Communication with
the dead

The road is hard, but sooner or later the official science will prove on a comprehensive and compelling way the communication
with the dead, and then it will be difficult to deny it,
as adversaries of Spiritism still do nowadays.

Introduction - I do not know why we, followers of the Spiritist Doctrine, do not have the habit of refute the articles that combat Spiritism. Such task, in my opinion could be for big names of the spiritist movement. Indeed these articles cannot bring any confusion to those who have knowledge of the spiritist Doctrine, acquired, mainly through studies. However, I think that some articles bring great harm to our image, allowing people in doubt and the ones that do not have any knowledge of Spiritism to have a distorted view of the doctrine. My concern lies in "who shuts consent", so I believe that we should refute any article that may tarnish our doctrine, not meaning that we should go aggressive when doing it.

Although I that I do not consider myself the most knowledgeable person regarding those subjects, I dare to refute one or another articles that appears.

The text under consideration - From the newspaper “Estado de Minas”, on 11.09.95, column “Christian Witness” the article of doctor Evaldo Alves d'Assumpção, which we transcribe the following excerpts: 

"It is more and more popular the issue of 'Transcommunication', ie the imaginary communication with the dead through electronic appliances: tape recorders, television, computers, etc." (...)

"Who died belongs to a different nature, intangible by our reason or our senses." (...)

“In short, we can say that Transcommunication happens, exclusively, by a paranormal action of a person who uses electronics appliances, as a kind of stimulus to his/her Paranormal and to express an energy called “Telergia”, generated by these persons, that are called medium, psychic, paranormal or “metagnomo”. Through this power, nowadays very well studied by the Parapsychology, they are able to create sounds or images in devices, which are assigned to people that already died, without being them. Interestingly, such devices never work without the presence of the paranormal person and the images displayed always reproduce some previously existing photo of the deceased that their relatives bring with themselves or photos are presented to the paranormal. And never the image of the person, when she/he was in her/his last moments, as would be expected. " (...)

"However, they do not arise spontaneously or consciously. Therefore, the fraud is almost always associated with these shows of Transcommunication. When the phenomena do not occur naturally, the organizers refer to fraud, to not disappoint the audience.

(...) Interestingly, as well, every time that they speak of 'scientists' who study such phenomena, they only refer to the followers of spiritist doctrine or spiritualists, not opening any space for those who deny such' phenomena '. And the 'scientists' who are part of that group do not mind providing biased reports, which confuse the readers. "(...)

"So far, all attempts to prove by correct methodologically way, without philosophical or religious sectarianism, that the dead communicate through devices or in any other way, resulted in massive failure ". (...). 

"It was seen then an old minded confidence academic, saturate of traditions of his classic culture, nobly revolt against the audacity of the innovator, he rushed to the representative of Edison and grabbed him by the neck, shouting: "Miserable, we will not be deceived by a ventriloquist." Mr Bouillaud was the name of this member of the institute. That happens on the 11^th of March 1878. Even more interesting, is that six months after on the 30^th of September, in a similar session, he felt very happy to declare that, after mature consideration, he could not find more than a simple ventriloquist, even because, he couldn’t admit that a vile noble metal can replace the component of human speech. According to this academic, the phonograph was not more than an illusion of sound. " 

It is amazing the behaviour of human beings when facing the unknown, as the pre-judgment does not allow us to face the new, even though it has been presented by persons of proven intellectual capacities.

That occurs as well with Transcommunication, which brings us the communication with the dead. It is surprising that in the end of the twentieth century people still behave this way, they condemn things with absolute certainty, without investigation or they do not persist in seeking the laws that are subject to such phenomena, and because perhaps they do not have the capacity to understand, they fight them systematically.

And what is worse, they come to such nonsense to say that everything is false. We do not know what to say about such levity, but we can remember that we cannot generalize, only because a forger has arisen, even because not all people are equal. And in any environment that we are we will find people who do not have the desired honesty. We can also seen in the religious field priests, pastors and religious leaders to act powerfully against what they preach, and we do not dare to generalize in saying that all of them act the same way.

