The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1860

Allan Kardec

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A Culprit Spirit Arrives in the Spiritual World

(Medium Mrs. Costel)

I will tell you what I went through on the occasion of my death. My spirit retained my body through physical connections and it took great pains to free it. I felt so strong at the age of twenty-four that I could hardly believe that I had left such a life behind. I sought my body and that surprised me, terrified me, for finding myself lost in that multitude of shadows. Then the consciousness of my state and the revelation of my faults in all my incarnations suddenly struck me. An inexorable light illuminated the most remote corners of my soul, and I felt naked and a sensation of overwhelming shame. I tried to escape, looking for other things familiar to me, surrounding me. The radiant spirits floating in ether gave me the feeling of an unreachable happiness. Shadow-like forms, devastated, drowned in despair, some sarcastic, others furious, all circulating around me and I felt stuck to the ground. I saw humans coming and going and I envied their ignorance. A total new order of things, or things that I had to meet again, suddenly invaded my soul. Dragged by a relentless force, trying to escape that relentless pain, I traveled distances; the elements, the material obstacles, the splendorous nature or celestial splendors couldn’t calm for a moment the excruciating pain in my conscience, or the horror caused by the revelation of eternity.


A mortal can sense the physical torments by the shivering of the flesh, but your fragile pain, softened by hope, tempered by distractions, annihilated by forgetfulness, will never translate the anguishes of a soul that suffers unremittingly, without hope or regret. I spent a time whose duration I cannot determine just envying the selected ones, in which I could see them glimpse the splendor; hating the bad spirits who continued to persecute me with their mockery, despising human depravity, whose nastiness were clear to me, made me move from a profound depression to an insane rebellion.


Then, you soothed me. I heard the teachings of your guides. The truth penetrated my soul and I prayed and God listened. It was revealed to me by God’s mercy, as it was revealed by God’s justice.

Novel

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