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The spiritual fluids, which constitute one of the states of the universal cosmic fluid, are well characterized as the atmosphere of the spiritual beings- the element from which they take the materials upon which they operate and the medium by which special phenomena occur, such phenomena being perceptible to the vision and hearing of the Spirit, but escaping the carnal senses which are impressionable only by the tangible material. These fluids are the medium through which the light of the spiritual world is formed, different in cause and effects from ordinary light. Finally, the spiritual fluids are the vehicle of thought, just as air is the vehicle of sound.
The Spirits act upon the spiritual fluids, manipulating them not as men manipulate gases, but through the employment of thought and will. Thought and will are to the Spirits what the hand is to man. Through thought, they imprint the fluids in various directions, group them, combine or disperse them, and organize them in a such a way to create a desired appearance, a certain form or color, etc; they are able to change the fluids’ properties, just as a chemist changes those of gases and other bodies, combining them in agreement with certain laws. It is the great office or laboratory of the spiritual world.
Sometimes, those transformations are the result of intention; other times, they are the product of unconscious thought. It is enough for a Spirit to think about something for that thing to be produced, just as it is enough to create a melody for it to travel through the atmosphere.
It is in this way, for example, that a Spirit becomes visible to an incarnate being with the psychic view [clairvoyance], under the appearance that the Spirit assumed during a lifetime on Earth (often one in which it was known by the latter, even if having passed through several incarnations between that time and the present). The spirit presents itself with the same clothing and exterior characteristics- sicknesses, scars, amputated body parts, etc.- that he had at that time. The Spirit of a decapitated person may present itself without a head. This does not mean to say that it has conserved such an appearance; certainly not, for as a Spirit, it is not lame, nor one-legged, nor cross-eyed, nor blind, nor decapitated. What happens is that in going back, in thought, to the time in which it had those defects, its perispirit [editor’s note: this is the spirit body, see The Perispirit ] instantly takes on those appearances, which will also disappear just as quickly as it ceases to act in that manner. If, then, at one point, it was a black person and another time a white person, it will present itself as white or black, depending on the incarnation associated with the evocation and to which its thoughts are directed.
In a similar manner, the thoughts of a Spirit create, fluidically, the objects that it is accustomed to using. A soldier may appear in armed uniform, a smoker with his pipe, a farmer with his plow, an older woman with her diamonds. For the discarnate Spirit, these fluidic objects are just as real as they were in the material state for the living person. But because such objects are creations of thought, their existence is just as fleeting as the originating thought.
With the fluids being the vehicle of thought, the latter then acts upon the fluids like sound upon air. The fluids then carry the thoughts just as the air carries sound. It can be said, then, without a doubt, that there are, in these fluids, waves and rays of thoughts, which cross one another without mixing, just has there are diverse sound waves traveling simultaneously through air.
There is more. In creating fluidic images, thought is then reflected in the perispirit (*), like an image reflected in a mirror, and there they take form; in a way, they are photographed. Take a man, for example, who has the idea to kill another person. While his material body remains yet unaffected, his fluidic body (perispirit) is put into action by that thought and reproduces all the matrixes of the latter, executing, fluidicially, the gesture, the action that the man intended to take. The thought creates an image of the victim and the entire scene is painted, a complete image imprinted on the spirit.
That
is how the most secret movements of the soul are reflected on the
fluidic envelope [perispirit], how one soul [or Spirit] can read
the other like an open book and see what is unperceivable to the
eyes of the material body. As
such, seeing the intention of the other, a Spirit can foresee the
execution of the consequential act, but cannot determine the exact
moment in which the act will be executed or other such details. Nor
can the Spirit affirm that the event will actually occur because
ulterior circumstances could change the resolved plans and alter
dispositions. The Spirit can not see what is not yet in the thoughts
of the other; what it sees are its day-to-day preoccupations,
desires, and intentions, both good and bad.
The action of Spirits on the spiritual fluids is of
capital importance for incarnate beings.
With these fluids being the vehicle of thought, which is able
to modify their properties, it is evident that they must be
imprinted with the good or bad qualities of the thoughts that cause
their degree of vibration, thereby modified by the purity or
impurity of the sentiments associated with the thoughts. Adverse thoughts pollute the spiritual fluids, just as germs
pollute breathable
air. The fluids that
surround, or that are produced by inferior Spirits are, then,
polluted. At the same
time, the fluids influenced by good Spirits are as pure as the
behavior or degree of moral perfection of those Spirits.
Because the fluids are as diverse [in terms of degree of purity] as the thoughts that affect them, it would be impossible to create an enumeration or classification of all the good and bad fluids, or to specify all their respective qualities.
The fluids do not possess their own, intrinsic qualities, but rather acquire them from the environment in which they are found, modified, like air, by the emissions of that of that environment, or like water is modified by the salts of earthly layers over which it passes. Depending on the circumstances, the qualities of the fluids are, like those of air and water, temporary or permanent which makes each quality particularly appropriate for certain types of effects.
In addition to having no intrinsic qualities, the fluids also lack any particular denominations. Like odors, they are characterized by their properties, their effects, and originating types. From a moral standpoint, they hold the nature of sentiments like hate, greed, jealousy, pride, selfishness, violence, hypocrisy, as well as those such as good will, benevolence, love, compassion, tenderness, etc. From a physical standpoint, they can be calming, exciting, penetrating, stringent, irritating, sweetening, soporific [tranquilizing], narcotic, toxic, medicinal, expulsive etc.; they can become a force of transmission, propulsion, etc. The scope of the fluid’s characteristics, therefore, includes all of the humanity’s passions, virtues, and vices, as well as all the properties of matter, corresponding, then, to the effects that the fluids produce.
