The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 132 -
About conjuring of spirits.
Then the captain spoke again and said: "I just thought of something and I ask you to make appear a known spirit, so that I myself can talk to him and that he can answer me freely out of himself and will revive my faith. We have indeed already many acquaintances who are in the beyond before us, also our parents and a few children. If one of them will appear to me, I surely will recognize him. If you can also do such a thing, then do it. I will be grateful to you for that."
2
Then Raphael said: "Listen, to make appear according to your idea a spirit as a kind of spook, so that you could see him with your bodily eyes and ask him with your tongue one or the other thing, this will not do, because then I will have to turn around God's eternal order completely and change it totally.
3
Your so-called invokers of spirits and conjurers of spirits - who firstly, as far as they are concerned, belief only extremely weakly in the existence of a spirit and secondly, having in reality never seen a spirit, except in a light dream - are doing it like this: they invoke a died person with their mysterious, but in itself completely senseless signs and word formula. He then, after 3 or also even 7 times of calling and conjuring will appear, usually with great fright of the one who invoked him, and also with all kinds of fire and big commotion and shaking, and with a very threatening and displeased face and ditto words asks the one who called him what he wants and why he has disturbed him in his rest. But such a spirit has never seen the spirit world himself, believes in it as less as his conjurer and is nothing else than a man who was made unrecognizable and who often has been working together for years with the spirit invoker in a firm and well planned beneficial alliance.
4
The appearance of such a spirit, which is usually very rude, brings then the one who let him call him, to a belief in the survival and continuance of existence of life of the human souls after the death of the body, but what kind of belief is that? Look, a totally wrong belief. So this belief is for man not only totally useless, but harms him often very badly, for firstly it gave the one who let him call him, a very rude material idea of a spirit, and secondly it brings the blind and credulous invoker by all kinds of threatening and bad prophesies to great fear and fright, more in particular when he gave the spirit invoker an insufficient remarkably big offering.
5
If he wants to free himself more and more from this torment, he must again turn to the spirit invoker with greater offerings. Then this one deliberates with the spirit who he will invoke again, and usually the spirit becomes more kind a second time. Thus, friend, such spirit invoking you absolutely will not have to expect from me, but a totally different one.
6
But in order to see a true and not a false spirit, who is not a so-called spook, you first must know what a spirit is and under which life conditions a human being can see and speak to a true spirit.
7
Since a soul, or according to your idea, a spirit, is absolutely nothing material, he can also never be seen with material eyes or with a mere material sense organ. The human being however, who still wants to see, hear and speak to a spirit must firstly become spiritual himself, because only that which is spiritual in him and never that which is of the flesh can see, hear and speak to a true spirit.
8
But you are still very material and the purely spiritual is in you still very undeveloped. That is why it is necessary here to strengthen for a few moments your hidden inner self, which is spiritual, and to enable it in a certain way above your fleshly matter to see. And then you will see not only one spirit, but see, hear and speak to a lot of them. If you gladly want it, I have also sufficient power to bring you suddenly into such a condition in which you will be able to see, hear and speak to the souls of those who died."
9
When the captain heard these words of Raphael, he said: "Very well, if you can do that without harming my physical health, then do it."