292 - (21). May we ask spirits for information concerning their situation in the other world?

"Yes; and they give such information willingly, when the inquiry is dictated by sympathy, or by the desire of obtaining useful knowledge, and not by mere curiosity."

22. Are spirits permitted to describe their sufferings and their joys?

"Certainly; and these revelations are a most important teaching for you, because they show you the true nature of the rewards and punishments that await you all. By destroying the false notions you have formed to yourselves on that subject, they tend to revivify your faith and confidence in the goodness of God. Superior spirits rejoice in describing to you their felicity; and the evil ones are often constrained to describe their sufferings, both in order to awaken repentance on their part, and also that they may find relief in so doing, as he who is unhappy in your world is relieved by pouring out his trouble, and by the compassion he thus excites.

"You must never forget that the essential and exclusive object of spiritism is your moral amelioration; and that it is for the attainment of this end that spirits are permitted to initiate you into the knowledge of the life to come, thus furnishing you with examples which you may turn to your own profit. The more thoroughly you identify yourselves with the world which awaits you, the less will you regret the one in which you now are. This is, in fact, the sole aim of the new revelation."

23. Can we, by evoking a person about whose fate we are uncertain, learn from himself whether he is still on earth?

"Yes, if uncertainty in regard to his death be not a necessary trial for those who are interested in knowing about it."

- If dead, could the person thus evoked make known the circumstances of his death, so that these might be verified?

"If the spirit attached any importance to such circumstances, he might do so; otherwise he would not trouble himself to narrate them."

Remark - Experience proves that, in such cases, a spirit is often not at all excited by any of the motives that may lead persons upon the earth to desire to learn the circumstances of his death. If he himself desires to make them known, he does so of his own accord, either through a medium, or by dreams, visions, apparitions, &c, and may thus give the most exact intelligence about himself; in contrary cases, a lying spirit may deceive us with perfect ease, and may amuse himself by leading us to make fruitless searchings, or to take other measures equally useless.

It frequently happens that the disappearance of some one whose death cannot be legally proved, throws the affairs of his family into great confusion; yet it is only in very rare and exceptional cases that we have known spirits to put inquirers on the track of the facts concerning which they had been questioned by the survivors. Spirits could, no doubt, clear up all such mysteries if they chose to do so, or if such action on their part were permitted; but they are never permitted to do so when the embarrassment caused by such uncertainty is intended as a trial for those who are interested in ascertaining the truth of the matter thus left in doubt. To attempt to recover an inheritance by invoking the aid of spirits is, therefore, to allow one's self to be lured on by chimerical hopes, about which the only point of certainty is the loss of time, effort, and money, incurred in pursuing them.