Humans beings, who are nothing more than incarnate Spirits, take part in the spiritual life, for they spend time in the spiritual world just as much as in the material world; primarily during sleep [a time when the material rests] and, many times, while awake. The Spirit, while incarnate, conserves its perispirit with all the properties that pertain to it, and this perispirit, as we know, is not restricted to the mere outline of the human body, but rather radiates through and around the material body, enveloping it in its own fluidic atmosphere.
Through its intimate union with the body, the perispirit plays a predominant role in the organism. Through its expansion, the perispirit puts the incarnate Spirit in a more direct relationship with the free Spirits as well as other incarnate Spirits.
The thoughts of the of incarnate and discarnate Spirits act directly upon the spiritual fluids of their environment and are transmitted from one Spirit to another by these same fluids. Depending on the moral quality of the thoughts, they will either help to cleanse or to pollute the environmental fluids.
As the environmental fluids are modified by a Spirit’s thought projections, the Spirit’s perispirit, a constructive part of its entire being, receives a direct and permanent impression made by those thoughts, and will hold their good or bad qualities.
Fluids that are polluted by the thoughts of inferior Spirits can become purified through the distancing of such Spirits, whose perispirits, however, will remain the same as long as the Spirit does not change through its own will.
Because the nature of the incarnate sprit’s perispirit is identical to that of the spiritual fluids, it assimilates the fluids with ease, like a sponge submerged in liquid. These fluids create an effect on the perispirit, as or even more direct than that of the perispirit’s own expansion and radiation, such that it becomes difficult to differentiate the perispirit from the fluids.
Under the influence of these fluids, the perispirit, in turn, reacts upon the material organism with which it is molecularly attached. If the fluids are of a good nature, the material body will experience the effects of a healthy impression, while fluids of an adverse nature will result in a negative impression. If the emanation of the fluid(s) is permanent and vigorous, they can cause physical disorders; for some illnesses, there is no other cause.
Places that are abundant in inferior Spirits are, then, impregnated with contaminated fluids that the incarnate Spirit absorbs through the pores of its perispirit, just as it absorbs poisonous miasmas through the pores of the material body.
This is how we explain the effects that are produced in meeting places. Such an assembly is a focal point for the radiation of diverse thoughts [meaning the fluids carrying the thoughts]. It is like a musical ensemble, a chorus of thoughts, in which each individual produces a note. This results in a multiplicity of fluidic emission currents that make an impression on each individual, through their spiritual senses, in the same way that in a musical choir, each individual registers the impressions made by the sounds through their sense of hearing.
In the same way that there are harmonious as well as dissonant sound waves, there are also harmonious and dissonant thought emissions. If the ensemble is harmonious, the impression will be pleasant; likewise, if the ensemble is discordant, the impression will be harmful. However, the mixing of some negative thoughts in with the positive ensemble, is enough to produce the same effect as that of cold water mixed with tepid water, or of a dissonant note producing during a concert of melodies. This is also how we can explain the anxiety or indefinable “bad vibes” that one might feel while attending an antipathetic or hostile meeting, where malevolent thoughts provoke currents of nauseating fluids.
In this way, our thoughts are capable of producing a certain kind of physical effect that reacts upon our moral being, which is the reason why only Spiritism has, thus far, made it comprehendible. Man can feel it, instinctively, which can be seen by the way he is drawn to homogeneous and pleasant meeting places, where he knows he can find a renewed moral strength. In other words, we could say that there, he is able to recover the fluids that he has lost throughout the day, just as eating recovers him from the losses of the material body. In effect, a man’s thoughts become a fluidic emission that results in an actual loss of spiritual fluids, making it necessary for him to regain his strength from fluidic emissions external to his own.
When it is said that a doctor cures a sick person through the use of positive, uplifting words, this is actually the absolute truth, because a positive thought carries with it reparative fluids that act upon the physical body as much as the spiritual.
You may argue that we can avoid ill-intentioned men, which is undoubtedly true; but how can we escape the influence of evil Spirits who are present all around us, but remain unseen?
The answer is very simple because such an influence depends on the will of men who carry with them, the necessary preservatives. Fluids are attracted to, and combine with, one another out of a similarity in their nature; those that are dissimilar repel one another. There is an incompatibility between positive and adverse fluids, similar to that between oil and water.
What do we do when the air is polluted? We seek to clean it; we take care to purify it by destroying the center of decay, expelling the unhealthy emissions through the use of stronger, healthy currents. The invasion and break-up of unhealthy fluids takes place, then, through the opposition from healthy fluids, and since each person has a permanent source of fluids within their own perispirit, all people carry with them an applicable remedy. It is only a matter of purifying that source of fluids with healthy qualities that will react to the negative fluids with repulsion rather than attraction. Because these qualities are directly related to those of the soul, any work towards the improvement of the latter is very important in keeping away the inferior spirits, who are attracted, to begin with, by the soul’s imperfections.
Flies are attracted to sources of corruption; with those sources destroyed, the flies will disappear. Likewise, malevolent Spirits will also follow the evil that attracts them; eliminating evil, these Spirits will go away. Spirits who are truly good by nature, both the incarnate and discarnate, have nothing to fear regarding the influence of those ill-intentioned or inferior Spirits.
Kardec, Allan. A Genese [Genesis]. 37th ed. Trans. Guillon Ribeiro (translated from 5th edition in French). Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil: Federação Espírita Brasileira [Brazilian Spiritist Federation].1987. 13-20.