But fortunately not everyone think like the writer, that is completely outdated of the subject, and to prove that not only the spiritists make such experiments we quoted the French father François Brune, that through scientific and serious research, without philosophical or religious sectarianism, concluded the possibility of communication with the dead, and he edited a book entitled "The Dead with Speak to us", translated into Portuguese in the original French "Les Morts nous Parlent ", by the publisher Edicel. He is still belongs to the deal of the Catholic Church.

We will cite, a bibliography summary of this author: The Rev. Charles François Antoine Brune has a Bachelor in Latin, Greek and Philosophy. He studied six years of the "Grand Seminaire", five of them at the Catholic Institute of Paris and one at the University of Tubingen. He has five years of higher education in Latin and Greek at the University of Sorbonne. He studied Assyrian-Babylonian and Hebrew languages and Egyptian Eurographics. He graduated in Theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris in 1960, and in Sacred Scripture at the Bible Institute in Rome in 1964. He was professor of several "grands Séminaires" for seven years. He studied the tradition of Christians of the Orient and is dedicated to studies of paranormal phenomena.

Father François Brune is defending, the result of his research, in seminars and lectures. In his book he says: "I wrote this book to try to overthrow the thick wall of silence, misunderstand, ostracism, erected by most western intellectual field. For them, to discourse about eternity is tolerable, but to say that you can get in communication with it is considered unacceptable. "

In order to show further evidence of the scientific communication of the dead, we can cite the book of Prof. Carlos Augusto Perandréa, entitled "Psychographic in the Light of Grafoscopia”, in which he analyses messages of so-called dead applying the techniques of grafoscopia, science that has as object the orthography. In the book, as a renowned expert, he certifies the accuracy of communications that passed through his analysis. 

The philosophical arguments - But as we do not want to analyse only the scientific evidence, we will show the inconsistency of these people that appear to be knowledgeable of the scriptures and teachings of the religious strands that they are part, but let's see: 

a) Saints Requests - There is no point in us been asking this or that to the so-called "saints" if there isn’t communication with the dead, because if there isn’t it, they could never know what we are asking them and therefore they could not answer our request. 

b) Prohibition of "evocation" of the dead - In Deuteronomy 18:9-12 there is the prohibition of raising the dead. However, we would like to know if there is some logic to prohibit something that cannot happen. So if there were the prohibitions of evoke them is because them can be present themselves. This is the bigger certificate of this possibility. Plus, for those how believe that this prohibition is a direct order from God, it is even worse, because God, the eternal wisdom, would prohibit the evocation of the dead despite knowing that they can not communicate, which is absurd. 

c) The Bible - Only those who do not want to see, or assigns everything to work of devil, ignore that in I Samuel 28:7-20 is said that King Saul was seeking for a pythoness in Endor to get an advise from Samuel, who was already dead, on what he should do, as he was surrounded by the army of the Philistines and he did not know how to act.
But if this wasn’t enough, we have a much more recent event that happened at the time when Jesus was in our midst. The narrative is from Matthew 17:1-9, where we see that Jesus, at the top of Mount Tabor, after transfigure Himself, talks with Moses and Elijah. We know that these two prophets had died long before this episode. So, if the dead do not communicate, how they were then, Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus, a fact witnessed by Peter, James and John? 

d) Appearances of the dead - There are numerous reports, recognized by the Catholic Church, of people who appeared after their dead to the alive. How many of these people were classified as "saints" after they appeared somewhere, talking to the faithful or orientating them? Is there a law that governs it and only allowed apparitions of people who belong to this or that current religious? We know that God is just and what He makes for one of His children He will do for all, so these apparitions have also confirmed that the dead communicate with the alive. 

