, but not via a limited part of their organism as when alive. We may say that molecular vibrations are felt throughout their entire being and therefore in their sensorium commune – the spirit itself – but in a different manner, and perhaps producing a different impression, which may cause a modification in their perception. They hear the sound of our voice, and yet they can understand us without the need of speech – the mere transmission of thought is sufficient, attesting to the fact that their mental acuity becomes greater the more dematerialized they become. The faculty of sight is independent of light; it is an essential attribute of the soul (for which darkness does not exist) and shows itself to be broader and more penetrating among those who are more purified. Therefore, the soul or spirit possesses within itself the faculty of all perceptions. During corporeal life, these perceptions are obliterated by the denseness of our organs; during extra-corporeal life, they become increasingly liberated as the semi-material envelope becomes more and more etherealized.
Drawn from the surrounding environment, the perispirit varies according to the nature of the different worlds. In passing from one world to another, spirits change this envelope as we change our clothes when we go from summer to winter or from pole to equator. When they come to visit us, the more evolved spirits assume a terrestrial perispirit, and so their perceptions are similar to those of common spirits; however, all spirits, whether highly evolved or not, only hear and feel what they want to hear and feel. Since they do not have sensorial organs, they can render their perceptions active or inactive at will, although there is one thing they are compelled to hear: the counsels of good spirits. Their sight is always active but they can become invisible to one another. Depending on the class they belong to, they can conceal themselves from those who are less purified but not from those who are more so. In the first moments after death, a spirit’s sight is always dim and confused, but becomes clearer as it frees itself from the body, and can acquire even more clarity than it had during life, including the possibility of penetrating objects that are opaque to us. As for the extension of a spirit’s sight into indefinite space, into the future and the past, that depends on the spirit’s degree of purity and evolution.
You might say, “This entire theory is not very reassuring. We had thought that, once freed from our dense envelope – the instrument of our pains – we wouldn’t suffer anymore. Now you’re telling us that we can continue to suffer; whether it is one way or another it is suffering nonetheless.” Alas, yes, we can still suffer a great deal and for a long time, but we might also no longer experience any suffering at all from the moment we leave this corporeal life behind.
The sufferings of this world are sometimes the result of a cause outside ourselves, but more often they result from our own volition. If we trace them back to their origin, we will see that most of them are due to causes we could have avoided. How many ills, how many infirmities do people owe solely to their excesses and ambitions – in a word, to their passions? If individuals always lived judiciously and never abused anything, if they always had simple tastes and modest desires, they would save themselves many tribulations. The same applies to spirits: the sufferings they undergo always result from the manner in which they lived on the earth. Of course, they will no longer have gout or rheumatism, but they will experience other sufferings that are not any smaller. We have seen that such sufferings are the result of the links that still exist between the spirit and matter, that the more the spirit is disconnected from the influence of matter, that is, the more dematerialized it is, the fewer painful sensations it will suffer. Starting with its present life, it depends on the spirit itself to break free from the influence of matter because it has free will and therefore the ability to choose to act or not. Let the spirit conquer its animal passions; let it entertain no hatred, envy, jealousy or pride; let it cease to be dominated by selfishness; let it purify itself through good sentiments; let it practice the good; let it not give to the things of this world any more importance than they deserve. Thereby, even while in its corporeal envelope, it will have purified itself by detaching from matter, and when it leaves the body behind, it will not suffer any longer from its influence. The physical sufferings the spirit underwent in the past will leave no painful memory or disagreeable impressions, because these affected only the body. The spirit is happy to be relieved of them, and its peaceful conscience will exempt it from all mental anguish. Concerning this subject, we have questioned many thousands of spirits who belonged to every social class and to every position. We have studied them at every period of their spirit life from the moment they left their body behind. We have followed them step by step in that life beyond the grave in order to observe the changes that had taken place in their ideas and sensations. In this respect, the most ordinary individuals were the ones who furnished us with the most precious elements of study. We have seen that their sufferings are always related to their conduct – they must suffer the consequences – and that this new existence is a source of ineffable happiness for those who have taken the path of the good. Hence, it follows that for those who suffer, it is because they have wanted to, and they have only themselves to blame in the other world as in this one.
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