e) Requests for prayers of the Souls of Purgatory – According to the article of Henrique Rodrigues, published in the journal Vision Spiritist 4, in which he says: "A French apostolic missionary, Father Jonet, founded in Rome in the end of the last century, the Museum of the Souls of Purgatory”, in paragraph 12 of Lungo Tevere Prati. This museum is in the underground of the church Sacred Heart of Suffrage, where we were, but it is very difficult that they allow us to visit it, and it is even harder that they allow us to photograph it. (...) There are there pieces from the phenomena. In some frames on the walls, they are in large frames, protected by glass. In a total they are 280, with the identification of names, dates, places where the facts occurred. More than 40% occurred before the Codification  (...). The problem is that, by the reports of phenomena that happened within churches and convents with nuns, sisters, and confessors, and even to priests and bishops, they came begging help in prayers and masses. The mediumistic phenomenon entailed and patented the existence of laws of eternity. " (...) 

f) Mediumship within the Catholic Church - We know that mediumship is not exclusive of the Spiritist Doctrine, because it has existed since the appearance of man on Earth, as it is a power inherent to the humans being, varying only in degree and way of how each person has it. This way inside of all religion we will find mediums. The only problem is who will accept such a thing, as they attributed it only to the Spiritism. But there will always be a person, let’s say, more courageous assuming the role, despite a lot of misunderstanding, as reported in the journal Vision Spiritist number 1 has published a article with Father Miguel Fernandes Martins of Sobradinho in one of the cities of the Federal District, in which he granted a interview to confrere Alamar Régis Carvalho, from which we cited the words below: 

Alamar - But mediumship in a priest, is a very weird thing, from the traditional point of view, considering the dogmas of the Church. Don’t you feel embarrassed when you face your partners of doctrine?

Padre Miguel – It is not that I ashamed of my spirituality - you call it mediumship, but I call it spirituality. I am accepting it only because I have seen charity in the Spiritism. I have seen people who do not believe in God and they began to believe, people that moved away from God a long time ago and returned, people who never read the Gospel and began to read, because the Father gave the Kardecista Gospel (?), Because he/she does not accept the other gospel. I even fought with him because he says that the "Gospel According to Spiritism" is much deeper and explains better than the Catholic Church. Though I do not see it that way, he/she believes in it.

Alamar - How the Church sees this situation, Father Miguel?

Padre Miguel - The Church has never accepted. I was even threatened with expulsion, when I was published in the magazine "Incrivel”(Amazing). That is why they threatened to rip my cassock. Everything that they want to do with me, they do. I suffer lots of aggression because of this. If Frei Fabiano really wants to help me, he must protect me; he needs to make the Church accept me.

Reference to Frei Fabiano comes from the fact that Father Miguel works mediunized by the Spirit of who became known on Earth as the Frei Fabiano de Cristo. 

Conclusion – This issue looks pretty simple. If the Spirit can act on matter, our physical body, how it could not act on other matters, whether that is incarnated or not?
We know that the road is hard, but sooner or later the official science will prove that on a comprehensive and compelling way the communication with the dead, and then it will be difficult to deny it, unless there are still there "wise men" of the type of the one that challenged the phonograph of Edison, and we pray to God that He does not allowed that exist those who would not try to muzzle it, as they did with Galileo Galilei, when he said that the sun did not revolved around the Earth but that the Earth is that revolved around that star.

Bibliography:

The newspaper "Estado de Minas", HBS 11.09.95.

Vision Magazine Spiritist 1, SILK Publisher.

Vision Magazine Spiritist 4, SILK Publisher.

The Dead with Speak to us, Father François Brune, Edicel, 1st edition.

The psychographic Grafocospia of Light, Prof.. Carlos Augusto Perandréa, Journalist Ed. Faith, Mar/91.

Transcommunication, Clovis S. Nunes, Edicel, 2nd edition.

Holy Bible, Editora Ave Maria, 68th edition.